Black Market Antiques Blog

I recently added a McDonald’s Happy Meal toy to the Black Market Antiques inventory.  My initial thought was that the photographers should probably be taking pictures of, well, better things.  But in doing the listing it brought back memories from my childhood (shows my age, or the lack thereof).

The Happy Meal toy in question was a Tamagotchi style keychain.  I remember seeing the McDonald’s commercial on TV advertising the toy.  Caught up in my own naivity and blinded by the overacting of the children on the commercial playing gleefully with their Tamagotchi Happy Meal toys, I wrongly assumed that by my parents purchasing a $2.99 I would get a real live Tamagotchi virtual pet.  My excitement quickly turned to disappointment before my father was even out of the McDonald’s drive-thru on our next trip to McDonald’s.  What I got as my “prize” was a crappy “Tamagotchi style” licensed keychain.

Not a real Tamagotchi, but it looked like one in the commercial.

I expressed my extreme disappointment with what I viewed as an obviously dishonest marketing campaign and vowed to boycott McDonald’s forever, as long as my parents would stop taking us there…  My rant was cut short by my dad telling me to shut up and eat my food.

I never did get a real Tamagotchi, but the next Christmas I did get a digital dog virtual pet – a less expensive knock-off toy that carried with it an anticipation equal to that day in the McDonald’s drive through.  By that time I had heard my classmate’s tales of their “stupid Tamagotchis,” but I did not let their tales discourage my efforts, and I chalked their complaints up to them being bad Tamagotchi-parents.

Despite following the instructions and meticulously devoting every waking hour to my virtual puppy, I had killed him four times before New Year’s Day.  The stupid thing kept begging for food and refusing to take naps.  I’d push the buttons to make his bed appear, and he’d be inside it and appear to sleep for just long enough for me to start playing with other toys.  Then he’d be beeping at me within moments begging for food, which you had to give him or he’d get unhappy and sick.  After the fourth overeating death, I never played with the toy again.

ADMIN Note: Today Sarah has a healthy normal-weight 3 year old boy that she has yet to kill even once, despite his constant requests for food and refusal to take naps.

I love old photos, so when I was given several World War II albums of photos to scan to put into Black Market Antique’s online inventory I rather enjoyed the task.  I’ve scanned scores of photos, mostly snapshots from circa 1942-43, and have even added a few of them to the online catalog.  I will be adding new photos as time permits over the next few weeks (I’m sure I’ll be given a whole different type of item to deal with before I get all of the photos uploaded).

The first group of photos that I have added includes some great photos of soldiers in swim trunks in beach scenes, including several of a pretty buff man named Chester.  Although Chester doesn’t have the ideal body of today, he was refreshingly buff compared to the other relatively scrawny soldiers in the photos.  These photos have been added the the Snapshots>Men>Gay Interest category under snapshots.

Last week we received new company phones here at Black Market Antiques.  My new phone was not much more technologically advanced than my personal phone, which is a couple of years old, but my new company phone is equipped with a GPS navigational system.  As I was playing around with the GPS I couldn’t help but thinking that it was so much nicer than having a map or an atlas.  It was then I realized that I had completely taken technology for granted.

I was reminded of a conversation I had with my Grandfather after I got my first cell phone more than a decade ago.  My Grandfather – who is now in his mid-90′s – told me that he could remember the first phone to be installed in his rural community.  A family that lived next door (1/2 mile away in rural Pennsylvania at the time) got the first phone.  He remembered the exact year some seventy years later, yet I can’t remember the date from his story ten years ago.  He said that everyone in the area already thought of the family as being rich, but when the family got a telephone they suddenly became obscenely rich in everyone’s eyes.  That family’s house still stands today and it’s ~1200 square feet of space seem tiny by today’s standards.

My new phone that weighs four ounces has more functions than 500 pounds worth of items that were either not invented or available to my Grandfather as a child.   It’s easy to forget that less than a hundred years ago there was no television, radios were bulky and often enormous, telephones were scarce in most of the country, the only medium for playing music was hand-cranked victrolas, if you wanted to look up a location in another county it required a thick heavy atlas…etc.  Even the seemingly simple function of having a calculator on my cell phone is a marvel when considering the type of  intricate and complex calculating machines available a hundred years ago, many of which weighed 25 pounds or more themselves.

I am in my early thirties and was born before video games, CD’s,  VCR’s, satellite television, personal computers and GPS….  The world has changed so much since I was a child, it’s hard to imagine what it’s like for my Grandfather to see such advances in technology, and even harder to imagine what kind of technology will be available sixty years from now when I’m his age.

If you watch television, listen to the radio or read any sort of periodical there’s no doubt you’ve seen or heard the “Cash for Gold” advertisements.  In down economic times you may be tempted to send one of these companies some of your jewelry, and if times are really bad, you might consider even sending in some sentimental family heirlooms in the hopes of making ends meet for another couple of weeks.  Before you send any type of gold to such a company, we highly suggest you reconsider.

The internet is full of sites warning of the Cash for Gold type companies and for good reasons.  And many message boards and blogs where the companies are mentioned end up turning into sounding boards for irate sellers who fell for the scam.  In addition to paying way below market prices for gold, these companies often attribute no value to any jewelry that has any type of stones (including valuable diamonds and other precious stones), which the company will say needs to be “processed.”  Also, they do not give any value to silver jewelry or other items that are sent to them.  And God forbid you send them a nice piece of jewelry that is platinum.

These companies also do not attribute any additional value for antique or collectible gold jewelry.  Many pieces of jewelry, especially antique jewelry have values that far exceed the weight of the metal’s value.  So your Grandma’s Tiffany 18k bracelet would be considered to be the same thing as he old gold fillings.

For some further information on such scams and more in depth tactics used by the companies, visit this website, or simply do a search in Google for “cash for gold scams” – with over half a million results, there’s lots of info out there.

So how do you sell your gold?  That’s a good question that many people obviously don’t know, otherwise the Cash for Gold companies would not be able to afford to spend millions on advertising.  The first thing you need to do is determine an estimated value of your gold.  The gold price at this very moment is $916.38 per troy ounce or $835 per regular ounce.  To get real time gold prices, we suggest this online precious metals calculator.  At the current gold price an average men’s class ring would be worth around $80 in scrap (using 6-7 g / ~4 pennyweight).

If your gold jewelry is not antique and was just purchased at a department store or jewelry store chain, it is unlikely to be worth much more than the scrap value when trying to sell it to anyone.  Obviously fancy engagement rings with diamonds would have additional value, and a jeweler should be consulted for an appraisal.  If your jewelry is antique, ask your local jeweler for an appraisal and get a second opinion from a knowledgeable antique jewelry dealer in your area – any antique store should be able to recommend someone.

Who do you sell your gold to?  Basically anyone who will give you a fair value.  Most buyers of gold and jewelry will give you roughly the same price (approximately 80% of the current gold market value).  Anyone offering significantly less should be avoided.  Buyers who are easily found anywhere include just about any jewelry store, pawn shops, decent resale or thrift stores, and just about any antique store.  Whoever you choose to buy your jewelry should never take any value off for diamonds in the jewelry.  Semi-precious stones and pearls may or may not result in a lowered value depending on their size and number on the jewelry in question.