Seventh & Eighth Weeks At Home

I was on a roll making blog posts weekly but missed last Sunday due to Mother's Day and working on online estate sales in addition to the jewelry sales. Mother has been staying at home since three weeks before the stay at home order. It has not been easy for her since she is a free spirit and likes to be out and about. We have been staying at home as well but have been practicing social distancing with everyone, including her. At first we were doing grocery store runs for her but now she is going to the grocery store herself, during the very early morning hours set aside for seniors. For Mother's Day, we went to Mariano's and dropped off a care package with her favorites including Combos, Lay's Poppables and malted milk balls. Mother is more of a salty snacks person than a sweets person. She does enjoy the Mariano's cupcakes though. There has to be a touch of jewelry in every gift so there is a Native American cuff bracelet included in the mix. Mother prefers to keep food in Ball jars so she snapped this photo of everything we brought her after repackaging (including the sugar snap peas!) She said she was well set up for snacking during American Idol.

Right now we have six online estate or moving sales running on EstateSales.net's Marketplace in Arlington Heights, Chicago West Town, Deerfield, Des Plaines, Mount Prospect and Prospect Heights with a seventh sale in Mount Prospect coming soon. Our online sales in Roselle for watches and pens and Des Plaines for comic books will be wrapping up soon. We hope that after May 29 we will be able to either conduct by appointment sales or limit the number of people in a house at any given time to 10. This will depend upon whether we continue to flatten the curve and our governor deems that the Chicagoland area is ready to move to Phase 3 of his recovery plan. When we move to Phase 3 we will be able to hold a gathering of 10 people or less. Looking forward to that!

I've been powering through the Native American jewelry, posting a whopping 7 lots over these past two weeks. A summary of the lots will be provided below. I continued to post the jewelry I retrieved from the Native American gallery. I've got a system - I first post the lot to our Facebook page to give our fans a preview and then the lot is posted to a number of private Facebook groups. The unsold items are then posted to our Shop section of the website and can be found under All Products when sorted by Newest items or under their appropriate category. These items are also posted to eBay and to Etsy if they are vintage or handmade. This system has been working great, I'm glad that I didn't give up on the online store. I nearly cancelled it after it basically sat empty for a year. One positive aspect of the stay at home order was that I was able to master the online store. It is very easy to use and has lots of features. Just this past week I posted a few items where I have a choice of sizes. It worked beautifully, the size can be selected before the item goes into the shopping cart. I will continue to work on the online store every day as long as we stay at home but I feel that even when we eventually get back to full-time estate sales I will be able to at least devote one day per week to it. One thing is for sure, this will be the year that I will be ready for online holiday shopping! It's getting there but once the online store is more robust I will work on even more social media promotion. The next step is to take some Instagram-worthy photos with live models.

Below is the update on the jewelry lots posted these past two weeks! Any unsold items will be posted to the online store over the next week or so. A lot of pieces have sold but there are still many beautiful and unique pieces remaining.

This is lot #2 of the gallery-worthy jewelry collection; it was posted May 5. The Eugene Gruber floral squash blossom necklace, the pill box, the Fred Harvey-era pin, the floral ring with four stones and the floral ring with six stones have all sold, the remaining items are available.

This lot which was posted May 7 consisted entirely of pieces from our current Prospect Heights estate. Everything from this lot sold EXCEPT for the large white buffalo pendant and onyx cuff bracelet.

Our May 9 lot was posting #3 of the gallery-worthy jewelry collection. The purple spiny oyster necklace, all three cuff bracelets, the three-color stone long earrings, the opal dangle earrings and the tiny turtle pin / pendant all sold, the remaining items are available. I can't believe the Dee Brown Navajo bug pin didn't sell but I'm sure it will once it goes online.

The first lot posted the current week (May 12) were these amazing brilliant turquoise pieces, gallery-worthy lot #4. The three-row cuff bracelet, the cuff bracelet with the dark moody stone, both sizes of the Zuni cluster rings on the left side, the Zuni double floral ring and all three pairs of earrings at the bottom of the photo have all sold, the remaining items are available.

I snuck in this newly acquired lot of handmade Mexican jewelry by Elysium in on May 13 between the Native American jewelry lots. The bumblebee jasper jewelry flew out the door when I offered them for first time on Facebook and surprisingly they are still available. The east-west turquoise pendant and one of the plain bumblebee pendants have sold, the remaining items are up for sale. The three pieces on the right are amazonite composite. I haven't been able to present this collection at the estate sales yet due to the stay at home order but it is filled with unique pieces, not just these!

May 14 was a "naked" jewelry lot (meaning no stones,) #5 of the gallery-worthy pieces. One of the two feather rings, the beetle pin, the two pairs of earrings nestled between the squash blossom, the fetish bear earrings, the cuff watch, the storyteller ring have all sold. I also introduced some 14K gold pieces as well, the sterling beaded necklace with gold accents on the beads and the gold arrowhead pendant have sold. All of the other items in this lot are available. The solid silver squash blossom necklace is from the 1960s and is so cool!