It's Here!

The first part of our shipment has been released by Quarantine and we have started presenting it for sale.  And hurrah, it’s going like hot cakes!  It’s always such a relief when your new stock is so well received because we buy as best as we can, so if no-one liked it that would be an issue that would be pretty hard to overcome. 

Doug went down to Brisbane on Monday to be present for the Quarantine Inspection and to pick up the first load of things that Quarantine had no interest in (they kept more than half, but he still had a van load to bring back).  And right in front of him the Quarantine dude got his knife out and started bodging at the items!  Doug pointed out that we’d rather not have knife marks in a 300 year old coffer, and that we were quite prepared to pay for fumigation rather than have our stock ruined.  The Quarantine guy seemed quite surprised by this attitude, but stopped digging his knife in the antiques.  What is in the heads of these people?  They don’t seem to care less about what they’re potentially ruining, and if the item is going to be fumigated anyway then why not just do that?  I have no wish to import some terrible bug, but I always offer to have the entire shipment fumigated every single time, so there’s no need to go hacking away at my stuff.  But it never changes.

Anyway, while Doug was collecting the new things I started to clear some shelf space in the shop by packing away some of the older stock.  That turned out to take quite a few hours because I have to clearly record everything I put aside so I can readily access it when I want it out again, but I had Billy Idol and Blondie and AC/DC and Status Quo turned up load and bopped about the shop while I worked.  And no smart arse cracks about my age – as revealed by my taste in music – will be entertained, thank you.  It’s a retro shop – I play retro music.  That’s my story, anyway.

Eventually, though, I had to write a sign and stick it in the window because people I don’t know were coming in (even though the door was closed and the Closed sign was up) saying Oh no, you’re not closing down are you?  I rather think I would not be quite so chipper and inclined to bop about if we were closing down, but I assured everyone that it was in fact the opposite of closing – the arrival of new stuff.  And then I needed to write another sign and put that on the door because not enough people were reading a bright red sign smack bang in the middle of the front window about the new things arriving and were still coming in to offer commiserations.

So then we had Unpack Day on Tuesday.  I must say that Unpack Day beats Unpack Night hands down – it’s hard work but at least you get home at a reasonable hour.  And thanks to a couple of very kind friends who came to help, it was done faster and was more fun than usual.  Doug had to be sent home to get more boxes late in the afternoon, when we realised that we didn’t have enough to fill the shelves, even after unpacking for a few hours.  And we had to get in early on the Wednesday Market Day to put the descriptor and price tags on the last few items, and then we were set.

The response has been huge.  Hurrah!  I knew I had bought an awful lot of beautiful glass, much of it Art Deco, but when you see it out together on the shelves it looks great.  Today I had to get up early again (which sucks) so I could get a few more boxes sorted so they could replace yesterday’s sales.  If this keeps up we shall run out of stock well before our next trip in March 2012, but we’ll see what happens.  You expect a lot of activity in the week before Christmas, although January tends to be our best month.

I haven’t even started to look at all the copper we bought, most of the enamelware has yet to make an appearance, some really lovely lamps need to be rewired before they can come in, most of the lovely scales aren’t out (although I did sell those excellent lolly scales yesterday), and all in all most of the stuff isn’t out yet.  But nonetheless I’m very happy with how the shelves look, and even happier knowing that I haven’t picked the eyes out of the stock but instead just opened random boxes. 

Eumundi Green (a local community newspaper) has now advised its readers that I have a selection of photos of some of the new stuff on the Blog.  I had said I was trying to figure out if I could create a new page with photos, not that I had done it and there were pictures to be seen!!  So having been misreported the pressure is now on for me to get over being a Techno-Numpty, and if it’s possible to put some photos on a separate page I shall do that.  Very soon.