ListWise

Thursday, October 26, 2006

I’ve got it, but it’s wrong…

It dawned on me, as I was looking at the pricey antique toilets and vanities at DEA Bath, that I have a plethora of antique bathroom items, they’re just the wrong style. I wouldn’t call these trash by any stretch of the imagination, but you know the saying, One Man’s Trash is Another Man’s Treasure.

I own three complete toilets from the 20s, 30s, and 40s, plus another tank and lid from the 20s. All are very desirable and fetch a commanding price when they are cleaned up. I also own a 1920s bathroom sink and a very early brass toilet flapper out of an old high tank toilet. This is all in addition to the clawfoot tub and oak high tank that I already plan to use in the downstairs bathroom.

Getting rid of all these items locally would take a while. It’s a small town and people won’t snap these things up immediately. I could sell them on-line, but it's kind of a pain to ship these types of items. They are very heavy and would require a lot of packing. It’s odd that I did check out Ebay just to see what old toilets would sell for and there was only one listed. It was a fancy English painted and embossed Victorian toilet bowl starting at $650. My aren’t quite in the same category as that, but you would think there would have been at least on antique toilet like mine listed. Odd. Anyway, I got to thinking that one place that might be interested in them is DEA Bath. I’ve contacted them to see if they’re interested in buying them from me. I told them I would take store credit.

If it goes well, this could give me a lot of store credit. DEA Bath is a little south of Sacramento. I could load up the car with all the supplies and make it a one day round trip. I haven’t heard back from them yet, so, fingers crossed. Click this link here to see crude pictures of my inventory.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

You know, it's a little scary. The toilet in our master bathroom looks just like the first one in your pictures. Except ours is pink. To mathc the pink tile walls. And the lid has a date of Aug 1959 stamped inside. But we're not planning to get rid of it any time soon because then we would have to buy a new toilet which we don't have money for right now because we're getting some new windows. It's all about priorities.
I hope you get a good response from DEA Bath. Good luck!

Ben Biddle said...

do you have dimensions on the top one? It looks like the original style that would have been in our house before the 1950's remodel, but with a tiny bathroom, there are strict size limitations.

John said...

Have you seen if any of the salvage places you frequent in Eureka would take them in exchange for some credit with them? It would have to be less entertainment than driving down to Sacramento.

We hauled two truck loads of stuff down to our salvage guy, and got $75 taken off a set of windows and a Victorian door-ringer (proto-doorbell).

Greg said...

Ben,

Ben,

I don’t have the measurements at the moment, but I can tell you that is one big toilet. Did you notice the 4 bolts to hold the tank on to the bowl, as opposed to the normal 2. When they put it in the upstairs bathroom they (the idiots who installed it) had to cut into the wood wainscoting in the wall to get it in there because the off-set is 14-inches. This is not a toilet for small spaces.

Jon,

Yes, the one place in town that might be interested in them probably wouldn’t want all of it. I went in Sunday and they have two toilets now, and to be honest, they have nothing I want at the moment. Aside from that, I already have store credit with them from another transaction.

I am concerned the DEA Bath, if they are interested in these items, won’t offer me much. I can say that I wouldn’t make the drive for $75.

Daisy said...

Do you have a habitat for humanity ReStore near you? They accept donations of just the very types of things you have. You would end up taking a tax deduction rather than getting cash for them, if that's okay with you.

Greg said...

Daisy,

We don’t have a ReStore around here, but even if we did, I can’t really be that generous right now. I am going to be hemorrhaging cash again in a month or two when I start the downstairs bathroom. The idea, I hope anyway, is to sort of transform those bathroom items in to things I can use in my bathroom.

K said...

Good idea and good luck! Hope you get decent bucks for your stuff.