Welcome to Issue #1 of anyway, i sold it. My name is Amy and this newsletter is where I walk you through the finds, the research, and the final sale of stuff I sold online.

Today’s featured sale is a lot of five 1950s Christmas garlands, including five glass bead garlands and one foil garland, totaling about 40 feet in length.

Vintage Christmas decor is a hot seller, specifically anything that’s mid-century or older. I’ve built up a solid collection over the past decade, mostly from estate sale finds and antique shops. It’s also really easy to research, and you don’t really need to go beyond looking at current and sold listings on eBay, Etsy, or other online shops, to learn about the category, origin, age, material, and pricing.

The glass garlands were made in Japan, though mercury glass decor was also produced in Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the United States, from the late 1800s through the 1950s. Mercury glass doesn’t actually have mercury in it, but it’s called this because the the inside of the glass is painted to look like liquid mercury. I’m not exactly sure where the foil garland is from but definitely one of the above countries.

What to look for: The garlands come in standard vibrant colors like pink, silver, gold, green, and blue. They are very lightweight and will often have a wire loop at both ends for hanging purposes. The beads are typically not perfectly round like a modern bead because they are cut one by one, leaving a “lip” on both sides. Sometimes they are fused together in clusters.

Some of the strands have broken beads or spaces where the string is showing, but that isn’t atypical. Some have a bit of wear from use. With an in-demand category like Christmas decor, flaws aren’t considered an issue as long as the item is in overall good condition, or is rare in and of itself. With this specific lot, the multicolor strand is the most valuable.

I decided to sell these as a group instead of individually because it would take less time to list and ship, and because most of them were solid colors except the multicolor strand, which made the lot more attractive. An auction was better than a flat price because it was unclear how much it would ultimately sell for.

No question about it—easy to list, lightweight to ship, and highly collectible.

As far as my personal collection, every December, I look forward to retrieving the red and green decoration storage bins from my garage, full of hundreds of vibrant and colorful decorations. The excitement of unboxing everything feels just like opening a bunch of presents on Christmas morning.

That said, I’ve become more selective about my holiday decor, and I try not to buy anything new unless it’s really special. Garlands aren’t really integral to my overall Christmas display, so if I have to choose, they’re an easy yes to re-home.

That’s it for today’s issue! Thanks for reading and feel free to reach out with any questions.

Amy