Past Points Vintage & Antiques

08/15/2026

We just got in a collection of straight razors and other antique barbershop ephemera- here are the gems of the dozen or so items we've just priced into inventory!

These various American and German brands all used steel sourced and shaped from Solingen (once known as the city of blades!). These are the ones that come complete with the original boxes- we have several additional straight razors with Sheffield steel, another major city of steel in the UK. Solingen and Sheffield were the benchmarks of steel and cutlery production from 1880s onwards, heavily providing quality materials to American tools, cutlery, and farm implements.

We also have a Theo & Kochs 1930s barber chair in the back, but that needs a little work!

08/14/2026

Tickets are only $5 dollars!

Here's a recap of the prize list (spotlights in our earlier videos):

1st prize : Rare 1930s NH Guide's Association Drum!
2nd prize: 40 volume set of the 1950s Yale Press Shakespeare Collection!
3rd prize: Sterling Leaf Necklace & Sterling Ring
4th Prize: 1970s Print of Newmarket, one of only fifteen!
5th-10th: $10 store credit or a record of your choice!

Come help us support a great cause!

08/14/2026

Cottage core and rustic, just add frame and apply to wall.

Do you think little Kate Hanely enjoyed stitching this or had her mother over her shoulder the entire time?

08/13/2026

Been thinking about creating themed lots for sale in the shop- otherwise, just having fun with displays.

The vintage Johnson card shuffler and the NGT Poker Machine glass sign are pretty neat!

08/12/2026

Say it with your chest!

In the decades following the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry and the American Black Ships in July 1853, the breaking of the Sakoku (the 200 year isolationist policy of Japan, literally "locked country) the fall of the Shogunate, and the opening of trade with the west under the Meiji Restoration, classical Japanese crafts and furniture became popular exports to the UK and the USA.

It was considered worldly and cultured to have examples of tansu, painted shoji screens, noren curtains and ukiyo-e woodblock prints in wealthier homes, downright vogue following Japan's first exhibition at the Paris Exhibition of 1867. By the 1890s, Japanese furniture workshops were well-accustomed to producing items for foreign demand- the taxes on and profits from this trade allowed the new government to rapidly modernize their country with the latest in metallurgy, electricity, training and weaponry.

08/09/2026

08/08/2026

Do your part for humanity- oppose destructive scanning, buy secondhand books and read about how the 1960s and 1970s saw how the future could slip wildly off course!

Blish, Harrison, Herbert, Asimov and Del Rey have a lot to say about overreliance on artificial constructs!

08/05/2026

The last specific prize from our August anniversary raffle to benefit the Rochester Historical Society. Tickets are on sale all month!

Places #5 - 10 get a record of their choice or $10 store credit!

08/02/2026

The best way to tell a diver's watch is the material used for the watch 'crystal' (the dome covering the dial). Dive watches from this period will have acrylic faces- as these will press down and compress beneficially to create a tighter seal under atmospheric pressure. Glass will crack sooner at depth!

This "Craba" civilian model can be accurately dated to the 1980s due to its smaller size and movement compared to the earlier and heavy "Sadko" model. While all produced by the Second Moscow Watch Factory (rebranded commericially to Slava in 1964), this one is a clear Perestroika-era product meant to be sold internationally- the manufacturer's stamps are in English rather than Cyrillic!

This item is bound for my case at Kristofer Danaher & Elisa Kozmits !

08/02/2026

This one's pretty straight forward- who doesn't like a bit of silver?

While these two items aren't a matched set, I've put them together as a prize because of their shared botanical theme. The Krissos leaf necklace is Grecian sterling and the "daisies" ring is Mexican, most likely from the cultural center of Mexican silver production- Taxco! The necklace dates back to the 1990s, while the ring is slightly older at the late 1980s.

Together, they comprise a little over an ounce of silver, but in my opinion, form beats finance when it comes to vintage silver items!