Our Goodwills are Insane

Our Goodwills are insane. Here in the Pacific Northwest, people give away some of the most amazing things. We're not sure if it is a byproduct of the laid-back pace of the world in the Northwest, or if people here just don't know about stuff like we do.

We go to Goodwills everwhere when we travel. So far we have explored New England, California, Colorado, New Jersey, Washington and Oregon. The best Goodwills are in Washington and Oregon, and of those Goodwills, our favorite one is right here in Portland.

We call it "Mill & Grand" because it's at the corner of Mill & Grand. It's what Goodwill calls a "Superstore" and super it is. We find treasures almost every time we go there. And we've found a lot of valuable things, such as an Asian painted screen worth over $1000 for $20.

We always look at the home goods, tchotchkes, wood, metal, glass, ceramics, and framed art. Sometimes we find textiles, such as the 1970s quilt that we recently sold to the Bowers Museum of Santa Ana, Calif., for its soon-to-open exhibition of quilts.

The place is a goldmine. We think it is because the store is downtown, in a densely populated area that is also rather transient. During the pandemic years, a lot of stuff showed up at that Goodwill. We did not want to be morbid about the situation, but every now and then we wondered whose stuff we were finding.

We found an original Geoffrey Pagen ceramic art disc wall piece with a landscape design, pictured at top, for a song. We found a pair of rare, Hippie and Flower Child bourbon decanters for $6.99 each, and sold the pair for over $400.

This week we saw a giant Satsuma style floor vase. It was only $200, and easily worth several times that, but since it was so large and breakable, we left it behind.

We are truly blessed to be in a place with such generous people. It makes treasure hunting and reselling much more fun and worthwhile. It looks like this year will be a good one for our Etsy sales, and we're also selling larger items locally through Facebook Marketplace.

Considering all the great stuff we see at Goodwill and other thrift shops in the greater Portland Oregon area and throughout the Pacific Northwest, you really never know what we'll find next.

Photography Trick

I recently posted this photo on my social media, and a friend commented, saying it must have been difficult to shoot this piece of glass. In fact, it was easy. The glass piece is a rainbow colored Sanyu Narumi vase, so all it needed was some light. The last time I shot one of these pieces, I used a remote controlled battery operated disc light and set the vase on the disc, carefully balancing it so the vase wouldn't fall over. That worked, but this time I couldn't find the remote control for the disc light, so I had to think of something else. Then it came to me. I could use an iPhone flashlight. It was even easier then the disc, since it was easier to prop up the vase on an iPhone. I just turned off the lights, turned on the flashlight, pointed it upward, set the vase on top and shot it with another iPhone. No Photoshop necessary. And that, my friends, is how to make a super easy shot look dramatic and difficult. The vase is now available in our Etsy shop, VintageVaultPDX.

A special Goodwill find

We found this beautiful painting yesterday at Goodwill. It was a good bargain, and we were drawn to the colors. We also loved the subject matter, Sauvie Island, a place we have spent a fair amount of time. What we didn't realize was the artist passed away last year. We searched for her online, and found an obituary. Harriet Kaufman Levi passed away on Feb. 19, 2025. She died of natural causes during an afternoon nap. After graduating from Brandeis University, Harriet worked as a costume designer for a theater company in Boston. She married Don Levi, and they moved to San Jose, Calif., where Don had his first teaching job in philosophy at San Jose State. They adopted four children and later moved to Eugene and Portland. After divorce, Harriet became active in the woman's movement. She worked for Head Start and later taught Childhood Education at Clark College in Vancouver. She started a Women's Studies program, teaching in it for the rest of her career. She married Charles Deemer in 1998. When she retired, Harriet took up art, working in mixed media. She had solo and group shows in the Portland area, as well as in China and Korea with the Women's Caucus for Art. Her online gallery is at http://www.artistliszt.com/galleries/levi-h.html.

Is it true?

Is it true? Has it really been over two years since I wrote a blog post? My, how time flies! I'm still out here and still very much enjoying the journey of collecting quilts, but in recent years my focus has shifted from collecting to finding new homes for many of the quilts in the collection. My wife Linda and I still maintain a stellar collection of quilts, and I can say with confidence the quilts are some of the finest and most interesting quilts ever made. We also have many that are favorites, things we can't quite let go...yet. Some of our quilts are now in museum collections. A significant group of "New York Beauty" quilts from my first book are now part of the collection at the International Quilt Museum. Another quilt, pictured above, was purchased by the Bowers Museum of Santa Ana, California for its collection. The quilt will appear in an exhibition this year curated by Tara Miller of The Quilt District. We are especially proud of this quilt because we found it at a local Goodwill while we were thrift shopping. The quilt is a masterpiece of the 1970s period, when polyester double knit fabrics came into use. I have collected quilts from the period for more than a decade, and I still find them fascinating. I was just a kid in the 1970s, and it was such an interesting time to be a young person. There was a significant quiltmaking revival at the time, and a new generation of quiltmakers was born. Many of the quilts were made with the fade-resistant polyester material, and they look every bit as vibrant as the day they were made. That's kind of a newer development in the sphere of collecting quilts, as many of the examples from the past are faded or have changed in other ways over time. Linda and I have a small reselling business now. We often explore the thrift shops, vintage markets and antique stores looking for treasures, mostly to resell. We love all types of things including quilts, but have branched out to appreciate glass, pottery, wood, metal, art, holiday ornaments and mass-produced collectibles. Last year, our Etsy shop - VintageVaultPDX - had record sales. We surpassed our 1000th sale milestone, and had a lot of momentum heading in to this year. Several of the quilts from our collection are now available in our shop, and more will be available soon but we are holding on to the ones we love the most. The really special ones. Those quilts will likely be part of museum collections in the future. Life is good. I just wanted to pop in to say hello to everyone who has enjoyed reading this blog, and all who may discover it in the future. There's a lot of stuff here. Thoughts, ideas, and memories. I will try to check in more often, but until then you may find us on Facebook and Instagram among other places. We hope 2026 is a good year. The thrill of the hunt is still with us, and we look forward to sharing it with you.

Thrift Store Find: Mata Ortiz Tejido textured bowl by Reynaldo Quezada, Mexico

 

Recently we were thrift shopping in Portland, and thinking we were done, we wandered down an aisle we'd already covered and headed toward the door. Something on the bottom shelf caught our eye. Looked like Oaxacan pottery. We almost missed it, but could it be what we thought it was?

Actually, it was better than that. It turned out to be a Mata Ortiz Tejido textured bowl, signed, by Reynaldo Quezada, Mexico. We learned a few things about it, most importantly the Quezada family had several prominent makers, and the piece had significant value. At first, we found a couple for sale online, then we found a sales record from 2016.

All signs seemed to point in the same direction, and now we have the piece available for sale in our Etsy shop. To learn more about it, click here.

more Christmas in August

 

In our last post, we talked about a wonderful set of vintage Riddell grumpy Santa mugs. We didn't intend to have "Christmas in August" as a blog theme this month, but the other day Linda discovered this wonderful set of 15 vintage plastic blow mold NOEL candles. That's something to crow about!

Each candle is about 10 & 1/2 inches tall and 3 inches diameter. We did a lot of searching and found very few examples like it. There are plenty of NOEL blow mold candles out there, but few with this simple block font. Each candle has an opening in the bottom, presumably where a light would go.

Such a rare find! We almost fell over when we found them. Good eye, Linda! The set of 15 is now available in our Etsy shop. To view the lot, click here.

1951 Riddell Grumpy Santa Mugs

 

We were driving around our neighborhood some time last year, and there was a sign for an estate sale. The house was just a few blocks away, and it was full of stuff, but still slim pickins for the types of things we would normally collect. 

We were on our way out, and Linda saw this set of 1951 Riddell grumpy Santa mugs near the exit. Eight of them! She did a quick Google search, discovered they were rare and very hard to find, and could sell for upwards of $50 apiece. So, we scooped them up, paid and made a quick exit.

The mugs are now available in our Etsy shop, along with over 500 other unique handmade and vintage items-- and this week we're running a 30% off sale! To visit our shop, click here.