Squarish Plates

I am a sucker for dishware, and one of the things I collect is square plates. I have a wall of them (well, it's a stairwell, actually), and I'm always on the lookout for them.

Recently I acquired two of them. Okay, one of them is only "squarish," but I thought it was lovely and decided to add it to my collection. Actually, this was one of three plates for a grand total of 50 cents. (That's THREE for fifty cents.) I sure was a happy camper. I'm keeping this one, but the other two will probably be part of the "catch and release" program. That is, I'll be having a yard sale later this season, and they'll be part of it. (I got the phrase "catch and release" from Yardsale Bloodbath, a weekly blog about a couple of junkers in Seattle.)

This other, smaller "tulips" plate  I paid a whole buck for.  Not bad.  I saw another quite nice, but nothing particularly special, square plate at a yard sale the other day, and the woman wanted $10.  I quickly put it back on the pile.  She gave me a story of how it was made in England and the factory was bombed out of existence in WWII, yada, yada, yada -- but the bottom line is, I'm not collecting plates because they have history, I'm collecting them because they're pretty.  The plate may well have been worth $10--but she should have put it on Ebay or sold it in an antiques shop, not a yard sale.  (Then again, everything else in her sale was overpriced. She had a LOT of stuff.  I'll bet she had to drag it all in at the end of the day, too.)

My philosophy about yard sales is this:  do you want to get rid of it, or sell it for a profit?  If your motives are the latter, then open a booth in an antiques arcade or become a power seller on Ebay.  Don't have a yard sale.