Ever "found" valuable vintage furniture?

some more pics for your viewing pleasure.

R



Oh thats great… im drooling right now… i know the chances of such an awesome find are rare, but im keeping my eyes open for that one.

I have some nice Herman Miller Eames chairs shell type, and I had a DAR also. If everybody wants to cringe, when my grandmother moved to a nursing home my cousins had a yard sale for most of her furniture and other thing that she did not need any longer. Like, real Arco lamp-$45!!!( AHHHHHHHH!!!), Nelson clocks (two ,don’t know how much they went for but it is safe to say it was well below market). And a LOT of original Knoll and other random Danish modern/mid-cent. furniture. My grandfather was a salesman at a furniture store in Chicago whilst in grad school and then was in college administration. I did get a nice walnut coffee table that is unlabeled but really well made.

This is a bit of a bump, but hey, I’ll make my very own thread just for this if people don’t like old threads coming back like zombies. :smiley:

Found two maybe-eames chairs in a utility room at one job. I’m having trouble figuring out of they’re real, or knockoffs since I haven’t been able to find good info on what to look for yet, but:
*Legs form an H shape under the seat, bolted to four rubber pads.
*Are the “seafoam green” type with visible fibres
*Legs are silver, no finish
*White plastic feet
*Rectangular label with patents but no Herman Miller logo anything like the images I’ve seen with embossing or metal labels, etc.

Found out more. This is one of the more common bases, but apparently an earlier/more sought-after shell. People take these things and sell just the shell or tack on the more rare legs and jack up the price!

I was back there today to finish something off, and took a seat in one of them. For a nonadjustable formed fibreglass chair these are pretty comfy! I wouldn’t want to be in them for hours on end, but much more supporting than I expected. I just might try and get one of these off them.


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I like a good bump. Keeps these old threads active!

Nice score. Looks like it might be real just judging by that underside. If the shell is in good shape that is a nice find. My brother found a great example of a fiberglass shell one in Orange just in a janitors closet at his school a few years back. Like any good student, he stole it, but unfortunately at some point someone drilled a hole through the seat of the shell (probably to drain water for outdoor use) totally ruining the value of it.

when I first moved to Southwest Michigan I started hearing the stories, one co-worker who had worked in the furniture industry years prior seemingly couldn’t leave the house without someone giving him a piece of design history, but had no luck no matter where I looked. Finally one day last year I was taking my son to the park and saw an Eames shell in a driveway out of the corner of my eye, so I whipped the van around and checked out this garage sale and found there were 3 chairs and took them all home for $28.

Here’s a pic I took while cleaning them up in the drive way

Actually, the way I found it was on horrid condition. Someone painted on top of the fiberglass shell with a thick, off-white, industrial paint. Using a large brush with very noticeable strokes. So with the help of Kate’s (my girlfriend’s) dad, the outer coat of paint was sanded down and coated with a classic orange. The rust from the eiffel legs was also blasted off. I then ordered feet/coasters from a reseller of Herman Miller parts from the UK to complete the chair.

A magic eraser has taken dirt, splatters, and paint splatter off of it as well as most of the permanent marker, but it looks like some of the dye has soaked into fibres below the surface. I’m not sure what will remove/break down the dye that wouldn’t also harm the color of the shell or the material itself.
Funny how much dirt and dust can be on something that you don’t even notice, though, and I already went over it with a soapy cloth.

Found the manufacturing logo, this one has the overlapping triangles from Summit Plastics.

When I lived on the West side of Michigan during my internship and after school I purchased many Herman Miller and Knoll products. There are a ton of antique stops along US 31 and they have vintage pieces. As most of you know the West side of the state is home to Herman MIller, Steelcase, and Knoll so that kind of stuff is pretty norm if you come across it in antique shops.

knoll is in PA, john.

I love that my brother posts in here sometimes, back to the topic…

I like a good bump. Keeps these old threads active!

Eleven months seems long enough… .

I blundered into two Knoll Eero Saarinen “Tulip” Ashtrays at a yard sale earlier in the year. I got them both for $25 and sold them on eBay to a gentleman in Manilla for $1,000 … I feel so, dirty.

When was the last time you encountered an ash tray in a conference room?
Saarinen by Knoll Intrnl.JPG


Nice. Hey, knowledge has value right! In this case, that value was $975.

Awesome score, Lew! There’s absolutely nothing wrong with what you did there. Exercise that knowledge and reap the benefits.

I’m not really feeling too guilty about it; the “buyer” obviously appreciated what he was getting. Perhaps these were all it took to complete his vintage Knoll Tulip office ensemble.

Definitely a once-in-a-life-time kinda score for me. I usually buy high, and sell low… … .

Just wishing I could get my hands on all of my grand-parent’s Stickley stuff that was discarded back in the sixties when they passed on… . :unamused:

This is an entertaining thread…tons of nice finds.

I found a pair of Eames armchairs at an abandoned camp while deer hunting three years ago. I figured they would be pretty haggard from being outside, legs rusted from being pressed into the dirt, etc. but they cleaned up very well.

Several months ago, I noticed that a neighbor had an Eames lounge sans ottoman wasting away outside on their front porch. Sadly I couldn’t shake it loose. I offered them a better than half of what I found similar examples sold for. In my mind a better price then they would get selling it in a garage sale or letting it waste away until it was eventually thrown out.

I don’t believe one shouldn’t necessarily feel bad about getting a bargain. If an owner doesn’t know the value of an item or value it themselves, it is a good bet it isn’t going to be taken care of or appreciated.

This is a great thread. Very cool finds. My eyes are open for stuff all the time and so far knowledge has saved me some money a few times, but it hasn’t made me any…yet.

Like others, I am holding on to the hope that I may be able to find some of the furniture from my past…from before I knew Koll from a hole in the wall. College roommates (still good friends) had a complete Saarinen breakfast set with the yellow seats, the public schools I went to had hundreds and hundreds of Eames fiberglass chairs, my grandfather had a bunch of Herman Miller stuff from his old office, etc etc. Not sure what happened to it, but I still have lines to a bunch of it.

I once snapped up 3 Knoll diamond chairs (red, blue and yellow) that someone left out for garbage. Got a few years of good use out of them but decided to get rid of them after yet another move to a new city.

I actually found the same Electrohome Circa 701 stereo console from the first page. This is the only other place I have seen one like it.

Yes found this really nice set of plastic Kartell drawers at a yard sale. Guess brand new those same drawers are a couple hundred. So good deal at $20 dollars.