Weird Pocket Finds

[John in Covina]

Pasadena, CA?

My forties coat that Root helped me locate in Pasedena had a "snotty" in it. ONLY jocking - t was just a tissue.... Coooooooooooool colors tho'. I luvit....

In Pasadena there is/was a band known as "Snotty Scottie and the Hankies"

Did it have blood and a hair in it? Gross!

 

[jamespowers]

Why don't I ever find a fedora in one of these pockets?

.

Because not many people wore the travel models that can be rolled and tucked away I guess. [huh]

Regards,

J

 

[Mr. Rover]

Hey Ghos7a55assin I bought a hat with the same sign!

Same seller! The original owner must've gotten all of his hats from this one shop.

 

[Grace]

Heartbreaking about the engagement ring! And the condom made me laugh out loud.

In my years of dealing, I've come across alot of snot rags.

I think the coolest thing I ever found was a pack of unopened Basic cigarettes from the 80s. A colleague of mine bought a little black 50s purse. Inside was a funeral thing, and a tissue with eye make up on it. I thought that was kind of neat.

But....at an estate auction one time, they were auctioning off a vinyl trunk-the kind that vaccuums were stored in. It was full of old sheets and a few towels. Well, no one wanted it, so I won it for $1. I got it home and put it in the back room for a couple weeks. When I went through it, in the very bottom was an old cotton t-shirt from the 40s with Tex Avery's wolf guy on it, whistling at a pin-up type girl in a swim suit. The shirt was yellowed, had lots of holes and various stains. It sold for almost $300.

 

[BegintheBeguine]

"I'll just stash this risque t-shirt in here so the wife won't see it...heh heh"
Cool.
I've only found condoms. Unused, thank goodness. And a business card from an escort service, with a notation I will not post in public. EEEuw.

 

[carebear]

"I'll just stash this risque t-shirt in here so the wife won't see it...heh heh"
Cool.
I've only found condoms. Unused, thank goodness. And a business card from an escort service, with a notation I will not post in public. EEEuw.

This implies you are buying a certain kind of clothing, worn by a certain kind of ladies....

 

[BegintheBeguine]

Uh oh!!!!!

I was working at a dry cleaners! Found in a creepy customer's suit jacket. Now I'm embarrassed!!!! I did buy a guy's really nice corduroy jacket to wear as an outdoor coat and found condoms packs all up in the pockets. Man about town, yeah I'm impressed.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

... in the very bottom was an old cotton t-shirt from the 40s with Tex Avery's wolf guy on it, whistling at a pin-up type girl in a swim suit.

Ah, yes ...

 

[BegintheBeguine]

Hubba Hubba!!!

 

[Spellflower]

Two very hard, plastic wrapped slices of American cheese came free with a brown Levi's Action Suit I picked up at The Red Light in Portland, Oregon.

 

[miss1934]

I was at an estate sale in northwest dc about a year ago and inside of a sixties jacket belonging to a cute little old lady was a vibrator and extra batteries, upon removing them from the pocket and identifying it as such, I immediatley dropped it on the bed and made tracks to another room.

 

[Fletch]

A couple years ago I acquired a WW2 era Navy aviator's summer dress khaki coat on eBay. In one pocket was a little plastic keychain viewer with a teeny photo, circa 1970s, of a cherubic-looking red-headed man in plaid pants playing golf.

I suppose it could have been the uniform's wearer, a Cmdr. Laughlin (an Irish name, and the golfer certainly looked Irish). I'd scan and post the pic, but like most interesting small objects I own, I can't friggn find it. :rage:

 

[Tommy Katkins]

Bit late on this thread but...better late than never...

Like many of you I’ve found a lot of things over the years for instance I had a run in the mid-80s of finding 1951 Festival of Britain souvenir buttons and broaches in items of clothing...and once found a wallet with a fiver in it, but these days clothing is really gone through by the thrift store volunteers. They don’t miss a trick. Anyways one of the best things I found was when I lived for a while in Glasgow, Scotland in the early-90s...it wasn’t in a thrift store and it was free...or so I thought at the time. With hindsight I’m not so sure. The room in Park Quadrant was a real dive but I was in need of a fast and inexpensive place to live. It had been until recent years an all male boarding house and indeed there were a few old geezers there who been in situ for decades. The room in moved in to had a squalid little kitchenette you could barely turn around lat alone anything else but this was fortuitous as all the other rooms, of which there were many, merely had an electric ring sat on a dresser or suchlike, for cooking, and those less blessed residents had to share a communal sink in a gloomy hallway with intermittent hot water, and a communal refrigerator sited near the drafty entrance hall. It was mostly linoleum underfoot in those shared areas, except for the bathrooms which were bare boards. The old guys would drink cheap whiskey alone or in pairs in there rooms and play Frank Sinatra records till late. They’d all been there a minimum of 15 years. One old fellow Michael had to go in to hospital while I was there, and he’d been living in the same single room since the late-50s. When he left I investigated his room, it had been emptied out of everything personal and the furniture, what there was of it, wasn’t anything to write home about. There were stalactites of dust and nicotine hanging from the yellowed ceiling, and the dresser draws were line with a newspaper from 1966 the year I was born...I didn’t stay in Michael’s room too long as the carpet was rotten and squelched underfoot with ancient deposits of dropped food. A nice extended refugee family lived in the apartment above. I met them when one of their pipes bursts and brought my ceiling down. The whole place in an earlier incarnation, maybe around the 1890s must’ve been a well appointed and well to do town house in (very much like a Brownstone for you probably know the cities of Glasgow and New York are close kin) but the respectability had moved away from the area, there was a whorehouse next door and the once spacious apartment had been hacked up into small rooms in such a way that the narrow badly light corridors left dead airless and lightless corners. So it wasn’t really strange that in the passageway outside Michael’s room I noticed a cupboard that I hadn’t noticed before. In it a succession of previous occupants had deposited their cheap suitcases and there they had remained discarded or forgotten for years, probably decades. They were all empty except one and that was full of photographs mostly featuring the same guy, a few hundred dating maybe from 1925 to around 1977, roughly the span of a adult life. I took the suitcase back to the privacy of my room to examine the contents in more detail. It wasn’t the first such haul of photos I’d found and it wouldn’t be the last but maybe it was the most comprehensive. The earliest photos were optimistic and energetic snapshots. An athletic boyhood followed by a adolescence full of group cycle rides in the Highlands and picnics in heather with healthy wholesome looking maidens. Then by far the main share of the photos were from WWII. Our man on a troopship bound an unknown overseas. Our man in khaki drill in Egypt and East Africa. Our man posed in front of the Pyramids. Our man posed in front of a trophy leopard. Later photographs were more fixed, more rigid. Our man posed with a trophy wife. Our man posed with a daughter who took more after her mother in family portraits lacking in expectation or promise. Then a few birthday cards, death notices and such like and, at the very bottom, a few Masonic items. As I saw his whole life spread out on my bedspread I began to dislike or fear him for his failure. I vowed to do my best not to end up a lonely old man in one unwelcoming little room.

 

[thunderw21]

Once I found a stick of gum in a WW2 enlisted man's class A uniform pocket.

 

[dhermann1]

Tommy Katkins:
You've just summed up the whole fascination, both the positive and negative sides, of my and probably most peoples' fascination with things vintage. Thanks for sharing.

 

[gluegungeisha]

A 60's-looking "rain bonnet" folded inside of a tiny, green plastic case.

 

[imoldfashioned]

Ah, yes ...

That girl should get herself an umbrella!

 

[Vintage Betty]

Thank you everyone, I am really enjoying this thread.

I found a Victorian Mourning card in one pocket of a coat, and a simple squashed black hat in another coat. Occasionally I have found vintage compacts, gloves, mirrors and such.

But the best thing I found wasn't really a Vintage Find. My father asked me to sell his entire collection of WWII patches on ebay a while ago, and I realized the bag holding the patches had our family name on it. Upon further inquiry, my father told me the entire story of my Grandfather growing up as a tailor and milliner, selling patches to the military men during WWII and making those wonderful fedoras we all love.

Each time a new patch would come into the shop, my father would buy one. Apparently, my Grandfather was one of the only sellers in San Francisco who refused to make more than a nominal profit off of a patch sale, and the guys around the corner sold them for 5x the price.

My Grandfather said it wasn't right to profit off of men who put their lives at risk.

All that from a paper bag with our family name on it. I'm proud of Grandpa. Even if I never knew him.

Vintage Betty

 

[MrNewportCustom]

A 60's-looking "rain bonnet" folded inside of a tiny, green plastic case.

Not a "pocket find", really, but I found one of these bonnets in the glove box of my Chrysler when I got it home. But it didn't have a case. It's still in the glove box.

In another thread, I showed a few records of classical music that were in the trunk.

I once worked for a uniform company, and you'd be amazed at the things you find in pockets and dump lockers - cell phones, coins, wallets, gravel, photos of the guys wearing their uniforms while on vacation. In one pocket, I found about 125,000 pesos - old pesos from before the change, worth, at the time, about $12.00 American. But you'd be amazed at how many ladies silkies you'll find in dump lockers at companies that employ only men. Although, there was one time when I discretely returned three items to the one lady who worked in the shop at Mercedes Benz.


Lee
________________________________

And in the car, the standard wadded tissues and a quarter in the seat.

 

[Micawber]

A dead stoat.

No really...