This is a HIVE.blog exclusive today where not all content need go onto my personal website newtonclassics.co.uk also, and as I'm switching the focus more to cars, locations, and travel I don't wish things to become too obscure. However that means I can unleash a lot more freedom into my HIVE.blog posts and not be limited by thinking too hard about it : )
If you've been following I was back in my homelands of Devonshire, England until recently and many of the posts I cover will be from that time. This is one of them. As I was preparing to leave the UK, I wanted to get rid of as much stuff from the household as possible and have kept back a bare minimum. I also picked up a few things as new decor and general interest stuff as we'll see in a moment.
Ashburton is a small Devon town which has a lot of antique and collector shops. In recent years it has become a popular place for people to move to from bigger cities who wish to try the country life. Hence you could say it's become more gentrified over the years. However, one thing I never remember being any different whatsoever is Rendell's Stonepark Auction House. I've been coming since my youth and my parents would have bought and sold tens of thousands worth of goods/antiques/furnishings they traded (or we used at home) over the years.
Everything goes through the auction house, often due to house clearances which can unearth decades of untold treasures.
I always like a bookshelf to be full of interesting things that fit with my own passions and interests. Then when I heard about these big boxes of books, some upto 100 years old, curated into topics I had to take a look. I found one box full of excellent racing driver and race car team autobiographies and memoirs. Another with many books of all kinds of nautical themes. The next was more car books, this time very old and heavy tomes of Motor Mechanic knowledge. Even a book of blueprints for coach building from the 1920s!
You'll see all that and more in the following pictures.
Stonehouse Park auction house in Ashburton, Devon.
Remember these? I actually picked them up for £5 just as a retro decoration rather than anything else.
A pair of vintage electrostatic 'QUAD' stereo speakers - this was one of the most high end home HiFi systems back in the day. These actually fetched a good price, a few hundred pounds sterling. If you have someone to service them correctly, and matched with the rest of a QUAD system they still sound incredible.
Above: The connectors for these speakers, looking down on the rear floorstands.
They even came with original cardboard boxes, perhaps 35 or more years old.
Mappin and Webb is a company still in business today, a kind of luxury department wedding gift store.
Here's something I picked up for my own collection and at just £17 it was a bargain. What a great desk ornament and paperweight it is.
One of my favorite picks which I recommend any petrol head hunts down and reads - is this Aston Martin book by Gershon, a man responsible for much of the development work on the DB6 and other models before and after that. It's a true insight to the levels and depths of zero-compromise engineering that went into making some of the greatest cars of all time, back in the 60s and 70s.
Another book on my reading list, from a box full of them I bid just a few quid and won.
A better look at the Jaguar mascot
Here's something clever, storage for all your disused and spare USB cables and chargers. How did they think of that so long ago?
This interesting statue went for a good price I believe.
Cute wooden elephant, you can get everything big and small here.
Some vintage 'Sansui' speakers, a Japan brand known for high quality if it is from the right era, and these look like they could be. If they work they probably sound great. I didn't take the bait however, I've enough hifi stashed away for now.
These Sansui were very large and heavy. They came up almost to my waist level and as such could be used like a table or shelf also.
Vinyl was there by the bucketload, however it seemed anything worth keeping in the piles was long gone. This means you can pick up a lot of it really for almost nothing.
Old traditional workshop tools have a strong collector market. People still like to setup the workshop and use them.
A shot of the interior upstairs. There is a great many items, and all of it will be gone and refreshed with more items every month. Any items submitted to the auction get 2 goes i.e. 2 chances with one auction per month, if unsold they are returned to seller, sent to charity, or disposed of.
There were plenty of these old radios going for very little money. Tempting to make them into Bluetooth portable speaker projects with a little DIY and electronics know how ...
These are some of the books I talked about earlier. Early 'The Modern Motor Mechanic' books in 5 volumes, which covers a vast amount of topics. It can be quite mesmerizing and fascinating to pick up and read a section at random. £5 paid for all these books.
This time they also cost £5, and the topic is all nautical books. Being close to the sea here, that's a theme which goes down well with the yachting brigade. What needs to happen is these books go to a chandler's flea market (i.e. at the marina or yacht club) and sell for a few quid per piece ... to see a decent return on this auction buy one day. I have 3 boxes of them now all in my storage in England.
More nautical themed books, which would look great on any boat or yacht bookshelf.
You can find a recent movie that was made from this book. This is an early edition. The curated motorsport books actually cost me £17 and so I was lucky that even though someone else was bidding, they didn't go any higher.
Great little companion books for sailors.
Books
And more of the books ... the whole lot didn't cost more than about £30 in total.
Do you like boats?
Another great book full of history of British Motorsports.
An art deco sideboard lamp featuring marble plinth and jade inlays. Actually lots of details here, it's quite an interesting piece. They can fetch some money, a few hundred.
An art deco statue
Rear detail of the Sansui speakers we saw earlier.
Quite useful for a veggie garden, I think someone picked these up also for about £5 (about the minimum for items these days, including the auction house fees)
A Victorian era (maybe) bird cage or perhaps for hanging in a conservatory and growing some plant inside.
A very old calculator or adding machine of some description. Functional!
I was tempted by these. Perhaps another time, those cabinets just look the business in my living room. Even if the guts were changed to something new.
The road home is a pretty one wherever you head out in Southwest Devon!
