Buying Vintage from Everything But The House

This is an emotionally controversial post, not because it’s against my morals or ethics, but because it’s giving away a vintage source that I’ve come to love and check on a daily basis. But, when Everything But The House (EBTH) approached me to partner on this post I listed the following reasons I should do it: 1. I love their site, 2. I USE their site to purchase for The Flea as well as clients, 3. The more exposure they get the more sales and product there will be and, 4. Companies that truly have great products and services should succeed in this world and perhaps my platform can help them succeed.

What is this secret new source of mine? EBTH is an online bidding auction that sells from over 300 estate sales a month. It’s Ebay (in the sense that you bid) meets Chairish (in the sense that you can choose from just your city and pickup). You get the best of both worlds in the fact that there is the thrill of the auction format paired with the fun of sifting through vintage goods online.

Here’s how it works:

If you have an estate that needs selling (or just a ton of stuff … maybe you are moving, downsizing, etc) then they come and take all of your things and sell them for you. The selling process is so easy – and so much less stressful than actually trying to sell it yourself. Their experts come in for a consultation, you go through everything with them that you are looking to sell, and then they handle the rest (photographing, cataloging, selling, and then within 30 days you get a check for a percentage of what was sold). All the terms are agreed to upfront and they make it so clear for you so you know exactly how it will work and what you can expect from the sale. This is such a nice alternative for those of you that aren’t ready or wanting to have an estate sale with hundreds of strangers cruising around and haggling prices down for your pieces. Don’t get me wrong, I love traditional estate sales, very much, but if they can be online then I can satisfy my shopping addiction after the kids go to bed, not on Saturday mornings away from them.

As a buyer using EBTH you bid on the items very similar to how you would bid on Ebay: you get notifications when you are the winner or if you got outbid. You can search what is ending the soonest, what is the most popular, by city, or even program in keywords so that when new items come up with those keywords they will send you an alert to go check it out. Yes, they will ship most items and you can calculate shipping costs before you bid but with some items (especially larger or fragile) the shipping can be more expensive than the piece itself. But, that still might be way less than what you’d pay in LA at a vintage store.

So here is what I’ve won recently on the site:

Some of those are amazing deals, scores that I would have never been able to get at a store in LA, and some are just good. We styled some of these out in vignettes because, well, that’s what we do here. We shot this at my friend Scott’s house because I fear that we’ve really exhausted shooting at our house lately (thank God we are moving, right??)

The collection of blue glass vessels and bowls was a STEAL – $12 for all of that? Insane. They are so pretty and simple and so easy to style with (as seen in some of the below photos).

I’ll probably keep some of the blue glass and sell some. Now onto those crazy cool wood desk accessories.

It was a collection of mail openers, paper organizers, bookends and clocks.  I’d say out of the 12 pieces I like 8 of them – there is a clock on a piece of wood shaped like a boat that is questionable. But that’s not a bad ratio. It ended up being on the more expensive side but still a good deal for such unique pieces you wouldn’t be able to find anywhere else.

I definitely wouldn’t mind working at that desk and keeping all my fancy paperwork handy in that double tiered paper organizer whilst opening up all my bills with those hand carved letter openers.

The side table might be my favorite of all of my winnings. It’s a 100% rosewood sewing table with such pretty simple detailing, for $135!!

After we shot it and Scott saw this pic above he quickly let us know that he wants it. He’s not getting it. But yes, it looks amazing in his house, and was such a good price.

It’s just so pretty. I haven’t picked up the brass collection yet (most of these things were in LA and you simply make an appointment to pick up) but that painting just arrived a few days ago and it’s so amazing. It was like Christmas morning opening him up.

He’s going in our new house. I don’t know where, but he’s the perfect bit of ‘old world’ that we need.

Lastly I have a thing with gadget-y necklaces and I found these clock necklaces on the site. I like two of the three a lot:

That’s the end of my show and tell, but my shopping habits won’t be quelled. If you are also into vintage scores head over to the site and start shopping. They just launched a boutique called Laid Back Living that is more curated for those of you who don’t want to do the deep dive – as that can be overwhelming (but honestly, my favorite part).

They also just launched a new app so you can do your hoarding from your phone in the middle of the night like I do. It is so easy to scroll and favorite items and there are thousands of items added every day, and I’m hoping for even more. I’m addicted. To get you all started they are being nice enough to give $20 to any new registrant by clicking HERE and signing up. Now excuse me while I go close out a few more of my bids before the sales close up.