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Thursday, July 12, 2018

How/Where Do I Collect the 1970s Dream Furniture?

So, I see this question posted a lot, the best/quickest way is always Ebay, you do have to stalk it for awhile to get a complete, affordable set in nice condition. The way I did it was to check every few days for pieces, purchase them when they were reasonable prices, search random lots for small missing pieces. Eventually, I ended up with like 8 ovens and 6 green desks, so this enables one to pick out the mintiest pieces, sell the rest, mark up the shipping and hopefully net the pieces you keep for free. Sometimes there are tons of stuff on ebay, sometimes not. But, this week, here is what I found, the bulk of the 1978 Dream Furniture line in one set for $30, you would still need to do some collecting (and cleaning) but that's the fun in collecting vintage pieces.





If you scour long enough you should be able to amass the entire collection sooner or later, and then sell all the pieces you don't want to help pay for it. 
Alternately, you can make some retro stuff like this hanging egg basket style chair I made from thermostat wire. I used photos from google as inspiration, you can add a seat cushion, or make it out of white wire for a crisper more modern look. I like the brown because I have made several things that look like wood from it, very easy to work with, just need a vision, some down time to craft it and a pair of wire cutters. It's very inexpensive, so you could buy miles of it if you wanted.

I always wanted a 1960's orange chimney/chiminera for my AFrame, along wit a white stair case, so since an offordable one of the correct scale is unavailable, I finally just made my own, I used a 99 cent auto fluid spout but you could easily make one from paper board cones, this was too time intensive to sell them online, but it was fun, my only regret is that I didn't have the orange spray paint to tone down the fluorescent orange plastic color, otherwise its not bad, I jut need to make a fire poker set and log basket.


FYI the starburst clock is an IKEA christmas ornament with a home made clock piece made from a beer bottle cap. Yes, I have way too much time on my hands, no pun intended. lol The white wall art was a greeting card with a wood cut out, I removed the card and painted it white, acrylic paint works best, the table base is a napkin ing, the green shag carpet is a phot frame cover from dollar store, the Eames chair was a pink barbie one I repainted and contact papered, though its more for 8 inch scale figs. the TV is the 1988 pink microwave contact papered, turned around and black poster board added. Voila! - a mid century lounge. complete with 60s magazines from cut outs. Below is the inspiration:

Evidently, it pays to follow local thrift shops on Instagram, I'm certainly motivated now. Two things sicken me about this post: 1. I never walk into a thrift store and see anything like this. 2. I don't know what they priced it at, but having browsed thrift shops for 30 years now, more often than not, vintage toy boxes up to 70 years old are wrapped up in boxing tape and cheap price stickers slapped all over the brittle paper box labels making the tape and price labels a new permanent part of it, AND the prices so low, God only knows what hapless shopper will pick this up not knowing or caring these are nearly 50 years old, bought it for their kiddo and discard all of the packaging and such to the garbage can. I wish every thrift store had an ebay account so they could be sold correctly to protect these rare time capsules from pilfering and waste. I'd like to think an astute collector snagged these and preserved them in their collection at home. 


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