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| dated railroad nails |
An antique (Latin: antiquus; "old", "ancient") is an old collectable item. It is collected or desirable because of its age, beauty, rarity, condition, utility, personal emotional connection, and/or other unique features. It is an object that represents a previous era or time period in human society. ~wikipedia
There are a lot of antique shops here in Guthrie , OK, Ellijay , GA. It is interesting to browse
through and see what is there. It is a little disturbing that a lot of the items
are things I grew up with, like record albums and old toys and typewriters, but
I guess that is to be expected seeing as I am old, too. I like to see the old quilts, the tiny stitches, the hand
embroidery, all the work put into them.
I often find things I have no idea what they are and the
condensed description on the price tag is all I have to go on, like in the picture above - the
tag said 'dated railroad nails'.
Of course Google helped out: A date nail is a nail with the date stamped in its
head. For example, a nail with a "41" is from 1941. They
are usually 2 1/2" long, with 1/4" shanks. Date nails were
driven into railroad ties, bridge timbers, utility poles, mine props, and other
wooden structures for record keeping purposes. ~dated nail info
I like to watch the people too, there are those like me just
being a tourist in a small town, slowly browsing. Then there are the folks who
are serious, walking fast, their eyes darting here and there, obviously looking
for something specific, maybe to add to their collection, or to buy and
re-sell.
Maybe I should start some sort of collection, something I
could look for in all these little shops as we travel around the country, mmm. I remember my mom collected salt and pepper shakers from all over the world, which was kind of neat I guess, but then had to pack them up and move them every year (Army), and then of course there was all that dusting :)
But, no, I have enough stuff and looking is free, so a casual browser/window
shopper I will be.
