I stopped by an auction this morning to check out a listed A&C 2 door bookcase...junk...but there were a couple other interesting things, however there were about 500 lots of stuff I wasn't interested in. I skipped out for a few hours and went back towards the end when the crowd thins and prices usually trend down.

original finish, keyed tenons, crisp and no repairs required, covered with dust and cob webs, just how you want to find em...2 bids, 15 bucks and tax

Very, very nice piece. You are so lucky to be able go to auctions and discover pieces like this that nobody wants. It is very smart to come back at the end of the day and pick up stuff when it is emptying out.

Could you post a picture when you get this cleaned up?

You are right . . . The only way to buy A & C is when people don't know what they have and don't care. I have gotten some wonderful deals. How about a thread on great deals on A & C stuff we have bought?

Bev.

I've cleaned it up a bit but I think now it will need a little finish work on top and since I don't think it's an important maker it should be OK to do some restoration (just ordered a couple more catalogs, on a hunch, however so I'll wait to check these before finish work).

Semi-regularly people will post their 'find of the day' or latest eBay purchase so maybe a regular thread for this could work. I could 'sticky' the thread so it always sits at the top of the forum. However, I think new people to the forum will just start a new thread with a tile like 'can you ID this chair?' or sometyhing like that, and they will say they just got it at a flea market or whatever. The other side to this is if we have a dedicated thread and suppose someone starts a message on their find and there are several replies because its a great piece, it almost becomes a topic in itself. This would be weird then if someone sticks a message in the middle of a discussion that is totally about another piece. In fact this happens regularly and I have split threads up to start a new thread, using the 'One Thread = One Topic' rule.

My suggestion would be if you want to post a new find then stay more or less consistent with a thread title and then date it like I did for the title of this message, so 'find of the day (..date..)' or 'my latest eBay purchase (..date..)'. If these keep popping up regularly, then people who are surfing through can just scroll down the message tree and check everything with the same title.

Now on the other hand, if others pipe in here and there seems to be a consensus to have a dedicted thread then we can try it but I envision it possibly becoming a mess and kind of subjective as to what should be in it or not. The other problem is in theory the thread would grow constantly and to check new stuff you have to do a extra clicks to get to the end, and it would have to be moderated constantly, as well, to stay under control.

UPDATE - a good scrubbin and quick restoration by skin coating the base with thinned shellac and a combo skin coat and even out blend on the top using super fine steel wool dipped in thinned shellac, and then wax. Basically I didn't remove any original finish but just reworked it (... did scrape a couple paint blotches off). time = 1hr

Looks great. And it looks like you definitely chose the right restoration. It looks nice but not totally refinished. I have seen too many pieces that look terrible with new finishes (recenlty an excellent JM Young Morris chair with a rough shiny finish). This looks cleaned up with a good finish but not new and shiny. What kind of wax did you use?

Thanks. I did my due dilligence first to make sure as best as possible it wasn't a long lost George Maher piece worth 100,000 and then did the quickie restoration. Leaving a little of the old grungy finish, on the edges, and not trying to bleach out the little water staining on the top helps to preserve and tell the story of the life it's had - I like this approach whenever possible.

My wax was a dark brown Minwax paste wax that hasn't been made for many years (how many not sure) that alas my can is slowly but surely running out. I have been saving this can forever and just use it as the first coat of a redone piece. I use newer stuff as subsequent coats but I like the idea of the older dark stuff being the base and filler.