My husband and I are huge antiquers. We love vintage and will go ga-ga over the most bizarre peices. So when we were out in Amish country, we were like "WOOHOO! ANTIQUE CENTRAL!!!!!!!!!!!"
Yeah.
So we pull into Country Loft, and there are two buildings. A barn/shed on the right of the parking spaces, that holds some gorgeous cabinets and a house/building on the right that holds all the knicknacks.
We walked around the barn/shed first, and I found one or two peices that looked good, but were either outrageously priced (for the condition the cabinet was in), or just wasn't in good enough shape to make it worth the effort. However, we were excited to see that there were some interesting peices and so we made our way into the house/building to explore the rest of the collection.
There we found two things:
First, I found several sets of the original Orphan Annie comic books, and some Dick Tracys - all in fairly decent shape. I was so excited; the prices were a little higher than they warrented, but it was only by a smidge.
As I was gushing over these books - and debating if I should bite the bullet and buy them, even at the slightly inflated prices - my husband nudged me, and tilted his head towards the counter. The manager/owner was listening to something that had a lot of white noise and........it was then that I realized that the manager/owner had the entire outside of the building mic'd!!! Which meant, that she heard our conversations about the prices of the cabinets while we were out there to discuss if we should buy it or not. Uhhh...so so so shady.
I know that theft is a concern, but there was also a TV of the outside space, so having the outside mic'd is just...well...shady!
Still...I wanted those Orphan Annie's...so I tried to catch the manager's attention...but she was so busy listening to the conversation outside that she ignored me...so I left. read more