Lizabeta’s Condensed Recommendations for Hunting Steampunk Treasures on Ebay

Lizabeta has some excellent suggestions for searching out steampunk goodness on eBay. Some highlights (although you really must go read the whole thing):

Old Looking - This is great for two reasons. One is, a lot of folks just don’t know what they have. They can’t find a better way to describe it. Two, if it is old looking, but they don’t know how old, you could be getting a really great deal because they haven’t listed it directed at the market that is looking for it.


There is just nothing like taking advantage of someone who couldn’t figure out what they had, was too lazy to figure it out, or just has too many items to sell to take the time to look. Put the words “I don’t know” in quotations marks.

These are two fun ideas that would never have occurred to me. Wasn't Lizabeta gracious for sharing her clever ideas?

The Treasure Trove at RadioGuy

Radio-guy Steve Erenberg is the real thing. Before I even knew what steampunk was, I had stumbled across his website and spent hours pouring over his wild and wonderful collection. Although I mentioned him recently in the post on scissor lamps, I thought he and his collection deserved a post all to themselves.

What does this collection entail? "Oddball and scary scientific stuff, globes, industrial masks and helmets, motors, contraptions, classroom demonstration models, tools, nautical, medical, lighting, early advertising, electrostatic devices, telephones, telegraphs, planeteria, patent and design models, steam engines, microscopes, salesman samples, anatomical, x-ray tubes, artist mannequins, microphones, and early radio equipment." Whew -- a little bit of everything, all of it different and wonderful.

Here's three of my favorites, but you should definitely visit his entire site and waste an enjoyable hour of your day exploring it.

A static electricity generator (could it be from the 1700s, as the filename implies?)
A granite and brass reostat.

And a microscope lamp:



Housewise, most of these are great collections, accessories, etc., if you could find similar things through eBay or antiques dealers. The lighting section, however, is full of great ideas for functional antique industrial lights for your home.

p.s. The masks and mortician models in the museum section are not to be missed if you have a taste for the slightly macabre.

ebay scavenging...

Spent some time today poking around Ebay looking for things to use in the house. Thought I'd share these with you -- but there are plenty, plenty more.




Large Shell Casings
I'm not sure what you would do with these, but I thought they were neat. Bud vases, perhaps?




Antique Switch Plate

Just the switch part, without the cover plate, costs $35 new... so far this is a steal. And way cool. I'm going to bid on it for my hallway.

Also worth checking out is this Lightning Rod -- I can't get an image, and I can't tell if it's antique or not from the description, but it does look pretty unique.