Shoes. New in the box. My age.

[Que]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025825794*

Kind of cool. An abandoned shoe store sits for 50 years till someone inherits a building and gets curious about it.

*Don't judge me for the location. I read lots of things lots of places. I am not a closeted liberal, just for the record.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

There was an episode of Married with Children that had a similar premise.

 

[oggbashan]

Back in the 1970s, there were two shops in Kent that had been closed for decades.

One, in Cranbrook, still had goods on display in the small shop window with 1950s price tags. Several people tried to buy the contents but the elderly lady who owned the property wouldn't sell. The whole contents went to a social history museum (now closed) when she died.

Another, a village shop near Tonbridge, was still trading but the owners found a cellar they hadn't known existed. It had suitcases full of 1940s toys from a failed attempt by the previous owners to diversify. They sold them through their shop and the message got around toy collectors. By the time I found out all the good stuff has gone, but I bought an early, incomplete Rovex (later Triang) train set for five pounds.

There was a charity shop in Hastings Sussex that was given the complete record library of the Performing Rights Society - all unplayed 78 rpm records. They sold them at one pound each. I still have many pre-First World War operatic 78s from there.

 

[Libsam]

*gasps* those are some cute shoes!!
I wonder if they are all stiff and brittle, you know, from aging or something like that.

 

[DesEsseintes]

*gasps* those are some cute shoes!!
I wonder if they are all stiff and brittle, you know, from aging or something like that.

They are the same age as Query...

 

[Lord Pmann]

That's quite neat. It would be cool to have a vintage shoe choice like that. I wonder how the leather has held up all these years, though.

 

[Que]

*gasps* those are some cute shoes!!
I wonder if they are all stiff and brittle, you know, from aging or something like that.

They are the same age as Query...

I have noticed a brittleness not present in my more resilient youth, the stiffness, not as much.

 

[oggbashan]

Until the mid-1990s my favourite walking boots were two pairs I bought in the 1960s.

They were ex-Army Commando boots, manufactured in 1944. When I bought them they were unused. They cost seven shillings and sixpence the pair = fifteen shillings (now 75 pence). Even in the 1960s that was very cheap.

The reason they were cheap? They were UK size 13 (US 14).

Even when I finally retired them the leather was still supple but the stitching of soles to uppers had given up from hard use.