An unlearned gut process, market psychology, and the absolute muscle of trusting the quiet weeks.
Opening scene
It is midnight and raining outside. Here I am in bed with my coffee, my cats, and my dog safely inside. I have been an early riser all my life — I have never needed an alarm clock to wake me. My body clock simply works optimally at its own pace. I routinely wake up between 1:00 and 2:00 AM. By 4:00 AM, I have already worked three hours of the day, and by 6:00 AM when the house is up, I have completed five hours of completely uninterrupted, necessary work before the noise of the world begins.
The work behind the work
This disciplined stillness is what gave me the space to sit with my latest market experience, turn it over in my mind, and finally put it into words for this chapter.
Every single week, we travel a significant distance — 60 kilometres one way — never truly knowing what we will find. It is a massive market filled with hundreds of informal vendors showing up for themselves, and we travel as a family for the weekly ritual of amazing food finds and unexpected treasures alike.
Over the years, I have been blessed to build a tight, reliable network of regular sellers who know my eye. They will spot me coming down the aisle and say, "I have your stuff, come back when I am unpacked." It is a beautiful system built on mutual reciprocity. As a rule, I very rarely buy from new vendors or day traders whose faces I do not know.
But when you are out hunting, you must leave all assumptions outside your scope.
While walking up a crowded row between stalls that stretch roughly four meters wide, I passed an unfamiliar vendor displaying wares directly on the floor. From a five-meter distance, my eye locked onto a massive, heavily textured art glass vase. It had original commercial stickers affixed to the side — one marking a price code, and one marking the country of origin.
At first, I walked past. My mind immediately made the assumption that it was mass-market contemporary decor. But then the unique silhouette hit me. The shape was incredibly familiar. My gut commanded me to turn back around, bend down, and pick it up.
There it was, printed clearly on the second label: "Made in Poland." Looking closely, I realized instantly that the currency marker was entirely non-local. I turned the piece upside-down. It was beautifully heavy, featuring a flawless, smooth, shaved flat base — the definitive hallmark of world-class Makora Krosno Polish art glass craftsmanship, showcasing a rich, layered marble effect cut directly into the glass.
It was absolute pokerface time. I quietly negotiated the acquisition.
While I was standing beside the seller's car, paying him and looking over a large crate of wares, I asked, "And these?" He told me they were already sold. Someone had arrived before me, bought the entire heavy crate, and left the vase sitting in plain sight beside it. Just like my husband, who only saw me negotiating for a vase without knowing what it was, that buyer had been close enough to the treasure to take everything around it — and still missed the vase.
I wrapped the heavy Polish glass carefully into my material tote bag and walked away. My husband looked over at me and whispered, "Was it any good?" I kept my eyes straight ahead and murmured, "Just keep walking." We moved much further down the row before I let the excitement hit. It was pure Polish perfection.
Further on, 3 rows over, I visited one of my absolute favourite regular vendors — the volume clearers who clear out entire estate storage rooms and sell everything at a frantic pace to go home with empty vehicles. Resting right on the floor, I spotted a spectacular, large articulated wooden python sculpture that speaks directly to my deep love for nature's organic forms and after a sharp negotiation, I secured the snake.
But the hunt held an even greater secret. Right beside it, my eye caught a vintage material bag with painted jacaranda seedpods. I looked inside and found not only the painted Jacaranda seedpods but also what looked like small art pieces. The vendor sold the bag as is to me for flat R10.00.
At the bottom were two historic German art miniatures.
I had no idea what they were when I bought the bag. I never peek at the treasures or analyse them at the market; as I keep saying, I only know what I have bought once I get home and research it. The buying is gut-based, and the joy of discovering the value afterward is the miracle — and the proof that my eye has spotted something good before I can explain why.
It was only when I got home and was preparing to film a short, unedited video of my market finds for Instagram that I turned them over in the morning light. My breath was taken away.
Both original pieces still had their physical authentication certificates fully intact and attached to the back panels. They were original, luminous miniature paintings from the iconic Schwabing art district of Munich, personally hand-signed and dated by the artist, Dieter Brändle, in 1990. Finding verified European art provenance resting in a casual market bundle for R5.00 an artwork is an absolute gift from the universe.
The psychology of the market floor is endlessly fascinating. In my years as a boutique vintage curator, I have mapped vendors into two primary intentional classes: the volume clearers who work strictly on quantity to clear space, and the deliberate curators who source specific categories with premium knowledge. Understanding these dynamics is the unseen legwork behind every single artifact that enters my collection.
The collector's corner
When a pair becomes one. Every dedicated collector knows the quiet grief of watching a perfect pair get permanently reduced to a single survivor. This week, my beautiful Stiver Italy frosted art glass "Lily Calyx" trumpet vase unfortunately lost its companion. To secure this specific pair, I paid a significant premium at auction — more than I had ever spent on a single acquisition. I was completely devastated when one accidentally broke during a routine handling session, and I will not pretend for a single second that it did not sting.
The surviving Stiver vase is still listed, but with the caveat of the heartbreak on my side. Completely and honestly described as a single piece with its sudden loss disclosed in full detail. That is my uncompromised standard at Shift 2 Thrift Vintage: condition is always transparently disclosed, flaws are shown openly, and trust with my private collectors is kept absolute. A historical piece's story includes its losses — and so does mine.
If a heartbreaking break has ever left you missing a specific piece in your home collection — whether a rare CorningWare lid, a mid-century platter, or the partner to a vintage set you love — that is precisely what my Request a Treasure Desk was built to handle. Bring the gap in your inventory straight to my desk, and I will deploy my network, and do the hunting for you.
The human bit
This week brought its fair share of personal disruptions, but looking back at the data, it was fuelled by deep behind-the-scenes building. In fact, I kicked off Monday by successfully cataloguing and listing 13 fresh, beautiful items onto my digital storefront!
Tuesday morning was entirely lost to the dentist's office — after waiting patiently while the previous appointment ran significantly over time, the schedule broke down and I was sent away without even being seen. To counter the frustration of a missed plan, I broke my own strict operational rule on Wednesday and drove out to the mid-week auction yard.
Normally, I enforce a two-fold rule for mid-week auctions: first, stay home to get active computer work done, and second, leave proxy bids instead of attending live so you never get emotionally swept up in a frantic bidding war. But this Wednesday, I lost sight of my own system all because of a pretty, small pink bicycle. It wasn't a high-end vintage asset — it was just a beautiful little bike for my granddaughter. Sourcing an entire empire of antiquities requires deep alignment, but coming home with pure, unadulterated happiness for family is the ultimate win. Some weeks, the single best purchase you can make has absolutely nothing to do with what belongs in the shop.
Trust is a muscle. It has to be worked, especially when the numbers make it tempting to spend your energy somewhere else. When I look at my bank account and the debit orders waiting to go off, it is very easy to become overwhelmed. And let’s be honest, I am the breadwinner. That reality can make the quiet weeks feel heavier than they are, because there is always a part of me calculating what must be covered and where the next income needs to come from.
This is where the practice of trust matters. Years ago, I made flower essences, and one of the things I learned through that work was that the message you need is not always the message you know to ask for. Sometimes you are drawn to the plant, colour, or image that carries something you have not yet realised you need to hear.
When the deep blue Larkspur came forward for me, I took it as a message from the universe: wake up, I’ve got you covered. Later, when I repeated the choosing exercise in a different way, the same essence came forward again. The same Larkspur. It felt like a double affirmation, not a reason to stop doing the work, but a reminder to keep trusting while I do it.
Flower essences are a practice I will return to in the future. For now, the message was enough: keep going.
This week's lesson
A quiet week is not an empty week. It is the necessary stillness where mending the fishing nets takes precedence over casting them out. When the front-end transactions slow down, the backend roots grow deep.
Perhaps that is what I have learned by the end of this week: my brain does not know how to switch off. Even when the shop is quiet, it is still drawing possibilities out of the hat, connecting old parts of my history to new dreams, and quietly building the future.
There is a completely different type of visual feature taking shape in the background. I am incredibly excited, but I am still only roughly 20% of the way through the long-term progression, so I cannot share the details yet. For now, the focus remains on keeping my foundation uncompromised.
Keep showing up for yourself — the end of the quiet week is exactly where the trust begins.
— Ina Lubbe, Purveyor of Vintage Treasure
Shift2ThriftVintage • Est. 2024 • Curated Vintage, South Africa • shift2thriftvintage.co.za
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