Tuesday Treasures - February 4, 2025

I went to St. Vincent de Paul looking for a large container in which to store some Christmas decorations early last month.  I had no success with that, but found this 5' x7" snowy creek scene painting.

It's signed Sibley.  I found two other landscape paintings with the same signature for sale on eBay.  Both were in Washington State, so that fits with this one, found in Oregon.   I like the snow overhanging the creek banks, and how the leaves on the trees are dabbed on.

It was $1.25! 

On a different St. Vincent de Paul trip I found a few individual postcards (5¢ each) and this unusual hand-crafted frame.  Turned out the image is a 1960s postcard of Lake Tahoe.  $1

One other item for today is this shovel from the Goodwill Bins.  I went looking for books. I only found one, but I managed to find a few dollars worth of other things.  Most of that "few dollars" was the $2 for this antique Southern Pacific Railway stoker shovel which was sitting right on top of a bin of stuff near the register.   I could just see it was older than just an old shovel!  It's short and very heavy, just right for shoveling coal.  If you were strong and didn't get tired, it really is very heavy!

Southern Pacific bought Nevada-California-Oregon Railway in 1925 and used the narrow gauge tracks until 1928, when they converted to standard gauge.   They had two lines, one from western Nevada into eastern CA, and one into Oregon. There was a single track running from Reno, Nevada into the eastern part of Southern Oregon.   

Did I need a stoker shovel?  Of course not.  But, it's interesting.  Not to mention (but I will mention) worth more than the $2.00 I paid!