Welcome!

CJ here, ‘us’ being the many hats I wear: Picker, Packer, Copywriter, Ads & Analytics Pro, Graphic Designer and Full-stack Web Developer of this custom built store. More to the point, I’ve always loved anything vintage. My first listing was a few 1950s vintage glass Christmas ornaments that sold at eBay auction for around ten bucks. Located in New Jersey’s lovely Hopewell Valley just a few miles from Princeton, I launched the Think Great Stuff online store in 2007. Making locally acquired stuff available to you wherever you happen to live, packed with great care and shipped fast.

Scouring local estate-sale auctions I like to buy stuff that I’m both knowledgeable of and which fits well into my ‘logistics’ of (generally) not too much larger than a breadbox — vintage or antique home décor, industrial design, scientific instruments & tech, cameras & photographic, fine art & collectibles. As to some of the stuff you’ll find here in my store…

I’ve long been a collector of antique bookends, particularly Art Deco era bronze or bronze-clad — ’most fond of the miniature-sculptures figural types, which were fashioned on myriad themes: Cowboys Farmers & Native Americans, Mythological Nautical & Patriotic, and animals of all kind. Not familiar with antique bookends?  Begin exploring the topic by visiting my easy-read primer linked below

My first camera was an (all-plastic) Argus 127, first SLR a Pentax K1000 — and, yeah, I still have both — ’got into 35mm Kodachrome in a big way back in the day and also learned a lot of darkroom-craft printing B+W silver halide and archival-color Cibachrome, that, over several years of college coursework. My interest in film cameras spans just about anything: early box cameras, beautiful wood & brass view cameras, roll-film medium format, 35mm rangefinders and stereo image, 8mm and 16mm cine, and tiny ‘spy cameras’.

What’s not to love about porcelain and pottery — the fine bone china produced by Walter Scott Lenox, the simple beauty of Franciscanware, the whimsical cookie jars from McCoy, Abingdon and Shawnee, the artistry of Stangl’s birds or the folksy Americana of Pennsbury Pottery.

Any manner of Scientific, Mil or Tech when it catches my eye: electrical or mechanical, I’ve always loved to tinker with old devices … be it an antique microscope, an Osborne 1 “laptop” computer, a WWII-era US Navy sextant or Army Air Forces ‘propellor protractor’ — it pretty much all interests me.

🌜 Hope you find something you’d love to add to your home; thanks for taking the time to browse. ~CJ

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