Madame Rac home tour and a vault bustin' auction!

hi i'm alex archbull and i've been buying and selling antiques since i was 9 years old from basements to scrap yards i'll look just about anywhere i can to find lost antiques and collectibles and sometimes i'll go big and buy everything with my wife and kids we run an antique shop in edmonton alberta canada filled with some of the most unique items we can find i never know what's going to happen or who i'm going to meet this is our life this is our adventure and this is curiosity inc from home honey [Music] hey guys and welcome to today's episode as you know i've been working my tail off getting things ready for another big auction sale that's gonna be happening uh probably i think next week they're gonna have all the pictures up and then through october third everything's gonna go and this time we have all sorts of stuff from toys to jewelry tons of jewelry actually from adam rack they went and opened the other safe deposit boxes and there's a lot of diamonds and gems and all kinds of crazy cool stuff that's going to be there uh antiques antique firearms boy i put a lot of stuff through pocket watches you name it anyway it's going to be a great sale we're looking forward to it and to uh kind of set the the mood right i'm gonna go and uh make a visit this morning and visit a friend and talk a little about the uh the sale and uh also what they've been up to so let's go for a ride [Music] [Applause] [Music] it's been a while since i've been here but let's see what kind of change has been happening around betty jones old house the outside there's a brand new sidewalk and a brand new driveway and the steps which were all heaved all over the place are repaired i see some railings that look like they're going to go on and look they did sort of a um a tribute to betty jones there's music notes and piano a metal sculpture up on the roof there let's go knock on the door and see who's home see if anyone's here oh hey vince oh other political candidates this time i'm just here for goodwill and to see what you've done to the house come on in so i guess first off everybody meet vince youtubists vince you are the reason not only that i ended up um meeting betty jones but also the reason i had that cool cadillac for a couple years too yeah i knew as soon as it was time to get rid of that cadillac you were the guy while you were cleaning out the potter's house i was cleaning out my mom and dad's house at the same time and coming home and watching you at night the difference was i wasn't in minus 40. i was in a warm house well that makes a difference and you said that your mom and dad's house was pretty much identical to betty jones house here the identical layout identical construction year and just 10 blocks that way so yeah these are post-war houses built kind of in the post-war boom for all the baby boomers yep and uh so now you have been getting the house sort of ready more or less reusable more usable yep and have been using it it's been being used as a music studio for rehearsing soloists and my celtic trio just rehearsed last night and i'm thinking about getting it ready perhaps for airbnb this winter for sure wouldn't it be great if you were a musician looking for an airbnb to have a beautiful piano because if we look around the corner here we'll see that betty jones piano is back where it was but in a space that's actually uh quite a bit more usable yeah yeah it's in the exact same spot i can tell you that because i sat at that piano for many many decades now you betty jones was your teacher when you were a child right my first lesson with betty jones was uh exactly 52 years ago wow 1969 my last lesson was only three days before she passed away last november but you you had a space in between you didn't it's not like you took 52 years of consecutive times 25 years off to raise a family and have a career in that kind of thing uh but when we came back it was like we never separated in the first place it all came back immediately within the first week so did she did she still kind of when it was come to the lessons did she treat you like nine year old vince uh you know a little bit a little bit yeah and then as we you know as the years went by we became more intimate and our conversations were more fun but yeah at the beginning i was little vincent yeah little vincent smacking your hands getting in the right spot she was uh she had quite the legacy of uh teaching how many students over the years betty jones teach we actually counted it was over 300 and that was primarily out of this house uh primarily although when i first started taking lessons from her she was still in her mom and dad's house which is was in my neighborhood where i grew up west of here okay well and um this home has transformed so why don't you kind of walk us through some of the changes that you've made and and some of the things that have happened in the world this uh the house was so perfectly preserved you didn't have to change anything underneath the horde was beautiful wood and this floor is just a gem other than moving my fault my mom and dad's um furniture in because it had been in storage for quite a few years uh i haven't really done anything other than redo the windows of course paint and clean and that's all you had to do the bones of the house were quite good then yeah i did see the driveway oh front that's that's a lot different and the heaving sidewalk is no more yes but i'm still waiting for hans and zanovi to free up some time so that they can do a retaining wall around the driveway okay well i guess they'll hear that loud and clear on this video i'm sure get back to me before the snow flies they have been busy clearing out a another house which was a very full property and i think that's where all the times but i think they're wrapping up on that place so hopefully they'll get them back but i guess my question is when you put the furniture back in this house did you put it more or less in the types of places that your parents had it uh no uh the furniture had been all of course moved around but you'll see some other pieces and i can tell you the history behind some of that well i'm looking that is that is a really nice little mid-century lamp this was your parents that was my parents yeah that's original 19 but probably a wedding present 1957. yeah sorry got some teak going on and you said the the radio stand or the stereo stand you've got some artwork so it's actually become a nice usable property again yeah i featured some of my great grandfather's artwork he was charles ty he was an edmonton resident right from the turn of the 20th century so your grandpa your grandfather did this great grandfather he worked with the photographer ernest brown in edmonton he's quite famous and it's thought many of ernest brown's photographs were in fact taken by my great grandfather wow that's his original oil and pastel paintings so you've got a an homage to your family and you know your longtime teacher betty joan madame rack you didn't know her as madame rack though did you uh betty well miss rack miss rap first started and then when i got back i figured we're both adults so i'd call her betty jones oddly enough i was the only one to call her betty jones because she usually went by betty by betty yeah so what can you tell us about madame rack about betty jones they don't make women like her anymore honestly it was like a time travel portal opened up in the 16th century and she walked through she never wore pants um skirts all the time the proper lady no matter what the circumstances except she could tell the odd story from time to time oh i bet that's gratifying well she she had sort of it seemed like two lives one where she was here and this demure um proper you know teacher of music and another where she was almost like this uh bohemian uh traveler traveling the world and busking and and all that so she was she was a proto-hippie and she uh and her good friend bobby brown who i hope is watching this toured all of europe all of asia in the 1980s they played in front of the berlin wall he had sort of a one-man band act uh they played in front of the berlin wall a month before it fell so they were part of history you know throughout the latter part of the 20th century and um what sort of what kind of stories could you tell us i guess you know pg friendly stories but what's the story that we might not have heard or what's something we might not know about betty jones oh you put me on the spot well she was uh she was very much a product of her generation so post-war um she could tell the odd story from time to time but she was just as polite and um just just a personality that came from a previous era she was she was a delight to be around everybody loved her all the people she interacted with throughout edmonton she'd been an edmonton resident her entire life so many you know as you're aware thousands of people knew her by sight because she traveled the buses all over the city but nobody actually reading you or i like to think i was your most intimate uh confidential friendship i i remember kind of how silly i felt in retrospect when i bought the cadillac i thought here's this little lady probably doesn't have a whole lot of money she shared her bus pass with her with her former husband and uh boy i bet she could use that money to go have a trip and if you recall we were standing out there and i said well maybe you could use this money betty jones to go on a holiday and she said oh maybe i'll see little did i know she didn't need my my pathetic cadillac money but uh she could have bought and sold both of us she could have bought an airplane and flown there herself well yeah and yeah and yet that was always part of her she was she was eccentric and she knew it but uh nobody had uh had any idea of what her her pastor circumstances were right up to the day she died she was 100 in charge of her faculties and and he really didn't invite people into that part of her life no and i think that i talked to other piano students that said that they never really got past this front there was a chair like the piano sorry the church pew was here and they kind of never got past this front area but they often would see a crack in the door and they knew the house was very full and that uh there might be some other stuff going on that they always wondered what was going on in the rest of the house that was her closest acquaintance and i had never been beyond the living room the washroom on a couple occasions and the kitchen and of course in the back bedroom when i was 12 or 13 we used to have theory lessons back there in a card table that's right there was little school desks and folding tables yeah it was uh it was it was perfectly usable house for that kind of thing and then at some point she stopped having classes back there and the house basically collapsed down into this front area and she primarily ended up living in this front room right this is where she slept on the couch which i think was by the window yeah um and this was her world this one room yeah but you know she was out and i i would always see her at starbucks or tim hortons or marking or grading papers so she really lived outside of these walls i don't think she was home terribly much no and she never ate any meals here and she would hop on the bus and go to sherwood park spruce grove the the bedroom communities around edmonton she could travel within a 50 kilometer radius no problem she was very independent that way well let's uh let's continue the tour and uh have a look at some of the other rooms go ahead look at this beautiful old 1930s sofa it's funny my dad and i were we would sometimes stop at abandoned farm houses when i was a kid and we went to one and the roof was falling in and there was only one room the front room was still intact and it had a set almost identical to this and it was in the same condition my dad said look at this this thing's been sitting in an abandoned farmhouse for however many years and it looks like brand new and this looks new too yeah that's spent uh many decades in my mom and dad's basement basically unused you know the funny thing is in canada we sometimes call couches of a certain type a chesterfield and you look there it is chesterfield mastercraft made in edmonton made here in edmonton as as canadian of a couch as you can get yeah amateur the matching chair this little room you said this is the room that they used to do music theory in right yeah so that closet was set up so you could go and listen to records no we never oh you never went into i know the the card table was in the middle here and that paint by number painting on that wall i didn't recreate it from memory yes yes spent many hours here and there's a blackboard up there and that's where of course the oregon organization i've been there for years and uh we took classes here and so i guess maybe that was just a place for betty jones to go and just sit back with jim actually oh jim he was quite a musicologist himself so he he liked listening to his bob dylan and uh right so if he wanted to listen to his music and not interfere with the classes or her piano would have been she he was uh summoned to his music room go sit in the music closet and go to your hole and go to your hole well okay and yeah the floors really turned up nice the bathroom you know you wouldn't you wouldn't be afraid to go in there when i first went in this bathroom it was almost like i was afraid to go in it you know i remember standing here and my friend paul was you know peeling boots off the floor and uh you know there was just all sorts of soap and debris but you've done a nice job of recreating for that subway tile and really kept that vintage look i noticed original fixtures well the toilet's new yeah of course but it's made to look old yeah the sink is cast brass from gold brass works outside of toronto oh yeah that'll last a while and cleaned up nicely too yeah are these original spigots i don't think so i think those have been replaced once oh okay but are these the ones that were in the house when i first saw the house i can't remember my farmers did some work they worked too well they worked too well to have been the ones that were in the original okay and the the kitchen is remarkably different as well you kept the pass through oh of course yeah so you can have your thanksgiving dinner and shove it through into the other side here's your turkey as i mentioned this probably wasn't used as a pass through he would probably oh desk phone a phone or something you could answer it from either room which would have been the height of convenience back then i guess it could be whatever you wanted it to be but i mean it would be handy i mean you're thinking about you're making supper or something the kids are like hey if you're in the kitchen can you get me a drink here like fine there you go but yeah you're right they would have a lot of houses would only have one telephone and uh so that would be a convenient place to have it you could use in both rooms you kept the original cupboards yeah those are original original hardware right down to the screws actually were used in the cupboards this is birch plywood they just they don't make it anymore it's got all my mom and dad's you probably know the name for this oh all the yeah the glass we're in the dishes yeah we kept those cleaned them up right down to the original breadboard all right uh i'm gonna have it oh i was gonna show you as well oh you can remember those as well yeah they were on the outside of the cabinet before the little lions i remember i had somebody write me and they said i'd love to have those and i said i think they're staying with the house and the one thing you didn't see last time which i have to show is the ironing board oh yeah so you've recreated an original option that the builder would have provided to the to the housewife of the new house but it works yeah that is uh you've recreated a 1940s bugs bunny kitchen where you know you're one division where you see like the door opening knock somebody on the head and then little birds go twirling around but yeah that's a handy thing to have in the house is now called the millennial uh murphy bar the murphy bar yeah so you got your ice cap your ice here your drinks here your glasses there oh yeah i guess you could use it for pretty much anything yeah but now it was painted i think before did you restain it or just no it was it was it was like this but it's a solid laminated four laminated planks of i think it's either dug this for ponderosa pine it's just the most beautiful buttery wood you've ever worked with wow it looks fantastic i'm very proud of that chandelier i can't believe that it's just chandelier still you did it looks like it's all cleaned up yeah and every jewel on it is original when i was a kid we would have stolen those and taken them someplace but now they're all in their place and i see that the the little hutch here is the built-in hutch is being used for pretty much we had betty jones had similar types of things in it before yeah same vintage well it's looking fantastic i'm gonna last time i was here i did not have a look in the basement so i'm gonna go do that and then i'll pop back up and um you've got some pictures you want to show us yes i do okay i'm going to go take a trip down memory lane to the basement it looks to me like you painted the basement floor down here yeah yeah it's looking much i mean it's it's still basement like it's similar i can remember i you know when i when i peered around that corner and they discovered that whole room was nothing but fur coats man that was insanity all these little strings that are still here it's it's like a weird i'm having flashbacks of climbing and falling over things and having to try and reach that string to pull the light on it's not a bad system no it's not a bad system when you know especially considering she couldn't reach anything probably it was the only system that you could have but it's definitely looking a lot cleaner and a lot uh nicer down here in the basement too yeah this is where the drum kit's going to go and the thrash band will reverse they can yeah there you go ventilation and now the bedroom can be used as a bedroom again very 1950s uh feeling that was that your folks uh bedroom set the parents uh solid maple bedroom suites maple was a big deal back in the day it's a good good wood it's heavy it is so you had after we haul all that stuff out then you brought stuff right back in again yes but it is a usable space and people can come and hang out they want to play music and have fun a great little uh great little spot for folks so let's go check out those pictures okay you look right at home in front of that piano vince well this piano does not sound like it did it never sounded that beautiful all the years i played it so thank you alex i when you brought the piano back i kind of had mixed feelings because i was willing to let it go but you brought it back and i got it fixed up and it's just beautiful i spend hours practicing here it sounds so beautiful well you gonna play something i don't know what to play i guess that's it for our fair use of that particular song well and i know it's on the piano there you've got one of betty jones that's kind of how i remember seeing her when we bought the cadillac i think that's a fairly recent picture that's my one of my favorite pictures of her you know this was taken last summer uh before she got sick so she had just mowed her own lawn and was quite proud of herself so i took a picture of her and she mowed her lawn in that outfit in that outfit yes with all with all those necklaces and look at how many bracelets she wore yeah she was always decked out like that right to the nines she has a ring on a ring or two on every finger exactly it looks like a pocket watch all kinds of necklaces heavy gold heavy gold or silver necklace yet and that was her style that was her style nothing succeeds like excess safety deposit box were a number of originals i had only seen [Music] photocopies over the years this was betty jones dad steve rack oh rock's custom tailoring custom taylor here in edmonton outfitter to royalty and this is him in miami beach uh 1966 modeling his own creations for some fashion show down there yeah what a dapper fellow he was and i never i didn't know him well because he was busy working all the years betty jones was teaching uh but he was very petite as you can tell that's where madame joel madame rat got her tiny stature from he was a slim fellow but look how look how well tailored that jacket is very very fitted tapered leg hat matches the fabric and the hat band matches the tie wow that's quite the outfit well they look the ladies over there look pretty impressed with the outfit that's going on yeah the matrons of miami beach this is a photograph that was taken of betty jones mom christina in 1932 when she set up her first uh beauty salon in north edmonton here on 118th avenue 95th street event chrissie's right yep chrissy salon yeah you could see the brand new hairdryers in the back and the horrible perm rods they used to use oh yeah you look like you'd be hooked up like frankenstein with those things you hook up all those wires to your hair but the expression on her face i just love it's she reminds me of rosie the riveter she did it all herself that's right i think i have that same barber chair in my store right now that same looking one could be yeah wow so you did find some uh some photographs in the in the vault as well i guess yes a lot of photographs um actually and i i was going to show some but actually some cheesecake photos betty jones herself looking her best okay yeah i think i sent one to you alex yeah i guess she had she was not modest when it came to modeling for a camera i guess yes but those pictures ended up in the safety deposit box not for general dude not for generally she wouldn't want her students little did she know that one would end up with some one day but but she was an instagram influencer before there was instagram oh she would have been huge if she was an influencer now with her fashion sense oh she'd be one of the top ten i'm sure yeah and she was going at it now that must have been quite an experience so when we found the keys in the next room there was about five safety deposit boxes i think there were five safety deposit boxes in total in total first one you opened was first one i opened was nothing but documents so there was your grandparents naturalization papers a number of you know important documents as people used to put those in the safety deposit box so you know interesting but somewhat disappointing at that point you're thinking what a safety deposit box for this so yeah it must have been a bit of a bummer that first one yeah and i really had no awareness other than betty jones had always said the good jewelry wasn't in those safety deposit boxes right um the second safety deposit box was a double wide about the size of a large binder i guess it had a lot of jewelry in it and it wasn't in boxes was it it was basically just all uh jewelry no boxes no bags no no no nothing piled up to the height of the she was saving on space we were saving on space and uh because the gold had been used and the silver had been tarnished it didn't look like much until we started cleaning it up right and we saw what was in there i bet so i mean we won't get into the i'm sure you had some absolutely crazy things come out of those units yes there was a lot of crazy things come out of those units and the third safety deposit box we opened had uh um you know very nice jewelry but it was with its original documentation and its original receipts and everything wow what what a lady i mean she must have i heard stories later that you know she'd go into a jewelry store and they'd pull out the tray and she'd pretty much buy the whole tray of stuff i would think that would have been the case there's some very high-end items on there that and you know five or six of the same ring if she liked it or she'd buy multiple bracelets and make them into necklaces and yeah and so we have um you have brought down we were we my store and i were doing an auction anyway and you said um hey i've got some things out of the vault and and you're going to add them into the sale uh what are the highlights what are some of the highlights would you say that are going into that auction uh there are uh silver coins silver ingots i both her and jim had a thing for silver so there's a large amount of that there is a lot of amber a lot of natural amber including one piece uh he's got lots of insect inclusions okay so that's worth quite a bit a little jurassic park action could happen maybe uh dragonflies and mites and all of that has been appraised so there are appraisals for approximately i would say 50 or 60 of the lots in the auction i did notice some gold and some diamonds uh yeah there is some some uh vintage gold jewelry and diamonds a particular note is a designer called liponia who is a finnish from finland a finnish jewelry designer very big in europe and was very big in the 1970s so there's a lot of 1970s vintage liponia silver jewelry in there wow so it's been probably uh i know how much work it was for melissa and i to go through even the small amount of stuff that we found here i can't imagine how much work it's been for yourself and for your life well we bought a new jewelry cleaner oh i bet yeah yeah the industrial one did you buy yourself a diamond tester uh did not but all the all the diamonds of significance have been appraised so there were some last time that were known as clear stone that i think ended up being diamonds so maybe some people have that opportunity again to find there are a large number of lots marked clear stones yeah okay they just i do not know if they are real diamonds or zircons or whatever okay so they're interested they could go to the auction and um but the significant diamond jewelry has been appraised right so that the bigger carrots the bigger stones okay there's also a lot of faux pearls and low-end stuff that i'm sure will go for just a few dollars you know if you want to get a piece of betty jones history and not have to pay a lot there's quite a bit of that stuff as well well it should be an exciting sale so it i think the postings are going up next week and then the sale itself starts to end october 3rd and it will end in completion on october 3rd so uh thank you very much for the the tour event so that's it the house is looking great um nice to know that he's enjoying the property and making good use of it over at the auction castner auctions right behind me there their local auction house reason i use them friendly folks that own the place they ship all over the world for me that's really important because we have you guys watching all over the world plus i can't possibly do all of the things i need to do and also pack up a bunch of boxes and we're selling a thousand things at a time it's really the only way to go we're gonna go inside and do a little bit of a preview and show you what's here they've been busy getting ready and taking photos getting them online for the auction sale which you can visit yourself at k auctions dot ca i have brought down a whole bunch of stuff from my store from tonka winnebagos to old radios a ton of cameras a chatty kathy i was looking for one of these not that long ago and then i find one and uh now i don't need ones i got one for my mom already uh decoys steam tractors antique books there is just a pile of stuff there's amber from madame rack i actually have quite a few pieces of madame rack's jewelry that i put through myself there are oh these are really cool um these date back to 1914 they're harrison fisher framed lithographs that were done i think it was for uh chatelaine back in the day but just lovely images beautiful work lots of books uh toy cars i mean pretty much you can name it it's probably here this was a cute little piece of the course old comic books as well really early archies and i think the uh katie keanes are in here too some of the very first katy keem comics we've got some of those going up for sale look at this it's a little kitchen sink this is new old stock the lady brought this in this has never been used uh there's a tiny little kitchen sink there's also one that rotates and does multiple things it turns into a dishwasher and all kinds of stuff anyway i get excited about stuff like this because frankly i think it's just fun military helmets and pictures beatles cards there is a little bit of something for everybody here there's even artwork that we've had melissa and i actually had this painting in our own house for a while there's watercolors and pictures that's a 1950s sort of folk art prairie scene just lovely neat stuff there is not too much for clothing but what we did bring down was interesting it's a beaded jacket indigenous made felt and beaded jacket beautiful beadwork on there lovely 1950s or 60s kind of piece we've got lawyers bookcases oh these are kind of interesting these binders are full of autographs so we put them up by the binder full and everything in here there are famous people there's musicians donovan bailey olympic athletes you name it there are just a pile of autographs in each and every binder and what we've done is we've put all these up this fellow that collected these had there's a little write-up about why he collected them he passed on we ended up with his collection of autographs and now it's time to pass it on to someone else but there's advertising oh look at this lamp we got this great mid-century modern table lamp with the blue shade lovely piece the little batmobile with robin shirtless robin we'll assume he's headed to the beach to go get in the bat boat that's there replica firearms there is enough stuff to keep you busy for a really long time so not only do we have all these collectibles that are going up really cool little things like that 50s porsche lighter um silver dollars and quarters we have a ton of cool stuff that we put through the sale uh there's also an abundance of other neat stuff oh look at this this is a 1839 anglo-afghan war gizelle it's called a camel gun and not that you would have shot camels with it because that would be pointless because they're like their horse but you would have sat upon your camel and shot from it they have this great long barrel so they're very precise for the time and they'll generally be a rest on the camel so you could rest it and shoot from long distance this gun uh when you didn't have a bullet you would flip it around and use it as sort of a hatchet that's why it's got that end on it and somebody did it caused a little damage at some point so it will need a little bit of repair to the stock but it is generally intact and a really cool piece of early history and this is what they call a match lock where you actually have like a flaming match in there that hits the powder and the uh and the gun and fires your uh round off really interesting piece but i'm gonna see if they can show us not just all the cool stuff i've brought down but i'm gonna see if they can show us some of the more valuable and expensive things i'll see if they have some ready to show this auction also contains a lot of actual treasure we have a 14 karat gold swiss pocket watch although the back has become a little bit detached on the base that solid 14 carat it is working very well with a beautiful little gold-filled pocket knife there that goes with it on the chain lovely little piece there is a gold um this is for holding your awkward glasses it's tortoise shell and gold and your glasses clip in there and you'd hold it when you're going out for a fancy dinner this is a cool piece actually um this is a 1790 gold english sovereign king george on the back really decent shape somebody obviously turned into a pendant at one point has a little hole on it but that is a solid gold coin from the 1790s excellent piece but then we've got diamonds there's 13 diamonds on this gold ring we've got items from adam rack's estate like this beautiful ornate little jaguar or panther ring look at the detail on that with the little eyes lovely piece we have a solid silver this is solid silver folks and that's an inkwell nice antique piece probably 1800s look at this massive 10 ounce silver coin that's solid silver if you're looking for some investment pieces we've even got this gold ladies watch this is a very early watch that was given to a lady during the first world war by her sweetheart and i don't think he made it back the watch survived and it is solid gold watch there are all sorts of treasures here that you just have to go and check out the auction again k auctions.ca if you wanted a piece from the madame rack story if you wanted some treasures this is the time to do it and if you didn't think that was enough to pique your interest for the sale check this out someone's also consigning a model t we're putting it through the auction it's not one of my pieces but it's super cool a nice addition for the sale heck it's a model t how cool is that of course i have to peek in the door 1926 model t two-door coupe it's actually got a nice interior in it it's a nice older restoration this happens a lot on these flat glass cars sliming that door has a little bit of a crack there but really looks like a very decent vehicle [Music] so that's it a busy day i'm starting off at madame rack's house where it all began and now to the auction house to see some of the treasures go up for sale it's your chance to check it out k auctions dot ca um the sale ends october 2nd you want to check it out soon but you can start bidding even now um so yeah thank you very much for watching guys thank you for watching this update video and uh i will do a live stream when the auction is closing so you have to stay tuned for that we'll see how everything closes and ends have a great day guys we'll see y'all soon and bye for now [Music] you

Channel: Curiosity Incorporated

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Length: 35min 15sec (2115 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 22 2021