Over the last few years, my puzzle collection has grown to exceed my book collection by quite a bit. To be fair, I only own a fraction of the books I have owned throughout my life as I have downsized books several times and mostly read library or digital books these days.
So I recently had Michael help me build a new bookshelf to house more of my puzzles. It was a pretty inexpensive one from Amazon, so it’s not very sturdy, but at least it’s standing. If I ever have to move, I’m not sure it will survive the trip!
Last Saturday, I did a bit of thrifting and was really happy with the results. The last time I was at Community Aid, the puzzle selection was sparse, but this time, they had a whole bin of pretty nice puzzles and I grabbed five of them. Then I went to Blue Mountain Thrift Store, which is where my son Michael works, and I was happy to see that they had puzzles as well. A lot of them were the really old ones you tend to see at thrift stores, but they did have some newer ones and I picked out three of them to purchase.
Yesterday, I attended a pop up puzzle swap which was in the parking lot of a shopping center in my town. It was put together fairly quickly, so unfortunately only three people showed up, but the organizer is hoping to do more of them and I had an enjoyable time talking with the two other ladies who were there.
I took twenty puzzles to swap, three of which were sets with multiple puzzles in the box. One of the women took one puzzle, and the other one took one regular puzzle and one set that had four puzzles. The woman who took the set had lots of puzzles to choose from. She mostly does 1000 piece puzzles, her sister does 500 pieces, and her mom does 300 pieces, and she had a TON of 300 piece puzzles. I don’t normally do a lot of 300 pieces, but they are nice when you just want something quick and easy.
I ended up getting six new-to-me puzzles, including several from Charles Wysocki, who I am very drawn to. When I sat down at home to add them to my puzzle spreadsheet, I realized that one of them was a duplicate of one I got thrifting last weekend – oops! I’m not too upset about it; I will just pass it on to someone else.
I think I am going to start posting the puzzles I want to get rid of on Facebook Marketplace. The woman who organized the puzzle swap yesterday shared with me that when she posts puzzles there, she mentions in the description that she is willing to swap, and some people have taken her up on that instead of just buying the puzzles. I think that would help me fill my thirst for new puzzles without breaking the bank!
In So Many Words 