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Cheap Silk

In order to get silk fabric but not pay an arm and a leg for it, you can opt for thrifting vintage scarves. I bid on and won a lot of them last year; let's see how I did.

There are nine scarves in the lot in all different sizes and styles.

The colors and patterns are even prettier than they were in the auction listing.

Vera Neumann scarves are quite collectible. This one is a newer design, probably from the 80's. If you see a scarf with Vera and a lady bug next to the signature, grab it. Those are the most valuable.

Pure silk scarf by Jones of New York.

Another 100% silk. Someone tried to launder this one, judging by the dye migration.

I ended up with three pure silk scarves out of the nine in the lot. If you want to wear vintage silk scarves, it's best to have them dry cleaned. For my purposes hand-washing is fine.

Also, do be careful of dye migration when laundering vintage scarves. This Bill Blass designer scarf bled purple dye everywhere when I hand washed it.

Most of the scarves in the lot are in good to mint condition; one has a couple brooch pin holes in it (silk is also not especially forgiving.) Most vintage silk scarves run from $25 to $50 resale, so at the bottom line my three are worth at leasst $75.00. The rest are easily worth ten bucks each, so I'd place the total value of this lot at $135.00. I paid $7.99 for the lot. Savings: $127.01.

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