Why I Can’t Have Nice Things.

I break them. That’s why. Well, I don’t always break them. Sometimes its my husband or, unfortunately one of my dinner guests, but mostly its me. Given that I do that I have a tendency to break them you would think I would decide collecting nice ones wouldn’t be a good thing for me to do. Nope. I have nice bar and tableware. I’ve been collecting it since was in high school which I know is odd but one can’t help what one likes. Usually I break wine glasses while I’m trying to clean them and put them away. I have so many that the cabinets are crowded and that is part of the problem. I had the glasses out after New Years. In fact, I blogged about the fantastic meal I made to serve with the great champagne we had a bottle of but I left off the tragic ending to the story: Sina broke a glass the next morning during clean up. (I use the word tragic despite realizing that a broken champagne glass is far from real tragedy. I’m just dramatic sometimes when it comes to stemware.)

So I went to the cupboard to count my Ralph Lauren Edward tall fluted champagne glasses and saw that I only have seven left! I used to have 12! Even thought they have long been discontinued I’ve managed to replace several casualties along the way by finding them at replacements.com or on ebay. In case you haven’t heard of Replacements Ltd. they are an outfit that specializes in buying up discontinued china, crystal and flatware. Their buyers around the country find lots of the stuff so that when you break something of grandma’s you can replace it. Often when you can find them there, however, they are very expensive depending on the demand for your pattern or item but I usually splurge to buy what I need as the security of having a complete set is at stake. I feel like a hostage to my discontinued stemware! Well, no more. I’m done. I give up!

What a lot of people don’t know is that in addition to selling all this stuff to you Replacements will buy it from you too. Of course, not at their retail price but its a good place to sell your stuff if you, like me, have thrown in the towel. So, since I’m on a mission to simplify my life and reduce my life’s ‘clutter’ I called them up and made arrangements to pack ’em up and ship ’em to Replacements for cash. I didn’t stop with these glasses either but decided to stop fighting on my other set of discontinued crystal from Ralph Lauren (Bedford) as well. It served me well (and many others!) but its just too difficult when one gets broken.

I was surprised at how much money I’m getting for this stuff! Replacements only takes mint condition pieces but if they have a waiting list on what you have you will get close to top dollar without the hassle of ebaying it a few pieces at a time.

Now I’m going shopping for a good set of wine glasses that aren’t discontinued. Any ideas?