How did it all start … Nostalgia was started in November 2014 but we need to go back much further to really see when it all began…
According to my mother it started when I was a babe in arms, being taken to the local church hall auction by my nain and taid (Welsh for grandmother and grandfather) every week it was held. Funnily enough, my husband Hyw’s grandparents also attended the same auction and occasionally Hyw was dragged along to the viewing as a child. This is not where we first met, this came sometime later in our lives.
Fast forward to early 1990’s Hyw and I, now married, popped out on a Sunday morning to get some milk from a local supermarket when we came upon a car boot taking place. Having never attended a car boot I was intrigued to what people were selling and concluded that quite a few people were selling rubbish in my opinion and that I had better rubbish at home to sell.
With this in mind, we went home and sorted through all the household items we no longer needed with the intention of giving a car boot a go for ourselves. The following Sunday we returned at 7.45 am, which is very late in the car boot world, with our little Golf hatchback full to the brim with our no longer wanted items along with our parents and sister in law’s kind donations to our cause. Naively we sold everything for 20p to most of the other car boot stall holders but we went home happy, practically sold out and £78 richer, we were hooked on car booting.
Our new found hobby continued for the next few years with the help of poor departed Aunty Marys house contents. We were really enjoying our time car booting, a complete opposite of our daily running of our farm. Then life took an unexpected surprise and we became parents again in later life. As a result, we diversified from our milking farm into the baby goods industry and operated a shop and parenthood successfully for the next twelve years from one of our barns until the recession in 2009 hit us and forced us to close.
As a consequence, I had the luxury of time to become a mature student and attended college and university studying Health & Social Policy studies until graduating in 2014. Yet again I found myself at a crossroads and wondered what the future held in terms of an occupation. Sadly, earlier in that same year Hyw’s elderly uncle passed away and his house had to be cleared which ended up with a good deal of his household items being stored in one of our barns.
So …. once again, we decided to have a go at car booting. Eventually we cleared the surplus and needed to buy stock to continue our joy of car booting, so we started to visit the local auction houses, and in due course travelled further afield.
By this time our love for all things vintage had been rekindled and we realised that this is where our passion lay so set about planning our new business, Nostalgia.
I guess we have to say a huge thanks to our grandparents for unbeknown to us they passed down their love of visiting auction houses to us when we were children.