Steve Maden: An American Original
- By Bruce McKinney
Every item starts at $9.99
It’s the 21st of September and Steven Maden of Kingston, New York has loaded 50 of what he expects will be a 70 lot sale on eBay that kicks off at 03:01 am EST on October 1st and ends on the 9th. Steve is a blue-collar dealer-auctioneer who relentlessly scours flea markets, antique shops, and house dispersals for material to post to the never-ending eBay auctions he runs under the name bestbidforu. “It’s a life, a busy one, and I like it.” I met Steve recently a month or so after I bought most of the about fifty Poughkeepsie fire photograph images he posted on eBay. Soon after I was taking a week’s vacation at the Mohonk Mountain House in Ulster County and it turned out he was running his eBay business out of his home a few miles north in Kingston. I figured and he agreed it would be interesting to meet.
Not knowing what to expect I arrived early and parked nearby. From the outside his home is well kept, vintage 1920s and the beneficiary of aluminum cladding applied a decade ago. The street is deserted the way they are in so many French villages. France still has not fully recovered from the millions who died in World War Two. Neither has Kingston that has struggled to maintain its population after the loss of IBM twenty years ago. Its 23,000 population is little changed over the past 3 decades though its composition has. It’s less local and more immigrant than it used to be. It’s still the county seat but the past few years have been tough. More people are thinking about leaving. It’s a whiter, older version of Newburgh two stops south on the Thruway that was the scene of race riots in the 1960s.
Steve’s neighborhood is typical here. His house is on the dividing line between the Kingston that exists today and its former neighbor, the waterfront Rondout, it absorbed 125 years ago. That Rondout is just a short winding drive down the hill to the confluence of the Wallkill River and Rondout Creek that a hundred and fifty years ago made its waterfront barge, ferry and schooner landings valuable points of transfer for the steady flow of coal barges working their way north on the Delaware and Hudson Canal from the Pennsylvania coal fields. In its day much of the energy to heat and light New York City passed through here. That was then. The heart of the old place has been torn out but here and there evidence of the history and commerce that once flowed by is still evident.
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Steve Maden: An American Original
- By Bruce McKinney
Every item starts at $9.99
From Steve’s house in fact history is found in every direction and it’s in one or more of these directions that Steve heads out almost every weekend to buy material to post to his auctions. His week is dense with commitments. Laying out the weekend plan he checks the Bee, MAD, the local papers and the flea market directories.
On Fridays he’s thinking about house sales and auction previews, on Saturdays and Sundays the flea markets that open like spring flowers, one here and one there, dotting the countryside. On a whim and how they sound he might head up to Onteora, west into Sullivan County, or possibly run north on 32, turning onto 146 at Durham in the direction of Livingstonville and Preston Hollow. They have interesting flea markets. His ’97 Explorer is a statement of confidence. “If I don’t drive something big I can’t bring anything big back.” The man is an optimist and the flea markets interesting. “The only problem is rain” so weather reports are important. In his pocket he’s carrying a thousand dollars cash. “Ten years ago I used to carry two but prices are way down.” A thousand does it now.
Whatever he finds he pays cash. No sellers accept anything else. Welcome of the under-economy. For himself, he keeps records but there are no receipts. If the weather is wrong or the opportunities better he’ll head east avoiding the toll roads like snakebite. “I like to drive and I’m in no hurry.” There are random auctions in Pleasant Valley and Putnam County to look over and a good flea market in Stormville but if he stays on the Taconic Parkway heading south on FDR’s highway home, with a few zigs and zags, he can get into Connecticut and its clear from the tone in his voice he’s made some great buys there. “Connecticut has been good to me – particularly the Elephant’s Trunk in New Milford.”
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Steve Maden: An American Original
- By Bruce McKinney
Every item starts at $9.99
For his career as an eBay seller, now a quarter of his adult life, he’s in a good place. The population is aging and looking to sell because the economic recovery here is a whiff and not the thick slice you feel in New York City. He’s also doing what he really loves. This makes for deals and deals are what Steve needs. It also requires a sharp mind because it’s easier to buy than it is to sell and Steve’s living depends on him making a reasonable spread between what he pays and what he receives.
In that quest he is aided by the slow but certain decline in the local economy that once was history and business proud. For more than a generation IBM had plants here but New York State’s high taxes convinced the area’s largest employer to go elsewhere.
Knocking on his door Steve warns me that his house hasn’t been cleaned recently. I took that to mean it’s been a week. It turns out its been a couple of years. He lives in a bachelor pad just the way the Collier brothers probably did. His house is not a house, it’s a museum and everything in it in time will go on line and if all works out, be sold and shipped to outstretched hands states and sometimes countries away. So this is what an eBay staging station looks like. It kind of makes sense. It’s interesting, almost magnetic.
He is friendly, if a little apologetic, for the dust that gives everything a rustic patina. I don’t really notice it because it’s evident Steve has the “eye” and lives in close proximity with his treasures that are dates, not marriages. The flip side of his eye is the need to sell. “I like to buy so I have to sell. No way around it.” It’s compulsion and urgency wrapped in one package, what most collectors would call a beautiful predicament. I’m immediately glad I made the trip. We sit down to talk and out from under chairs and around corners he brings out somewhere between 400 and 500 more photographs of Poughkeepsie fires. These are what I came for. What he posted on eBay was the down-payment, all this suggesting the entire city must have burned down several times over the past 125 years.
Some of the pictures appear to be official fire department material for among the pictures are photos of fire department displays with some of the very photographs he’s offering. There are also images of some of the city’s other signal if unhappy events. Rapid industrial development preceded effective fire protection by a good fifty years and these evidences of disaster make it a wonder any two boards are still standing. It almost seems that anything that could burn did and often more than once. We bargain and I buy them. What else you have?
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Steve Maden: An American Original
- By Bruce McKinney
Up the stairs there is a framed hand colored two-page illustration from Beer’s 1871 History of Ulster County. Such illustrations are around but I’ve never seen a hand colored version of anything in this book. To my untrained eye the coloring looks old. It is certainly interesting, depicting a scene a scant 2 miles from his house, down on the water drifting west on the Rondout Creek toward Eddyville. This is local history at the cellular level. The scene is of what was once a blue stone company, backed up against the water where material bargained and sold was settled onto barges to be poled out to the Hudson and then sent either north to Albany and the Erie Canal or down toward New York City and beyond.
Upstairs I see that Steve has other interests. There is a room of toys, all manner of children’s collectables. Down the hall there are period clothes. My Mother would have liked them for the memories they’d stir of her days between the first and second wars but she also never saw a particle of dust she could tolerate and the dust [I think we’re leaving footprints] would have triggered a 10 on her Richter scale.
On the way down the stairs without making eye contact I offer $500 for the hand colored illustration. He says “nah” and I proceed to wrap up the visit, talking about payment and shipping and what I hope he’ll someday uncover. Heading toward the door he says okay. “Okay, okay. I like that print but I’ll sell it.”
Ten days later I’m home and the UPS man rings the bell and delivers two boxes. Steve has packed the photographs and the print well and they are ready for a new home. And I’m very happy to have them. My living room is homage to Rondout, a mostly forgotten place, which is as alive for Steve as it is for me.
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Steve Maden: An American Original
- By Bruce McKinney
While with him I asked about his eBay sales and offered to write about him and one of his sales in October. It’s October 1st now and his next sale is loaded into his eBay module and ready to entice bidders. His daily trips to search high and low are about to be converted into an eBay event and he is primed. His starting prices are almost always $9.99 with no reserves and that’s the way they are for this sale. This way he can expect to sell almost everything but will not know until each item closes what it brings. It’s a dose of history and a piece of Vegas and you could drive by his house a thousand times and never know the excitement and drama he experiences.
Here is a link to his sale. Whether he eats cat food or caviar are now in your hands. And here are some of his items:
1900's RPPC Baseball Team Initials R Real Photo Postcard Turkey In Background
Rare 1911 RPPC Waseda Baseball Team Tokyo Japan University Original Postcard NMT
Dorothy Gilbert Portland Ohio Railroad Yard Train Americana O/C Painting Pa./Oh.
1907 Photograph Train Snake River Bridge Sunset Branch Seward Peninsula Railroad
1900s RPPC Street Scene St Helen's Oregon Real Photo Postcard Great Image
U.S. Grant Souvenir Celluloid Memorial Ribbon 1885 Highlights Life In Uniform
HP Custard Burnett Garage East Stroudsburg Pa. Buick Cars Circa 1912-18 Photo
Western Americana Cabinet Photograph Knife & Axe Thrower Girl Surrounded Pistol
Rare RPPC 1900's German Airplane w/Machine Gun Soldiers Real Photo Postcard LOOK
1900s Photograph Train Railroad People Outside On Tracks White Pass & Yukon Rte
1900s RPPC Arcade Powder Co. Benson Arizona Real Photo Postcard Worth Look
RPPC Baling Hay Grant Ranch Near Myrtle Point Oregon @ 1908 Americana Postcard
1904 Taber Bas-Relief President Roosevelt Pach Photograph Stud Highlights
1900s RPPC Camas Paper Mills Camas Washington Real Photo Postcard Worth Look
1900s RPPC Pepin Baseball Team Period Equipment Uniforms Farmland Real Photo PC
29 Acrobat Oriental Troupe 40s/50s Photographs Sword Swallower Magic Acts MORE
1900s RPPC Armour Baseball Team House of David Related? Real Photo Postcard
Here is a link to his eBay sale.
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