Goodwill Store Finds: Arte brasil, Cardinal, Karmin, NYPC, Dowdle & More

Collection of 11 Sure-Lox Puzzles, 7250 pieces total

I've been home from my recent road trip for one week now, and I'm getting back into the puzzling swing of things a lot quicker than I had expected to.  Maybe that's because the first two stops I made at local Goodwill Stores turned up a small bonanza of nice puzzles to add to my infamous To-Do stack.  In fact the first two things I spotted were this great collection of eleven puzzles and another of five different puzzles. This Sure-Lox bunch includes two 1000-piece puzzles, three at 750 pieces, and five at 500 pieces, for a whopping 7,250 pieces in total.

Here's the five-puzzle collection I mentioned:

Collection of five puzzles from Cardinal

All five of the puzzles are 500 pieces, so this adds another 2500 pieces for me eventually to work. Even if I don't work all 16 of the puzzles, it's hard to go wrong when the total cost was four dollars. I like the variety of the first box of puzzles more than this one, but I'm likely to do the Tower Bridge puzzle fairly soon as that's one of my favorite spots in the world.

"New York City," Dowdle Folk Art, 500 pieces, 24 x 18 inches

I prefer a larger piece-count, but I couldn't resist picking up another Dowdle Folk Art puzzle for 99 cents, even at only 500 pieces. I suspect that all of the so similar looking buildings are going to be more of a challenge than they appear to be on the box cover...so this one will probably play as a larger-count puzzle anyway.

"Winter Weekend," New York Puzzle Company, 1000 pieces, 20 x 27 inches

I've come to enjoy the "New Yorker cover" puzzles a lot more than I ever suspected I would, so it was kind of a no-brainer to spend a dollar on this New York Puzzle Company version of a "winter weekend."

"Amish Neighbors," Milton Bradley, 1000 pieces, 23 x 26 inches

This is another of Charles Wysocki's Americana puzzles, and as you can see from the buggies, it's meant to represent the Amish part of the U.S.  I like building the "primitive art" style of puzzle, so another at one dollar was easy to pick off the shelf for home.

Rolling Stones Album Covers, Ant Hill, 500 pieces

I was drawn to this Rolling Stones puzzle because of a similar one I found last year of album covers from the Beatles. I was surprised at how many good memories came from seeing all those old Beatles covers in one place, and I'm hoping that, since I am a fan of both bands, this one will have a similar effect on me.  

"Puzzle Grow," Arte brasil, 1000 pieces

I think this one is rather unusual because it appears to have come to my Goodwill Store all the way from Brazil. Almost all of the writing on the box is in Portuguese, and the puzzle image itself is taken from the work of Tarsila do Amaral (1886-1973). Her work is described in Wikipedia as "Latin American modern."

And finally, this is the only new puzzle I picked up this week:

"Country Auction," Karmin, 1000 pieces, 27 x 20 inches

I bought this one at Tuesday Morning for six dollars (probably a 40% markdown from its normal retail price), and I decided to get it because I'm always on the lookout for something new from artist Susan Brabeau. This one, I think, should be a lot of fun.

So there you have, one week home, and I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I bought 22 new puzzles (counting the collections) and only worked two. The good news is that my total cost was around fifteen dollars...not bad.

White Mountain Puzzles: "Fourth of July"

"Fourth of July," White Mountain, 1000 pieces, 24 x 30

This one from White Mountain took me a day longer than I expected it would, and that's entirely due to the trees that make up almost one-third of the puzzle. I wish I knew why it was, but trees give me more trouble than anything else I've ever encountered in a puzzle. It just seems as if my eyes glaze over when I see all those leaves and partial branches...and fitting pieces becomes near-impossible. And that was exactly what happened again.

As you can see from the cover, this is a representation of a Fourth of July celebration in a park setting of at least sixty or seventy years ago. It's the American ideal, of course, and I enjoyed watching all the little scenarios come to life as I began to piece things together. 
(But be warned...take a close look at the puzzle cover and you will notice that the puzzle has been blurred beneath the title "Fourth of July." Those words do not exist on the completed puzzle itself, and anyone building this one will be on her own for that section of the puzzle.

This one works almost as if it's one of the White Mountain collages in that it's best just to start fitting the various characters together without worrying too much where or when they are going to attach to the overall puzzle image. Then when you have enough of them completed, they start fitting to the frame and you can take it from there by either continuing with the separate little images or working the puzzle from the bottom up. I decided to keep doing what had already gotten me to this point by taking every separate scenario as its own little puzzle and worry about attaching all of them later.

And eventually they all start coming together...leaving all those pieces of trees and branches sitting around to laugh at what is to come when I dare pick one of them up for the first time. That's when things came to a streaking halt.

Finally, I got the trees started, but only because I could place some around the crashed kite and the balloons that had escaped earth to head toward the sun and their eventual doom.

Eventually, the trees began to fill in, but it would be another three hours or so before I would finally finish that last big section in the center of the puzzle. If you had asked me about the difficulty of this one before I started on the trees, I would have told you that it was pretty easy. But now? I would tell you that it's a pretty good challenge, and a whole lot of fun.

"Nice" by Hasbro

"Nice," Hasbro, 300 Easy Grasp pieces, 18 x 24 inches

Like so many puzzlers, I often work a "change of pace" puzzle after two or three difficult or large piece-count puzzles. It always seems to give me the jump-start I need to get back to the more difficult puzzles, and "Nice" was no exception. This is a puzzle that I picked up for next to nothing at a local thrift shop, and I failed to notice when I bought it that the puzzle pieces were what Hasbro calls "Easy Grasp" size. That means that I ended up with a relatively large finished puzzle of 18 by 24 inches, all built from only 300 pieces.

I began to get an idea of just how quickly this one was going to come together when I pulled all the "frame" pieces from the box on the first pass. Of course, that probably only happened because the frame itself has a uniform yellow border all the way around it,  because of all the puzzles I've ever worked, this is the first time I haven't had to go back into the box for a second or third pass at the border pieces. From there, the blue pieces really stood out from the rest, so that seemed like the logical place to go to next.

Simply completing the blue sky and and the rest of the horizon meant that about 40% of the puzzle was done, so it was on to the main figure in the image, along with all the supporting characters, and the cars. This would prove to be the slowest part of the puzzle, but would not really be any great challenge either. Instead, the fun from working "Nice" comes from its good variety in puzzle-piece shapes, something that Hasbro does a  very good job on. Even that, though, doesn't add a tremendous amount of difficulty to a puzzle with pieces this large, but it certainly helped to hold my interest.

"Nice" may not be much of a challenge for experienced puzzlers (it took me only a couple of hours, all told, and I'm not tremendously experienced), but the finished product is really quite an eye-catcher. And it did it's job...I'm ready for a new challenge now.

Goodwill Store Finds: Amish Country, San Francisco, a European Castle, Pencils, Shoes, and a Mystery

"Lancaster County," Milton Bradley, 1000 pieces, 26 x 20 inches

The puzzle pickings at my local Goodwill Stores were a little bit below par last week, but I still managed to pick up a half-a-dozen interesting puzzles, including this Amish scene produced by the Milton Bradley people. The puzzle is a little dark, meaning that it will probably drive me nuts when I get to that dirt area in the foreground. I always seem to have a real problem fitting together large sections of dark pieces, something that doesn't seem to be getting much better with experience.

"Shoes, Shoes, Shoes!," Springbok, 500 pieces, 24 x 30 inches

This Springbok image is not of a subject that I have a whole lot of interest in, but I got the feeling that I was rescuing this one from a certain date with the trash bin if I didn't buy it. The Goodwill folks had failed to tape the box together and I found three loose pieces  on the shelf alongside the puzzle. That means I'm taking a huge chance that other pieces were separated from the box somewhere along the line too, but for a buck, I decided to risk it. (Too, I really like Springbok puzzles.)

"Along for the Ride," Bits & Pieces, 1000 pieces, 20 x 27 inches

I don't see a whole lot of Bits & Pieces puzzles in the shops, so this nice San Francisco image was too good to pass up.  Not a whole lot of color variation in this one, and that generally translates into a tougher than normal puzzle.  We'll see.

"Neuschwanstein Castle," Buffalo, 1000 pieces

I probably should have left this one on the shelf because I have the identical puzzle in 2000-piece size that I haven't worked yet, but for 79 cents I decided to take it home with me. I've been told that the 2000-piece version is really, really difficult, but honestly, this looks like it would be tough no matter what the piece-count.

"Pencil Pushers," Springbok, 500 pieces, 18 x 24 inches

This older Springbok is the companion to the Springbok shoes puzzle shown earlier. They sat side-by-side on the shelf, but this box was taped together as used-puzzle boxes always should be. I like the colors of this one, and I expect that it will be a nice change-of-pace puzzle one of these days.

"Last Chill & Testament," Bepuzzled, 1000 pieces

This is the second of Bepuzzled's mystery puzzles that I've picked up in the past couple of weeks but I still haven't worked one of them. The image on this cover photo is said not to be what the actual puzzle will show...that's part of the mystery to be solved...so I have no real idea what all I'm getting into here. I just hope it's not quite all as dark brown as this image. The puzzle comes also with a 75-page book to read before building the puzzle and solving the book's mystery.

All in all, I suppose this was not a terrible week of puzzle-hunting at the Goodwill shops. I've certainly had better weeks, but I've also had whole weeks where not a single usable puzzle turned up at the three shops I visit regularly. So I'll take it. (And the new week is already shaping up to be a pretty good one.) 

Goodwill Store Finds: Sure-Lox "Art Gallery" Comes in at 6750 Pieces in Total

"Art Gallery" puzzles, Sure-Lox, 6750 total pieces

I got up early this morning to drive my granddaughter to Texas A&M University to meet with her advisor so that she could set her fall 2018 schedule (she's one class short of being a junior). That's a drive of almost 80 miles each way, so I was surprised to be back in town by 10:20 this morning - still with time for my usual breakfast stop. And, as I've mentioned before, in the same parking lot is a Goodwill Store, so why not pop in there while I was at it?

I was about to leave the store when it finally clicked that the big green box on the end of the toy counter was actually a collection of ten puzzles rather than the large game that I had been assuming it was. Needless to say, the box didn't stay on the shelf much longer because I truly like many of the images on the cover and the three dollar price was just about perfect. As you can see from the cover, there are five 500-piece puzzles, three 750-piece ones, and two 1000-pieces ones in the box. If my historical odds concerning missing pieces from thrift shop puzzles hold up, that means that roughly two of the puzzles probably have a missing piece or two. 

As you can see from this picture, the puzzles are separately packed in resealable plastic bags - always a good sign as to completeness - and there is a fairly large poster to help puzzlers in their work. Maybe the best thing about this "art collection" is that all of the images are identified by artist - and two of my puzzle favorites are included (a 500-piece Susan Brabeau and a 750-piece Ann Stookey). Other artists contributing to the collection are: Loren Blackburn, Ginger Cook, Alan Giana, Bill Bell, James Coleman, Michael Jackson, and Schaefer/Miles. 

I'm posting several of the puzzle images (despite the wear on the poster that shows up in the photos) so that everyone can get a better idea of what the puzzles in this collection are like - and why I like at least half of them. I'll list the artist name below each image:

Schaefer/Miles, 1000 pieces

Loren Blackburn, 500 pieces

Ann Stookey, 750 pieces

Alan Giana, 500 pieces

Ginger Cook, 500 pieces

Susan Brabeau, 500 pieces

This will be my first experience with the Sure-Lox company. Sure-Lox is a Canadian puzzle company that, I assume, exports puzzles into the U.S. market. A quick glance at the puzzle pieces indicates that Sure-Lox quality is most likely somewhere near the middle of the pack of companies I've experienced in the last few months (this puzzle was produced and sold in 2007).

Goodwill Store Finds: Three Very Different Puzzles (Peony Press, Ravensburger, & Mega)

"Children's Games," Peony Press, 1000 pieces, 20 x 28 inches

As regards finding puzzles at thrift shops, June has not been a particularly kind month so far. I am, however, pleased that two of the three puzzles I've acquired this way feature images that I really like - and I expect that they will make for excellent puzzle-building experiences.

I found the one directly above just this morning for $1.50 at the Goodwill Store nearest my house. This never-opened puzzle features a 1560 painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder titled "Children's Games," and appears to be a high quality product in every way. I will only know for sure, of course, when I have explored "Children's Games" more closely. It is a product from a British company I'm unfamiliar with called Peony Press, so I hope that I'm not being overly optimistic. 

"Country Life," Ravensburger, 1000 pieces, 27 x 20 inches

The second image that I really like is featured on this 2005 Ravensburger puzzle that features a nostalgic look at simpler times and lifestyles. I spent much of my childhood summers on the farms of my two sets of Louisiana grandparents, so pictures like this one always bring back good memories for me. This one cost me a dollar at the same Goodwill store already mentioned (the three puzzles came on different days from that store).

"Chinatown," Mega Puzzles, 1000 pieces, 27 x 19 inches

This Mega brand puzzle features an image by Heronim, and although it doesn't appeal to me to the degree that the previous two puzzles do, I found it interesting enough to bring home - especially for its one dollar price tag. I don't think I've ever worked a puzzle by Mega before, so this will be a learning experience for me and will allow me to add another review to my Company Reviews page.

It's still relatively early in the month, so I still have high hopes of bringing home more goodies before month-end. I picked up 22 used puzzles in April and 28 in May, so the pace will really have to pick up if June is going to come close to matching the totals of those two months.

Goodwill Store Finds: The One That Got Away

Let's  just say that I know exactly how this young man feels because it turns out that I walked into my favorite Goodwill Store this morning just in time to see a woman place another four puzzles into a shopping cart that already had at least 20 puzzles in it. It appears that I narrowly missed out on the largest single cache of jigsaw puzzles that I have ever seen in a thrift shop - and I mean missed out in a literal sense. She got every one of them.

This gal filled up her cart without even looking at the individual puzzles she was grabbing. All she knew was that they were two bucks a pop, and that she was taking each and every one of them  home with her. I spotted several by Ravensburger, Cobble Hills, White Mountain, and Buffalo before I quit staring at her in horror. And then I left the store before I said something I might regret...

(While this little episode is presented here in a tongue -in-cheek manner, I'm crying on the inside.)

Another Goodwill Find: BePuzzled's Buried Blueprints - Noah's Ark (1995)

"Noah's Ark," BePuzzled (Buried Blueprints), 1000 pieces, 23 x 29 inches

I found this one at what I call my Goodwill Store No. 3 today (because it's the most out of the way of my normal daily driving route), but I almost left it behind for what it says on the back of the pictured container. Take a look at these quotes for a taste of what I mean:

"Few puzzles are as challenging. Fewer require as much skill and tenacity. None are more rewarding."

And then there's this: "A puzzle that requires endurance and willpower. You'll desperately keep looking for piece after piece after piece. Another find gets you closer to your goal."

It's not easy to tell from this picture, but the ark is a cutaway version showing where each type of animal was packed into the ark. There are numerous little notes around all the animals explaining why they are where they are and other tidbits about them. One of those notes says: "Although insects and birds are in close proximity to each other, a special truce was in effect. All the birds had promised God: no live food. Since the ark was made of wood, the termites had also made a sacred vow: no wood."

Notes like these are all throughout the puzzle, but I'm not sure yet what the intended tone of the notes is...humor, irony, satire, serious take on Biblical scripture?

Anyway, this 1995 puzzle will be interesting - some day when I feel brave. Has anyone out there worked this one, or anything else from BePuzzled?

 

Goodwill Store Finds (Plus one from Half Price Books): 6 from Springbok and 1 each from White Mountain, Rose Art, & Eurographics

"At the Wee Folks' Fair," Springbok #5930, 1000 pieces, 24 x 30 inches

In what has become a more or less typical week, I added way more puzzles to my collection than I completed. In fact, I added ten puzzles and worked throutgh about one-and-a-half...meaning that the to-do stack is now officially out of control. I'm going to feature nine of those puzzles in this post - the tenth one is a review puzzle that I'll be featuring in a few days - because they clearly show why I'm so addicted to checking the local Goodwill Stores for puzzles. You just never know what you might find. (Of course, you also never know how many pieces are actually in the box, but that's got to be acceptable to you going in or you shouldn't be buying used puzzles in the first place.)

"At the Wee Folks' Fair" is a Springbok puzzle from the period in which the Hallmark company owned Springbok. I'm guessing that it's from the eighties but there is no copyright year on the box so that's just an educated guess.

"Santa's Delivery" & "Eyes of Color," Springbok 2004 and 2008 puzzles, 1000 pieces

"Feathered Friends" & "The Toy Shoppe," Springbok 2004 and 2006 puzzles

"Butterfly Collection," Springbok 2004 puzzle, 500 pieces

I stumbled upon these five Springbok puzzles one morning at the Goodwill Store I most often visit. I had been there only the morning before, so these must have come in together sometime later on the day of my initial visit. Needless to say, I snapped up the lot of them, and the bargain price of seven dollars for the five helped seal the deal quickly before someone else noticed them.

The particularly interesting thing about these five is that they were obviously produced for the French Canadian market up in Quebec. Last time I checked, Quebec was still requiring that everything be labeled in both French and English - and these puzzles are all packaged that way. The picture below shows the "French side" of the boxes:

The slightly different (in translation) puzzle titles 

I also added these two puzzles from a different Goodwill outlet. The "Kodacolor Puzzle" from Rose Art has never been opened despite being some 27 years old, and the White Mountain one, despite having been previously worked, looks like new.

Unnamed Winter Scene, Rose Art, 500 pieces, 13 x 19 inches

"Candy Wrappers," White Mountain, 1000 pieces, 24 x 30 inches

And, last but not least, the one shown below is the only new puzzle I purchased this week. I got it from Half Price Books and was able to use a 20% discount coupon on their already reduced price, so it cost right at ten dollars with tax. I particularly like it because it features so many of my favorite authors, writers I've been reading for my whole life - and the images are a good bit larger than the impression you get from the box cover.

"Famous Writers," Eurographics, 1000 pieces, 19 x 27 inches

Ravensburger: "Idylic Life" in Large Piece Format

"Idylic Life," Ravensburger, 500 pieces, 27 x 20 inches

I chose "Idylic Life" this time around because I wanted to get one more Ravensburger puzzle under my belt before adding the company to my list of "Company Reviews." I picked this one up at a local Goodwill Store for two dollars a while back, so it doesn't particularly bother me that there's a piece missing in the upper lefthand corner. It's not an image I would have chosen to glue or tape together anyway, so "Idylic Life" will go back into the box - and the box will carry a note about the missing piece.

This is one of those "large piece format" puzzles that generally go together pretty quickly, and that's exactly what happened here (it took just a few hours spread over three days). The box is quite large, and even the oversized pieces did not come close to filling it; in fact, when I first dumped this pile onto the puzzle board, I was afraid that a dozen or more pieces might be missing (turned out to be just the one piece, thankfully). After all, you never know with used puzzles just what you are going to get inside the box, or what didn't make it back from the last time it was opened.

It started out as a matter of grouping the more common colors and fitting them to the frame...a frame where that missing piece announced itself in no uncertain terms. That's what happens with these large piece puzzles, though - one missing piece leaves a large gap. I suppose, however, that I was lucky that the missing piece was almost all-white in color because that makes the empty spot less glaring on the white board that I use for puzzle-building.

After completing the white sections, and the two little girls in the foreground, it seemed logical to go next after the only building in the image. Even that went fairly quickly; the water wheel that just starting to show up here would soon anchor the whole building in place. At this point, I was starting to realize just how much the larger pieces simplify the whole building process. If it's true that a 500-piece puzzle is only one-quarter the challenge of a 1000-piece puzzle, I would say that a "large piece" 500-piece puzzle is maybe one-half the challenge of a regular 500-piecer...so one-eighth the challenge of a typical 1000-piece puzzle.

Soon, the puzzle looked like this, and it was just a matter of 15 minutes or so to snap the last few pieces into place.

If this particular puzzle is any indication, it appears that Ravensburger's "large piece" puzzles will have a tighter fit than the company's standard-sized puzzles. With a little care, I was able to flip this one over onto its face, and could have used tape on it if I had been so inclined to prep it for framing - I was never able to pull off that feat with any of the company's smaller-pieced puzzles.

As usual with a Ravensburger, there was never any doubt whether or not two pieces really fit together because the puzzle's cut is so clean and so precise that the pieces do rather softly "click" into place, just as advertised. But as often happens with something from Ravensburger, the quality I was most impressed by was the application of the image to the cardboard base of the pieces. This is such a seamless process that I can't imagine that any portion of the image will ever start peeling from a Ravensburger puzzle-piece -  a common problem shared by many other companies that do not cut their pieces as cleanly as Ravensburger.

Bottom Line: Despite its missing piece, this used puzzle was fun and quick to build. It's not the kind of image I usually go for, but there were enough contrasting colors and separate little images that I looked forward to getting back to it every morning after breakfast. If you like the large-piece format, you might want to look at this one if you can find it (it's from 2009).