Treasure seeker: Diane Kaser enjoys finding and selling antiques

By Kristine Thomas

Sublimity resident Diane Kaser feels a responsibility to rescue items others have abandoned.

An avid collector of antiques, Kaser was at a thrift store when she spied a photo album dating to the 1800s. Glancing through the black and white photographs, she felt an affinity for the people.

“I thought how sad it was that the photographs didn’t stay in the family,” Kaser said. “I made it my responsibility to take care of the photo album and adopt them as my family.”

On Aug. 21, Kaser hosts the fifth annual Molly Mo’s Summer Antique Faire where she and friends who share her love of old things will sell everything from vintage clothing to handmade quilts and primitive farmhouse items to French chic. The faire is free to attend. There will be food and beverages for sale as well as lots of “cool things to buy,” Kaser said.

Kaser suspects her affection for old things stems from the days she spent visiting the garbage dump with her grandfather, Ed Madsen, in Canada.

“It was in the early 1970s so you could still go into the dump and rescue stuff people had thrown away – like furniture,” she said. “It was like a treasure hunt and if I was lucky I would find something.”

She also would drive down the alleys with her aunt on garbage night, looking to see what people had tossed aside.

“We would take a flashlight and look for things,” she recalls, adding she was into recycling before it became the norm.

A visit to her home in Sublimity is a testament to her love for antiques and her creativity to take something ordinary and make it extraordinary. For example, she used old washtub with wheels as a ice cooler on her front porch and old telephone insulators for candleholders.

Her decision to sell antiques started when her ever-growing collection began to overtake her home and property.

“People would drive by our house and see all the things stacked in the garage and ask if we were having a garage sale,” Kaser said. “Molly Mo’s was born out of necessity and a love of all that’s sweet and vintage.”

She works for the state of Oregon’s Department of Human Services, where she shares a job, leaving her time to spend with her family, her husband, Matt and four daughters, Cara, Hayden, Emma, and Molly.

“It’s fun to make a little money selling old stuff but it’s really an unpredictable business,” she said. “I am not quitting my day job.”

She’s excited for people to visit her show and see the new front porch she added to her white barn, where she stores treasures she has discovered at estate sales, garage sales, thrift stores and more.

The front porch includes an old chandelier she hung in the gable and brackets salvaged from an old Victorian home torn down in Sublimity in the 1970s. She acquired the brackets from someone who was taking them to the burn pile.

She likes visiting garage and estate sales on the last day to see what other people have by-passed. She will purchase plates with a chip or chairs with a ding in the wood because what others may see as flaws she sees as part of the object’s history.

A few times a year, she packs a trailer with vintage items and takes them to events including the Funky Junk Sisters sale, the Barn House Flea Market, Coburg Antique Fair, and Ruffles & Rust. She will have a Halloween Sale on Oct. 2 in Salem and her annual Holiday Treasures Show at her home on Nov. 13.

Whether she’s hosting a antique fair or having guests at her home, Kaser said she hopes people feel comfortable and enjoy themselves.

“I would feel bad if someone came into my home and felt they couldn’t touch anything,” she said.

Her philosophy about collectibles and antiques are they should be used – not admired from afar.

“I have a romanticism about old things,” she said. “I wonder about their history and who had them before.”

And when she sells something she found, she hopes it goes to someone who will enjoy it just as much as she did finding it.