Furry Cat Pins are a Hit with My English Customer!

I recently came across a group of cute little cat pins in a large estate collection that I purchased. The were all very similar and were made of fake fur and hand done with red felt backing and a safety pin clasp at the back. I listed them all in my Carolina Collections Vintage Jewelry shop and they all sold to customers in England, but one customer purchased 3 of them - all exactly the same, and one at a time.

When I sold the last one to this customer, I showed the pin (featured here) to my husband, who is English and told him that they all sold to English customers. He just added in his (not a man of many words) way "English people like cats."

When I was notifying my customer of the shipment of the last pin, I added a note to my email saying that I had noticed that she really liked the kitty pins. We exchanged a few emails and she told me the story of her love for them, and agreed to let me share it with my readers. Apparently, she has a whole collection of them!

Melissa, from England, has several of these furry critter pins and she tells me that people stop her in the street when she wears them to ask questions about the pins. Here is a photo of her collection all on one sweater. It is quite a look, but she assures me that she only wears them one at a time! You can see my kitty on the top left in her photo.

She told me that the first one that she received was a present from her then boyfriend, who purchased it at an antique fair. The pin was similar to the tiger cat on the right of her photo. She loved the pin and they called it, simply, "cat." She wore cat one day on a date with her boyfriend, and when she returned home, she put the T shirt inside out in her washing machine, with the pin hiding in the folds, and accidently destroyed her beloved brooch.

You can imagine that her eyes bulged right out when she found his little white hairs everywhere but no bodily remains to be found. After a bit of panic, and a bit more searching, she found just his two little eyes, all alone in the bottom of the machine, staring up at her - so forlorn looking.

Of course, lots of sobbing followed with thoughts of never finding another kitty like "cat." However, about a year later, she found an almost identical one on ebay and purchased it. The cat was hers again! Within a week, she found a wolf, and this started her hunt for more of these furry critters. She has told me that most of them were found on ebay, and most came from American jewelry sellers.

Mellissa was recently in a vintage store in London and a woman exclaimed "oh my god, you're the girl with the things!!' because during here previous visit her boss had called over all the staff to see Lionface (the huge one). She says that she doesn't need to travel more than a few streets or shops in London before she gets asked about the pins.

It is such a delight to know that my kitty pins ended up in the hands of such a lovely collector. Thanks for sharing your story with me and my readers, Melissa!

Do you have a story about your jewelry that you would like to share? Please email me and I'll be happy to feature you in a future blog post.