A Frugal Find!

I'm so excited I finally found a great garage sale item! I came across the prettiest fine china I had ever seen yesterday. It had beautiful colors and details, and except for being dirty and not packed well (the owners did NOT take good care of it) it was all in great condition. And they were only asking $15 for it! Of course I absolutely jumped on that one. I have always wanted a set of fine china!

The box came with 12 dinner plates, 12 salad plates, 12 fruit bowls, 24 bread and butter plates, a gravy boat, a creamer, and a sugar bowl. I checked the bottom, and sure enough it's the real thing, actual fine china from Japan. The only damage to any of the dishes is one bread and butter plate has a tiny chip on the side. I cleaned them all up, wrapped and reboxed each piece to keep them safe.

I couldn't help but wonder how much these dishes were worth, even though I am definitely not planning on selling them. My wonderful hubby looked up each piece for me and priced them out, and the total value came to $548!! I can hardly believe it! That definitely makes me want to make sure we take good care of these dishes.

So now my question of the day is, what occasions do you bring out the china for? I don't really host dinner parties or holidays very much, but I can picture having tea parties with my girls later or candlelight dinners with my hubby. Or maybe we will bring them out just for fun and have fancy dinners with our whole family. I'm just happy I found these dishes and I didn't have to pay an arm and a leg to get them!