By Pam Sander
Storyteller and owner of LaMonaGirl Shops

After I left the news business a year ago, I knew I needed to do something completely different. I had transferable skills from more than 30 years as a journalist and news leader. My final position had been a three-year stint as a regional editor overseeing newspapers in five states. My areas of expertise included strategic development, project management, digital analytics, outcome wins, branding, connecting information and audiences.

But what I really enjoy – and what had taken a back seat in my career climb – is storytelling and the research that comes with it. On a broader scale, I love history and understanding how it has shaped our world.

Last summer, I started diving into friends’ ancestry looking for stories and greater insight into history. But I couldn’t find anyone who wanted to pay me to do it. In fact, most thought I was creepy when I’d send them an old photo I had found of their grandpa or great-aunt once removed.

So here I am. A purging of my attic and some bids at estate auctions sent me down research holes and landed me on eBay and Etsy. From that, I blinked and was in the middle of women’s vintage fashion and designers.

My fashion study has led to so much insight about women’s history. For example, when zippers were added to women’s clothing in the early 1900s, they were hidden behind a flap of cloth because no-good scoundrels would certainly take it as an invitation.

The bump in the road for me has been that most buyers on resell platforms like eBay and Poshmark aren’t there for the stories – they just want to know the price, who made it and its condition. In fact, many of them don’t want vintage at all. They want deals on the latest Ralph Lauren, Dooney & Bourke and Lululemon.

I equate it to news stories – journalists want to spend their time digging through documents to get that big revelatory enterprise piece, but the audience for that doesn’t compare to demand for the Seven Best Local Hamburgers list.

So I’m doing a little of both at my LaMonaGirl shops on eBay, Poshmark and Mercari. LaMonaGirl Etsy is strictly for vintage, work from local women who create art for therapy and artwork from lesser-known artists around the world.

In this blog space, I’m going to share the rest of the stories and interesting bits as I learn them — such as women being empowered in the 1960s by a purse designer in New Jersey who laid them off for three months each summer so they could collect money and be home with the kids.

But there’ll likely be no hamburger revelations here — unless I discover a pair of grease-stained jeans from the late 1800s that were worn at Barny’s Saloon in Moulton, TX. Barny’s was one of many places that may have created the first American hamburger.