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Friday, September 12, 2014

Estate Sale Loot: Max Factor Make-up Kit for Students

I bought this two weeks ago at an estate sale near Skokie and forgot to take pictures of it with the rest of my loot. It is deserving of its own post because I think it is cool and interesting. I saw it on top of a dresser and decided to buy it after opening it up; it was unique and since I always read /r/makeupaddicts on Reddit, I thought I would buy it for the low, low price of three dollars.
 I did some lazy internet "research" and it seems that these date from the 30s to the 50/60s. There are male and female sets, and I have a male. It look like the main difference was that the female one had mascara and another blusher. Older versions of the male one included a fake mustache and nose putty! I guess this would be closer to the newer end, but nothing is dated.  A few have sold on etsy and I saw another incomplete one on ebay that sold for $95!

 It is supposed to have some eyeliner pencils and a big powder puff, as well, but those are missing.

The cold cream has been used up completely, but there is still a small, flat powder puff and a lot of face powder in a light skin tone.
 There are four cream liners in yellow, black, brown and blue. The brown and blue are very dried out, but the others are fine. There is also Moist Rouge, which is a cream blush. I swatched all of these using q-tips onto printer paper, as I was kind of skeeved out at the thought of putting 60+ year old, used make-up on my skin. Shocking, I know.
 There is a nearly untouched powder blush, which has its puff and you can even still read the Max Factor stamp on the top of the rouge. It has a nice black and gold metal tin.
 There are four grease paints in various skin tones, but it seems it was sold with five. It seems the box comes with directions (now missing) on how to make yourself up into various characters like "straight", elderly, "Hindoo", Chinese and Spanish, which seem a little random. Mine is missing the instructions, though.
 Here is it all laid out together.
 I repacked it incorrectly. All the liners go in the center rectangle. The top left would have been the pencils and the top right would have been a big powder puff, if it had them still.
I thought this was a cool find and wanted to share it with you! What do you think?

4 comments:

  1. yea wow. What an interesting find!

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  2. That is cool! I wonder who the performer was who used it.

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  3. You still have this all in tacked and willing to sell it

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  4. My teacher at school would die as she says to have this and I wanted to surprise her with it. She’s a makeup artist and is a vintage collector of old glam.

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Thanks for your thoughts and feedback!