Dig This Treasure!

There have been lots of adorable Olympic mascots, but perhaps none as cute as the 1984 Winter Olympics mascot Vucko.  This happy little wolf beat out other mascot finalists, including a chipmunk, a lamb, a mountain goat, a porcupine, and a snowball.  (I bet that snowball would’ve been cute too though!)

Here he is in stuffed form:

Zach has always been a big fan of the Olympics, using up all of our DVR space the years it is on.  So when he saw this amazing metal Vucko on ebay, he wanted him pretty badly.  I ended up buying it for him for his birthday a few weeks ago.

Pretty adorable!  I love that he still has his little scarf on.

Like I mentioned, there are lots of cute Olympic mascots, and plenty of merchandise that features them.  Here are some other cute items I’ve found:

Cute, huh?

-Erin

On Saturday night, Sarah and I decided to hit up my favorite local hotspot–the Plymouth auction.  Our friend Lisa was also in attendance, and we were all excited because the items this night looked really good.  Spoiler alert: we all got some GOOD stuff.

I bid on and won the first item up for auction.  It is this framed Harper’s Bazaar print featuring an old baseball team.  (Sorry for the glare on the glass in this photo.)

I got this for Timmy, the #1 baseball fanatic himself.  It was $10.

There was a lot of really nice furniture this night, but none of us needed any furniture.  It all of course went obscenely cheap.  I was particularly obsessed with this seemingly simple table, which opened up to reveal a baller writing desk.  It sold for something like $50.

Lisa and I loved this chair below, and Sarah thought we were crazy.  It just needed some new upholstery.  

And then there was this crazy thing, which I saw and instantly thought, “Who the HELL is going to buy that?!”  Sure enough, this knitting machine (?) sold for $800!  Everyone clapped and cheered when it sold because that is some serious bank to drop on that thing.

I can only assume this thing is used to make these pony sweaters:

Lisa ended up getting two of the best items at the auction.  First was this horn; “horn” here being used in two ways: an animal horn and a musical horn.  

I’m not entirely sure what she is going to do with this, but it was definitely the most badass purchase made that night.  Also, look at that frowny lady in the background!

Lisa also bought this AMAZING carved wooden screen.  It has all sorts of animals on it.  If I had a place for this in our house, I would have fought her over it.  Probably the best buy of the night.

Lisa and I also split a lot of Pewabic pottery, which I have just now realized I still need to pay her for.  My piece in the lot was this little bear tile:

My best score of the evening was a gorgeous stained glass lamp.  We have needed a new living room lamp for awhile now, but I had yet to find one I really loved.  Our old lamp was broken and made a weird sizzling noise which I am sure meant our death in a fire was imminent.  Luckily, I bid on and won this:

I love the pattern so much.  It’s floral but not super femme-y.

I’ll let Sarah fill you in on her purchases, but I will say that at one point she bought this old plastic puzzle.  It came with another item she wanted, so she had no choice but to buy it.  When she got it, we realized it was all chewed on and gross.  I can’t believe this was even an auction item.  She ended up leaving it behind because as far as we knew, it was a biohazard.  

-Erin

Update from Sarah: I was expecting a lot more awesome treasures at this auction, but I did come away with some cool stuff. As Erin mentioned, Lisa came away with some of the coolest items–especially that horn!

In the end, I did come away with some cool stuff. One of the first things I noticed at this auction was an old metal Peanuts tray. I knew as soon as I saw it that I would pay a decent amount of money for it, because both Adam and I love the Peanuts. I won it for a whopping $13, and it came with that ugly ass puzzle that Erin posted above, and some expired astronaut food.

Anyone know any hungry astronauts?

Very adorable.

I also purchased this semi-creepy but also cute old woodblock print. Lisa was the first to notice it and bid on it. I hadn’t seen it but once I got a closer looked, I wanted it.

One thing that I did not end up winning was a HUGE lot of Grateful Dead beanie babies. I didn’t even know that such a thing existed until I took a closer look at the pile of beanies on one of the tables. Apparently there are people in the world who want to own Grateful Dead beanie babies, so the reselling potential was there.

One hilarious thing about these bears was that the person putting them up on the auction block called them WALKING Dead dolls, instead of GRATEFUL Dead dolls.

I didn’t think anyone on earth would be interested in them, but apparently people did their research. I think they ended up selling for something like $60, which was too much for me to pay, but then again, maybe there were some really obscure bears up in there. 

Also, in case you were wondering you can buy a plush Jerry Garcia.

You’re welcome.

I’ve been holding on to some very cute mechanical valentines to feature in today’s entry. The first up is my favorite. It’s too bad it’s for a wife from a husband, because if it were the other way around, I’d have been able to give it to Adam today! This card is a great example of the cool mechanical cards from the 1950s, and also is an example of a booklet-style card. Many of the cards I’ve found from this era are made up of multiple pages.

Man, aren’t those cats so cute?!

When you move the page back and forth, the boy cat moves his hand up and down to demonstrate the saying on the left.

And finally, on the last page, the two cats hug! ADORABLE.

Here’s another cute one from a kid to his dad. It features a little booklet hidden inside, which I’ve also noticed was pretty common in the 1940s and ‘50s.

And finally… This one is a great example of the illustrations of husbands and wives in the '50s and '60s.

I love that little fold-out table with nighttime snacks!

Finally, also in celebration of Valentine’s Day, I’m thrilled to share these awesome valentines that Organ sent me pictures of! He found them in one of his mom’s scrapbooks from the '50s, and documented all of them. Hope you enjoy as much as I did! Happy Valentine’s Day, y'all!

-Sarah

So like Sarah mentioned, we headed back to Windsor on Wednesday so I could try to buy those antique moccasins that totally burned me last time.  Kudos to Sarah for actually getting to my house on time.  We made it to the auction only 15 minutes late, and luckily the moccasins had not been up on the block yet.  In fact, the only thing we seemed to have missed was this giant box of VHS tapes:

Here’s how I probably looked waiting for the moccasins to be auctioned:

I won’t keep you all in suspense…I didn’t win the moccasins.  I KNOW RIGHT?!  Unbelievable.  Here is how it went down:

The moccasins went up for sale and the same auctioneer from last time (my mortal enemy) started them at $100.  He went down to 50, then 40, and when he got to 30 dollars I bid.  I didn’t want a repeat of last time where I think he is going to go lower and instead he ends the item.  So here I am, the ONLY bidder on these for $30.  

At this point, no one else is bidding and he starts doing his final countdown before he says “SOLD.”  All of a sudden, one of the EMPLOYEES starts bidding.  (Very fishy I know.)  I’ve seen workers bid at an auction before, but this was strange considering how badly the auctioneer did not want to sell these to me last time.  And why did she wait so long to bid against me?  

So we go back and forth and get up to $85.  At this point, I am convinced they are trying to bid me up on purpose, so I bow out.  The auctioneer seemed genuinely surprised that I did.  

To be fair, I did see this female employee leave with the moccasins, so she probably did buy them.  I felt at peace.  I got a fair chance to buy these (FINALLY), and $85 was more than I wanted to spend.  At least it was my choice, and not someone else telling me I couldn’t bid.  

So with that all settled, it was on to more treasures.  I bid on and won this amazing old box from the Canadian Salt Company.

There was still a little bit of salt in the bottom of this, which I was sure the border agents would think was cocaine when we tried to reenter the States.  I didn’t tell Sarah about this because she already acts like a crazy person at customs.  Not really a crazy person actually, but more of a deaf mute frozen in terror.

I then bid on this old bottle from Bright’s Winery, which is the second oldest winery in Canada.  I just liked the look of it, but might end up putting it on eBay.  

The bottle came with a ton of other glassware that I will end up putting in our garage sale this summer.  I also gave some stuff away to the lady next to me, which was great because it lightened the load a lot.

Next, I bought this old glass rolling pin, which Sarah thought looked very suggestive.  In reality, I bought this to use while baking, as it was just last week I made pizza dough and realized I had no rolling pin.  

The lady next to me said I need to get a cork for the end, and that way I can put ice water in the rolling pin while using it.  Apparently the cold will help your dough roll out more easily.

I also bought this cool book for Zach, which has lots of useful information in it.

I’ve been thinking of upping the number of servants in our household, and this book confirmed that I probably should.

Here are some things we didn’t win:

Sarah and I both wanted those green canisters, but they ended up going for like $40 or something.  If we got them cheaper, they would have been an easy eBay resell.  Oh well.

This hockey game would have also been an easy item to resell, but it too sold for a high price, around $50.  

And look at this great, retro table!  It wouldn’t fit in my car, otherwise I’m sure Sarah would have bought it.

She also would have bought this Beagle, but she wasn’t for sale.

We waited around until the end of the auction because there was some stuff that Sarah wanted.  I got us “2 Pop” again, and then went to wait in line to check out.  For some reason, this place has a woman who can’t do math who checks everyone out.  It literally takes 10 minutes for each person in line.  I waited in line while Sarah bought her last items, and then paid for both of us when I checked out.  This let us hightail it out of there pretty quickly so we were home at a reasonable time.

This guy in the background also had some pop, but he obviously brought it with him:

Also of note here is Sarah’s equally hilarious and confusing expression.

-Erin

Update from Sarah: I don’t know why we thought that man with the two-liter was so funny but we did. Also, can you believe that beagle?! Oh my gosh, I was obsessed. Her name was Maggie and she was 7 months old. She also had on red nail polish. Her owner, a hipster-looking guy, told me that she was a “princess” which was sort of an odd thing to hear from a guy like that.

In the end, I got a few cool things. First, this cool map of the Detroit river from 1952:

I also got these cool old rulers:

And I also got this JC to match my Mary from last time.

He’s also busting out the immaculate heart…

Finally, I got two things at the end of the night that I had to wait around for. First up was this cool vintage book of valentines.

Quite adorable!
Also adorable are these vintage doll heads from Japan.

The only annoying thing about these were that the auctioneer made me pay $7.50 for them. Absolutely nobody else was interested in them, but he would not go down to $5 once he knew that I wanted them. Still, I have a feeling they’ll sell on eBay!

Last night, I finally put a really big (1700+) lot of vintage photographs up on eBay that I’ve been collecting for the past few months. I saw a while back that really big lots of them can go for a lot of money.

Most of the pictures in my lot are from the sale that we went to back in November where I found that picture of the corpse. Most of the pictures from that sale were of one family–particularly one small girl whose parents took countless pictures of her. Here is just a small group. I arranged them so you can sort of track her growth. She was so beautiful. 

It’s sad that there was no family to hold on to these, but I hope that a collector or crafty person can swoop in and use them for something. I’ll keep you all posted.

-Sarah

While we write up our most recent trip to Windsor, we thought we would leave you for the weekend with these hilarious Hard to Resist items that were put up on the auction block while we were there on Wednesday night. Here are some lovely oversized nutcrackers from Costco.

The items themselves, while not decorations that I would own personally, were not what was most hilarious. What was hilarious was that the auctioneer kept calling them “nutcrack soldiers” instead of nutcrackers! He seriously said it about 7 times. Erin and I were really LOLin’ in our seats over that one.

-Sarah

My dad happened to be in the area today, so we decided to visit some estate sales before going out for lunch.  The first sale was in Plymouth and it was run by those hoodlums from way back.  Seeing this was the first sign that the sale would be bad.  The other bad signs were the bras classily displayed on a bedpost for sale in one of the rooms…

…and this scary mannequin head:

It kind of looks like Sarah before she shaved her goatee.  

We hightailed it out of this sale pronto, and while looking up where to go next, I found a listing for “The Barn Antiques” in Northville.   I had never been to this place, let alone heard of it.  Turns out, IT WAS SO COOL.

Here’s Timmy walking in:

The items were mostly primitive/rustic style and many were refurbished.  The prices were high, but we had a great time looking.  They even had a coffee station with different coffee flavors and all the fixins.

I, of course, managed to find the only thing in the place NOT for sale.  These two locker baskets would have been perfect for my bookshelf (a la biscuit box style).  

These baskets though, along with a few other items, were available for rental only (weddings mostly).  Let me say, that it is a GREAT idea for antique stores to rent items out for events.  So smart. 

I also fell in love with these metal carts:

That first cart would be great in my basement, in ebay world (the place I store all my ebay items I’m selling).  It would also be cool in Sarah’s house to hold books because it looks like a library cart.  

Unfortunately we didn’t buy anything today, but I definitely look forward to visiting here again.  Next up, we headed over to Knightsbridge Antique Mall, just a mile or so down the road.  This is one of Timmy’s favorite places.  I like it too, but it can also be overpriced.

Here is my favorite booth because it looks like an old-timey mercantile:

In one of those cases was this little guy, who stole my heart.  He was only $45 but I didn’t buy him today.

He is so frowny!

I also saw this amazing dairy box, but it was $65.  They seem to be a lot cheaper on ebay, so I will try to buy one there.

I think it would be cute on top of my fridge.  We have an old wooden egg crate up there now, so this would be a nice addition.

Here are some other neat items I saw:

These are old cast iron string holders.  If I ever get around to my dream of transforming the kitchen into an old-timey general store, these will be one of my first purchases.

I’m in the market for a new rug for our dining room, and this one caught my eye.

I’m not into Coke stuff, but this was a cute little soda fountain thing.

Again, we didn’t buy anything!  So we stopped at one last place, a new antique shop in Livonia called Yesterday’s Antiques.  And guess what we found?!?!

A yearbook from Eastern Michigan University…

…with Timmy in it!!!

He’s the one with the mustache that looks like Charles Manson.  We laughed so hard about this.  What are the odds!?  It’s not like there were tons of yearbooks here, just this one!

I left empty handed again, but Tim bought a program from the opening day of Comerica Park.  It was still a great day of window shopping though, and maybe I’ll go back soon to buy some of the things I saw.

-Erin