Whoa.
Sometimes people try to sell blatantly racist items at their estate sale.
Sometimes people collect these items and store them in file cabinets:
When I see old binders, file folders, or envelopes at estate sales, I assume they have a bunch of old confederate money in them, or perhaps an autograph from George Washy himself. So far this hasn’t happened. Here are some pics of what you might find, though.
And for the record, this house was so crazy filthy (literally and figuratively). I love me some cats, but this was clearly a former cat mecca. There were giant boxes in which cat litter had been ordered in bulk. The floor had a slick mix of snow from people’s shoes and litter granules. There were areas of the floor where carpet had been ripped up due to the sheer amount of cat urine soaking it. The smell was about how you would imagine. Probably worse.
Take a good peek at that Playgirl Inc. letter which begins:
Dear Sir,
We wish to thank you for your letter and polaroid picture which we recently received. We regret, however, that we will not be able to use you as a Playgirl’s “Man of the Month” centerfold.
-Erin
Update from Sarah: I asked Erin why she didn’t purchase the dirty binder, and I stand by that question. Look at how much stuff it contained!!!
Adorable vintage baking molds. Bought: $1, Sold: $15
-Erin
firestarter.
Sometimes you enter an estate sale and are forced to put on the blue baggie shoe covers that surgeons wear because the house is so immaculate. Most of the time, however, you wade around in knee-deep dust bunnies. Or worse.
Messy houses hide the best treasures. This is a fact. There was one house that had huge reptile cages with shedded snake skin all over that Sarah had to immediately walk out of because of the smell. I ended up persevering and risking the chance of hurling, and ended up finding a mint condition 1968 Detroit Free Press celebrating the Tigers’ world series win ($40 sold on eBay).
On last week’s hunt we came across a house that had the greatest collection of paper goods I had ever seen. The basement was literally covered with old magazines and newspapers, piled up on bookshelves and littering the floor entirely. My first thought was how great it was that there was never a fire in this house. My second thought was that there had to be at LEAST one valuable magazine in this pile. And so we dug.
Sarah had the best finds here, picking up a rare Disney World Life Magazine and some Little Golden books (see previous post.) I dug and dug, but came up empty. There were several collectible mags and newspapers, but because of the storage conditions, they were all water damaged, crumpled, and moldy. Bummers all around.
Upstairs in the less musty area, I did manage to find a ton of quilting magazines (again, mentioned in the previous post.) I bought them for about 10 cents each. They currently have 4 watchers on eBay. DUN DUN DUN.
-Erin
Update from Sarah: I thought that Ebony with Sidney Poitier on the cover might be valuable but don’t worry, it’s not.
This week’s finds…
This week, Erin acquired the following treasures: vintage matchbooks and a lot of quilting magazines from the mid ‘90s. Apparently quilters go wild over quilting magazine lots on eBay.
I acquired the following treasures: vintage Golden Books (looks like Bugs Bunny’s gonna bring me the gold, yo!), '70s Playboy magazines, and a Life Magazine featuring the opening of Disney World that is a hot commodity for Disney aficionados.
Some jerk kid named Rusty f*cked up a few of those badboys by writing his name in the front cover.
Didn’t he know back in the '50s that that would decrease their value? Was someone really going to steal your Golden Books if you didn’t put your name in the cover, Rusty? Thanks a lot. Good thing Bugs Bunny was clean.
We will keep you all posted on how these items do on eBay! If you’d like to keep track yourself, or if you are a quilting, Disney, matchbook or golden book fan, look no further!
-Sarah
Hello and welcome to our blog! We are Erin and Sarah and we LOVE treasures. Each week we set out to scour the basements and bedrooms of neighborhood estate sales. Some of our bounty we keep, and some of it we resell…often with surprisingly lucrative results.
But estate sales aren’t just about the things we buy. We’ve been in some of the coolest, wackiest, messiest, and immaculate houses. From trailer to mansion, we’ve seen it all, and along the way have met equally fascinating people.
We hope you’ll follow us on our adventures and that you’ll enjoy the trip. You never know what you might find!