Dig This Treasure!

So we headed out on Friday, full of promise, eagerly awaiting a repeat of the success we had found the week before.  The first sale we hit was pretty packed, with both stuff and people.  It was the type of sale where people use one arm to sort through items, and their other arm to block you from getting anywhere near the stuff they are looking at.  With a house full of people all doing this, it gets annoying pretty fast.  I’ve gotten good at muscling around in these types of situations, but it is still real stressful.

My first find was a bunch of vintage plastic toys.  I had been researching these on ebay last week for an art project I’m working on and found that they can be surprisingly valuable.  There is a good mix of cowboys, indians, horses, spacemen, pirates, knights, and more.  The woman running the sale mentioned that many of the pieces are by Marx, which I guess is one of the more collectible brands.  

I also bought some vintage jello/baking molds since I had had previous success in selling them.

Here is some of our loot while we were standing in line to check out.  The line was the slowest ever, as the sellers were having to phone in every credit card transaction.  At some point, Sarah contemplated leaving the line to go back for a huge ceramic dog she had saw.  I encouraged her to at least take a photo of it so we can document all the questionable items she considers buying.  She ended up just buying it, which I am sure Adam is thrilled about.  Hopefully it will make an appearance soon in TTFYHO.

Check out that nice kitten postcard in Sarah’s box.

The rest of the day was filled with bummer sales.  A lot were overpriced or had nothing of interest.  I did find this little buddy, by Josef Original.  He is pretty much the cutest.

I first came across Josef Original figures at Christmas, when I found this guy:

So a rather uneventful Friday.  No huge scores but still lots of fun.  I even ate a cookie for lunch, which is always a fun thing to do.  And we ended up going to the casino, although there were no huge scores there either.  We’ll get ‘em next time.

-Erin 

_______________________________________________________

Erin is right, the sales weren’t that great. We were also both sort of “off” on Friday. Erin seemed cranky, and I was sick. However, shockingly, I still came home with a carload of items. The first sale was the most fruitful in terms of treasures. I’ll do a separate post about the ceramic dog another day. He’s an Irish Setter and I love him. 

I found some cool items at this sale, but they were pretty overpriced. Oh well. (Note: This sale was ALSO by the same people who did the House of Horrors sale and the antique cigar stand sale. They love overpricing things.) 

Anyway, I got my brother this vintage Michigan State pennant for his man cave. I think he reads this blog, so I’m ruining a surprise. It’s probably from the '50s…if I had to guess. 

I also found this amazing book, called The Crazy Ladies by Joyce Elbert. I’m not familiar with her work, but as you can see from the blurb by Cosmo at the top, it is the first really great dirty book. 

I think Cosmo is probably wrong about this claim, but it was still a great find because clearly someone had kept this book just for the sexy parts. I know this because when I opened it, this happened: 

It reminded me of the copy of Jackie Collins’ Chances that was in my grandma’s basement when I was a kid. I would go downstairs and pretend I had to use the bathroom down there, and just read the dirty parts. My family probably thought I had extreme bowel problems (I’m neither confirming or denying this.) The book looked just like that by the end of my tween years. 

I flipped through it this morning, and didn’t find anything particularly racy. However, the first page is great, and I don’t know how this happened, but it’s like a picture-perfect description of the way I throw parties: 

I found some other cool stuff at the sale, most notably these postcards, a Swedish Christmas ornament, and a Greenfield Village pennant, all vintage: 

Next, we went to a sale at the home of a woman who was clearly a compulsive shopper, and I scored two purses and three pairs of Naturalizer dress shoes in my size that looked like they’d never been worn. You might say that’s a grandma brand to wear, but I was thrilled because a) the shoes are all cute, b) I hate looking for dress shoes when I have to go to a wedding or something, and c) each pair was only $5. 

Related sidenote: I first started hanging out with Erin, we were at this wedding and I complimented her whole ensemble, which was lovely. She then told me that her shoes were NATURE-alizer brand like it was real cool. First, nice pronunciation skills. Second, that’s not something you want to walk around advertising when you’re 22 or 23 (which she was at the time.) 

At the last two sales of the day, I scored some decent items, including cool wrapping paper to add to my collection (I remember making things out of fabric that was the same pattern as the paper to the right when I was a kid), an antique shelf, some cool vintage cheese picks for all of the entertaining that I do, and a cat pin with a head that wobbles. 

All in all, not the best day, but not the worst either. Until I lost at the casino and had to drive home from Erin’s in the snow, coughing and sneezing my brains out. 

-Sarah