On Friday, Erin and I hit about four or five sales. The first was a sale that had a bunch of old Life Magazines as soon as we walked in the front door. Now, if you see old Life Magazines at a sale, be careful. Many of them are not valuable. However, if you’re a Life Magazine expert like me, you can find the diamonds in the rough. They were priced at $1.50 each, and I probably bought 12 or so. Some of them I purchased just because I wanted them for myself, and others I purchased to sell, including two from MLK’s assassination: 

I think these will sell for about $20 total. Not a bad profit, eh? I bought some others–mainly all from the ‘60s. One has Ernest Hemingway on the cover, another has Grandma Moses. My mom has told me that Life Magazines from the 1940s are also valuable, so that’s something else you could look out for. 

I cannot remember what else I purchased at this sale, which is a pretty bad sign. 

At this point, we were starving, so we decided to get snacks at a nearby Target. After eating my Pizza Hut bread sticks (they hit the spot, BTW), I was craving a treat. Well, thank god we were in Taylor, because there was a mom and her daughter selling Girl Scout Cookies out of a minivan, on the side of Telegraph. 

Here’s me, making the money exchange. It sort of made me feel like I was doing something illegal. 

In case you are wondering, I purchased one box of Tagalongs and one box of Thin Mints. Erin purchased no cookies, because she likes to deprive herself of all joy. 

Next, we went to a sale that was held by our now favorite cranky ladies. We used to be sort of scared of these ladies, but now they are our buds, and they recognize us when they see us. They also give us deals, which is totally awesome. 

So this sale was advertised as one having a lot of cobalt glass items. Turns out that stuff isn’t very valuable, as far as I could tell from eBay, but Erin thought it was pretty. Gross.

Besides a lot of cobalt glass, this person also thoroughly enjoyed collecting valueless toys from McDonald’s over the years. 

These two pictures don’t really even begin to capture how many McDonald’s toys this person had. I didn’t buy any of them. Oh sh*t yes I did, I bought two small Inspector Gadget toys for my office: 

They’ll fit right in up there. 

Besides those guys, I bought some holiday pins (sorry, Adam) and a book about dogs. I also am ashamed to admit that I bought a TY stuffed dog that I thought was a pug. He’s a bulldog. I don’t like bulldogs. I mean, I don’t have anything against them but they’re not as cute as pugs. 

Next stop was a sort of grimy sale a few miles away. I only found one item worth purchasing, and even that is still up in the air. I don’t know if it’s worth anything: 

It’s a vintage speaker that still works. I thought it was an amp when I purchased it. It was marked $10 but I got him to give it to me for $8. I thought Adam might want it but he didn’t really know much about it, so I am planning on trying to resell it. 

This sale also had a number of really nice items that I did not purchase, as pictured below: 

I had been looking forward to the final sale of the day, which was the second weekend of the sale I went to with Adam a few weeks ago, where I got those old Disney books, among other items, and was let down by a molting E.T. The sale did not disappoint. The quantity of items that they were able to pull out of three closed rooms during the previous weekend was insane: 

Now you can see why this entry is titled “Christmas Explosion”? 

Ok, I purchased a lot of stuff at this sale, but I’ll focus on the highlights–the resellable (hopefully) items. First up: 

Original 1995 Tickle Me Elmo! I replaced his batteries and he’s good as new. He already has a bidder on eBay, which blows my mind. I purchased him for $2. 

I also found a complete set of the Seven Dwarves beanies, which can sell for up to $60 on eBay. Erin thinks I’m nuts for listing them for that much, but I figure if it happened once, why can’t it happen again? I paid $.75 each for these, but am too lazy to do the math for how much that comes out to. About $5, right? 

How could anyone resist these lovely fellows? 

Finally, I found a complete set of Simpsons promo dolls from Burger King, from 1990. They, too, were $.75 each. They have been known to sell on eBay for about $15-20, so I’m hoping that happens. They’re in great shape: 

And finally, I found this great item: 

-Sarah

Update from Erin: I didn’t buy a lot this week, mostly because I bought tons and tons last week, some of which was risky (i.e. plastic horses and ceramic kewpies).  

The first sale was kind of a dud, although I did find a big piece of coral that I am sending to Ryan Matthew in thanks for his interview.  I am also sending him a bunch of other weird crap that I will write about in a later entry.  He will probably not want any of it, but the items were the best I could do in terms of “oddities” found at estate sales around here.

Here are some things I didn’t buy at this sale:

I probably should have bought this though because sometimes at crowded sales I get real sweaty.  This is a combination of my narcolepsy medication and general crazy-person anxiety.  

I also saw this cool thing, which was in really nice shape.  Ironrites have been at other sales before, but they are usually broken and rusty.

I would never actually use the Ironrite, but I can just imagine how adorable it would look next to my washing machine.  I can also imagine the total horror on my husband’s face should I ever bring something like this home.

For the record, I did think that cobalt blue glass at the second sale was real pretty.  It was just so vivid of a color!  I can’t understand collecting thousands of pieces of it, but one nice vase on the mantel ain’t bad.  I didn’t end up buying any though, and instead grabbed a stack of Red Wings championship posters/newspapers/etc. to put on ebay in the future.

The Christmas bonanza sale was super interesting to me.  This person was CLEARLY a hoarder, but the house and items were all clean and in good condition.  I was honestly astounded at the volume of items.  Everything was in boxes and stacked up on shelves, and every box was just LOADED with random items.  The sale people did a good job of organizing some stuff on tables, but otherwise, you really had to rummage to find things.  The basement and garage were particularly packed, and the items were tucked into boxes without any rhyme or reason.  There could have been a diamond ring packed in with some old kids’ toys and no one would even know.  

A lot of the items at the sale were unopened and unused, mostly appliances and cleaning products.  Perhaps my favorite score of the day was this giant box of Oxi-Clean that I got for $3:

Oxi-Clean is second only to Magic Erasers, which I have praised on this blog before.

At this sale, I also got this weird cat pitcher from Germany.  It is currently on ebay, and usually sells for about $15.  When I first got it, someone had filled its head with glitter.  I figured I could just take it home, remove the stopper, and dump out the glitter.  Well, it turns out that the glitter fairy GLUED IN the stopper.  I had to really fight to pry it open and thought that I was going to break the whole head in the process.  

Alas, the glitter was removed and now I don’t have to explain on ebay why this German antique was all bedazzled.

The last thing I will mention is that I found another piece of Wagner Ware.  This time instead of a waffle iron, it is a griddle.  I paid $8 for it and right now on ebay it has bids at $15.  The waffle iron ended up selling for $48, so I really hope that this piece does too.

-Erin