Sarah and I decided to head out for an adventure on Friday, our sights set on two sales in Grand Blanc, which is just past Lansing.  We were excited because both sales looked pretty good.  Spoiler alert: they weren’t.

On the way to Grand Blanc though, we stopped in Whitmore Lake, and good thing because we found lots of treasures.  I picked up this cool ceramic pitcher for Zach.  It was some sort of promotional item for Cutty Sark scotch.  I liked it because it looks really New England-y, and knew he would dig it.  

I also got Zach this little box of old flags, but turns out that he wasn’t that interested.  I might try to sell them on ebay, but I am not even sure what they are or how to list them.

Cute right?  I might just leave them on the bookshelf like this as decoration.  Anyway, the best part of this sale is that everything was priced SUPER reasonably.  And despite it being the first day, the sellers were really fair on reducing prices for us since we ended up buying a lot.  I love sales like this, obviously.

To resell, I bought some old 1950s/1960s sewing patterns which already have a bid on ebay.  As well as a Laurel Burch cat pin that started blowing up with bids the second I listed it!

I am actually a little bummed that the Laurel Burch pin has so many bids.  I told myself that I would happily keep it should it not sell.  I imagined it on my spring coat.  Oh well.  I guess with all the crazy cash it brings in I could buy a pin for my jacket.

As I mentioned, we headed to Lansing after this sale and were in for a whole afternoon of disappointment.  Things seemed promising at first:

I walked down into this basement and was excited by the volume of items before me.  It was a real nice moment.  I was all alone in the basement and Selena was blasting on the radio.  I was sure that good things were about to happen.  Then, Sarah came downstairs, announced that she didn’t know who Selena was, and things got worse from there.

I opened a box and started rummaging, immediately realizing that something was way wrong.  I started screaming in misery as I realized my hand was covered in some sort of ultra sticky goo.  

Yeah, that cup is filled with an ocean of melted candy, clearly decades old.  I assume this candy was one of those chewy old-time candies that rip out the fillings in your teeth.  Bit O’ Honey or something like that.  Whatever it was, it was sticky as hell and ruined the use of my right hand until I could wash it.

I found one thing at this sale, an old Napco salt shaker that I put on ebay.  We’ll see how that goes.

Stay tuned for our update tomorrow, all about some sales we hit on Saturday.  Don’t get too excited, but we did hit up a random rummage sale and I scored some ultra-cool vintage Nikes!  

-Erin

Update from Sarah: First off, sorry this is so late going up. I had a lot of work to do today, and am also getting sick. Anyway, Erin is right. The sales on Friday weren’t that great–especially not for how far we had to travel to get to them. The exception, as she mentioned, was the sale in Whitmore Lake. I just took pictures of all the stuff I bought and I’m horrified with myself in some instances. For example, what was I thinking here? 

There is only one pin here that was necessary to buy, and I think we all know which one that is. 

Besides those great finds, I found some other actually cool things. For example, these two cute dolls: 

The one on the right, I believe is a polish doll that matches two others I found at a sale a while back. I love the one on the left best, though. 

I also found some awesome vintage Peanuts Christmas cards. Here is a picture of me, hoarding the cards so that Erin cannot get at them:

Here is a picture of Erin with yet another Mouse King!

That one didn’t have smaller mice crawling out of its neck. 

When we got to the basement, I found a huge stack of vintage wrapping paper, which is always my favorite thing to find. Here are some of my favorites from the big stack I found: 

Two final items that I had to purchase: 

I wonder if the girl on the bench is as happy as she appears. 

I would like to say that both the wrapping paper and that small, vintage bear-shaped milk bottle pictured above were in a pantry in the basement that Erin had already gone through and told me there was nothing inside. When I got back upstairs and she saw that I had both of these things AFTER she already had first chance at them, she was sad. OH well! Finders Keepers! Plus, she already has a bear-shaped bottle. 

On our way to the first sale in Grand Blanc, we saw the first of a new chain of hotels–Dads Inn (not to be confused with the lesser known Days Inn). 

The next sale on our list was down a very treacherous road. Here is a picture of what it looked like: 

This sale contained a lot of garbage that was not worth the 80 minute drive to dig through. I found a stack of vintage cards, some vintage Tuco puzzles that may or may not be valuable (whatever, they were $.50 each, and then these adorable buddies: 

Finally, at the last sale, I found one cute thing, and then a couple of things to try to resell. This is my one cute thing: 

Probably an ash tray, and clearly needs to be cleaned, but it’s cute! 

I also got a few other things that may or may not be worth anything. First, a bunch of vintage Christmas carol pamphlets (I think they were things that places would hand out when you went caroling?) 

Next up, a vintage money counter. AKA, the Handy Adder: 

Finally, I found this weird pamphlet about Russian education: 

Tomorrow we will update about day two of sale-ing, which wasn’t much better.

P.S. I know who Selena is–I just don’t know her songs when I hear them.

P.P.S. That Laurel Burch pin is fugly.