Last Friday, Sarah and I got off to a really rough start of our estate sale day. George the otterhound got neutered earlier in the week, and since then had had reoccurring problems and like 26 trips to the vet. This morning he had messed with his stitches again and things “down there” were looking pretty awful. Like a good friend, Sarah agreed to postpone our treasure hunting and go with me to the vet.
After peeing in the vet’s lobby, trying to bite the vet (to be fair, he touched George’s incision), and about 2.5 hours of elapsed time, we took George back home and our estate sale day finally commenced.
The first sale was in Dearborn Heights and I didn’t buy anything. I remember thinking, “look at all this stuff.” It was just that–stuff. In fact, all the sales this day would turn out to be mostly “stuff.” This photo was from the second sale, which I believe was in Livonia.
At this second sale, my mom and sister met up with us. They had just come from a sale in Farmington that was selling a bunch of penguin stuff. My sister is the penguin keeper at the Detroit Zoo, so she was pretty excited. My mom was excited because she bought some Chico’s shirts at the sale.
Anyway, at this sale I only bought a huge stack of padded mailing envelopes. Again, a letdown. Here’s Sarah rummaging through more of the “stuff”:
I did find a stack of photos that I was quickly obsessed with. How cute is this dog?! You can tell he was so loved!! The pics made me think of Georgie back home, and how I should forgive him for almost biting the vet.
The last sale was in Northville and was advertised as having “bling watches.” When we got there, the two guys running the sale were young hipsters. I asked them about the bling watches and they said that each watch originally retailed for $1,100. It is true that “1100.00” was written in pencil on the inside of the box, but I told the hipsters that this had to be in pesos.
They had two of these watches for sale, each around $100, which they admitted was absurd. The watches were stainless steel, made in China, and in some hilariously janky “JustBling” boxes. They were also crazy huge. Oh, and for the record, WTF is up with those bands in the box?!?! Yes, let me put a pink fake leather band on my bling watch.
I mean, who knows really, maybe those are real diamonds. Maybe we missed out on the best purchase of the year.
At this sale, I did make two good finds. The first is a Wagner Ware ice cream or candy scoop, which seem to be pretty rare. It was priced $2.
I also found this old cast iron dog hidden in the basement. Those hipsters charged me $1 for him, which is a steal. I didn’t know much about this guy at the time, but it turns out that Boston Terrier cast iron doorstops and banks are very collectible. I put him up on ebay and he instantly had over 10 watchers and 4 bids.
There are apparently TONS of fakes and new reproductions of this type of cast iron terrier. I’m hoping that the interest my little guy has generated so far means that he is in fact real. I put up a million pictures of him in the listing, and described him in detail, so I’m sure someone will let me know if he is fake. Right now he is at $15.
The last thing I will mention about this sale is that I loudly referred to a terrarium as a TERRANIUM, which everyone in the immediate area found quite hilarious. Idk what a terranium is, but my guess is some kind of dinosaur.
-Erin
P.S. Shout-out to mom Joan for taking all of us out to eat after the sales. We went to some Irish pub place and I ordered fish and chips. This was the first time I have ordered fish and chips since I was like 5, so it is therefore notable. Also notable is that it gave me a crazy stomachache and I forbid Sarah from saying the words “fish” and “tartar sauce” for the rest of the day.
Update from Sarah: Erin’s got herself all screwed up here. The dog photos she posted were from the first sale. Now, let me just say–this sale looked like it was probably good the first day. I really wanted to go to it because there were a lot of black and white photographs in the pictures of the sale. But George had to go and screw up my plans to get there early. Regardless, I still came out with a box full of interesting treasures for $10. Here’s a picture of one of the treasures:
I didn’t even know this treasure was in the box of stuff, which is pictured here:
I had found a really large box of papers and old travel brochures, and basically just threw anything that seemed remotely interesting into a smaller shoebox. I ended up finding a bunch of greeting cards in the envelopes they were sent in, so that was pretty cool–I can add them to the big lot of used cards I’m going to list on eBay. I also found lots and lots of travel ephemera and TONS of letters. It was really interesting to go through, but also very sad.
The second sale was full of a bunch of stuff, but nothing too incredible. I got a Knickerbocker bear whose music box doesn’t work, some old children’s books, and a bunch of vintage napkins and plates. Look how cute:
The last sale was sad, but I did find a Soul Hits of 1967 CD, and I can’t stop listening to this song in my car. One of the best ever. The CD also contains many other great Motown hits. The other thing I got was this weird milk glass mug for fifty cents:
I can’t think of anything else that happened that we’re leaving out. Sales have been pretty dud-y lately! Hope that changes this coming weekend!