Sarah showed up to my house mega early on Friday because there was a sale in Trenton that looked BALLER. It was packed to the brim, possibly past the brim. And everything looked collectible and old.
This sale was run by our now favorite company, which will remain nameless. They always have great full houses and are always willing to be fair about pricing. I used to be kind of intimidated of these ladies, but turns out you just have to ask nicely and they will work with you on price.
When we showed up to the sale, there was a line. Sarah and I are super impatient and generally try to avoid estate sale lines at all costs. After waiting in line for about 20 minutes, Sarah suggested we leave and come back later, but I insisted we had already come too far.
Here we are waiting for our turn to enter:
Our hair in this pic looks like we are those Garbage Pail Kids.
We finally got in the sale and it was indeed packed full, of both people and stuff. There was so much to look at! I immediately grabbed this old bisque Arranbee doll. I recognized it as a “Dream Baby” doll because in the past I had unwittingly bought one in a lot of doll parts and sold it for quite a bit.
I have this doll up on ebay now, but I am secretly bummed about it. I kind of want to keep it! I’m not sure what my attachment is to this doll, but I think it has something to do with how TRULY ADORABLE it looks when you take off that gross dress:
Look at that weird little body. It makes the doll look like a dumb little idiot, which I find kind of endearing.
I can’t remember what else I bought at this sale, except for a little plastic King Kong from the 50s or 60s. I also got some turkey salt and pepper shakers which I had to throw away because I washed them and all the paint came off :(
The next sale was in Troy and took place in a basement. This person was certainly a collector, and everything was sorted neatly among their various interests. There was a lot of Shirley Temple stuff, and a lot of glassware.
At this sale I got a Ted Williams baseball bat (sold in Sears stores in the 1950s) and this little metal Santa. He is skiing! I got this guy for Zach because it combines two of his favorite things: old metal soldiers and Christmas.
Look! Zach already had some fellow skiers for Santa to join up with.
I think Sarah hated this sale because they were selling Garfield pins for $1 each and she wanted a million of them. They refused to give her any sort of discount even though pins are universally a 25 cent item.
The last sale was in Warren and it was weird. Everything upstairs was newer ceramic and looked very Hallmark-y. The basement though had a bunch of old dolls. Clearly, as of late, Sarah and I are on a doll kick. We weren’t the only ones though…down in the basement there was this lady walking around talking to each and every doll she picked up. She would grab one and say, “Oh hello! You look very friendly. Looks like someone liked you very much! Oh look at you poor thing, you have no hair!” and on and on…
This lady was also some sort of self-defined doll expert because anytime I would go remotely near a doll she would interrupt me and say, “OH I didn’t see that one. Let me see that” and then she would tell me all about it. This was helpful in some ways, but it also seemed very clear that she might be making everything up. At one point, she grabbed a broken doll and said, “Oh my, this poor doll was in the war and was injured.” And then she picked up a doll that someone had painted black and said, “And you are black now! Someone wanted you to be black! But you aren’t supposed to be black!” I almost died.
Here she is, dollin’ it up:
This will be me in about 20 years, I guarantee it.
I bought two dolls at this sale, each for $5. One has the coolest eyes of all time and is a Bye-Lo Baby, which are apparently collectible.
-Erin
Update from Sarah: The first sale was so incredible–I knew as soon as I stepped foot in the house that I was going to find some extreme treasures. There were bags and bags of Victorian (and later) postcards at the front desk, and I immediately started looking through those and found a stack that I wanted. It was so crowded at this sale that I got pretty irritated with people pretty quickly. If you were looking at items on the floor, people would crowd you so much that eventually their butt would be right in your face. Not a recipe for a fun time.
Anyway, the house was a tri-level and on every floor and in every room, there were tons of office boxes (the sort with handles and lids) filled with various items. When I went into the bottom floor, I spotted a box with a few random things inside, but when I moved some of it aside, I found a huge stack of 1930s/1940s greeting cards! Here’s an up-close picture of some of the best ones:
They’re up on eBay now, if you happen to be interested in that sort of thing.
The best, though, was when I got upstairs–there was one room that was just FILLED with office boxes overstuffed with ephemera. I noticed right away that many of the boxes had greeting cards–and they were 1940s through 1960s era, for the most part, which is my most ultimate jam. I just started gathering them and shoving them in one box that was already overflowing with cards. The woman who owns the company running this sale knows us and knows that I collect cards, so she said, “I’m gonna make a judgement call–$50 for the whole box.” I was prepared to pay way more than that, so I was thrilled and agreed. She said, “Good. I figured you wouldn’t bitch.”
Anyway, I’m going to have to do a separate entry about these cards because they ended up being SO AWESOME. This sale takes the cake in terms of the best huge amount of GOOD greeting cards I’ve come home with. Can you tell I’m excited? I don’t know why I didn’t take a picture of them before I sorted them, but here is a picture of some of them, post-sort:
I bought lots of other stuff at this sale, but nothing quite as good as this lot.
Erin actually forgot about one other sale we hit up downriver–I actually forgot too, until I saw this picture:
That sale was full of garbage. End of story.
The rest of the day was sort of uneventful in comparison to the first sale. I didn’t find anything crazy awesome, but I did buy a lot of buttons (Peanuts, mainly, NOT Garfield), even though that lady was a jerk about the prices. At the last sale, I bought some records and three-headed doll, after Erin and the crazy doll lady convinced me that it was a good buy. I forgot to take a picture of mine but it’s identical to this, except without any hair or clothes. The faces it makes are pretty amazing–especially the crying face:
The crazy doll lady told me it was “in the doll books” and worth something like $500. I asked her why she didn’t buy it then, and she said it was because she didn’t realize it had three faces when she first saw it. That one above sold for $35 on eBay, which is good, but obviously she was full of sh*t.