Two Fridays back, the sale listings looked awful, so Sarah and I contemplated staying home. We eventually decided to suck it up though and find some garage sales. You all remember how entertaining that was last time…
Before the garage sale-ing, however, we did stop at one estate sale that looked kind of not-horrible. It turned out to be, well, horrible.
Everything was really Hallmark-y, but like the dollar store version of Hallmark stuff.
It was like the Boyd’s bears strolled up into town and took this home by force. Except that it wasn’t really the Boyd’s bears, but instead their creepy backwoods cousins who you don’t normally invite over for Thanksgiving dinner.
To be fair, I did buy two Waechtersbach mugs to go with my Christmas set. They were 50 cents each which is a steal.
We hightailed it out of there and, while driving, saw this sign:
A 4 day vintage market?! That is EXACTLY what we need! What sounds better than some sort of market filled with old treasures that probably occurs only once a year and is therefore filled with only the finest of goods?!
When we followed the signs to the “vintage market” we found more signs (the ones you see above). Here, let me zoom in more:
Well, sh*t. Turns out, our “vintage market” was the name of a party store and they had some MAD DEALS on ribs. When I realized what was happening, Sarah refused to believe it. She was so heartbroken. She tried to convince me that these were different signs than the original, but there was no denying the truth:
So after this huge failure, things were looking bad. We started driving in a neighborhood after we saw a garage sale sign, and came upon this:
A big ol’ trash heap, and a metaphor for how our day was going.
But then things started to turn around. We rolled up to one garage sale and it looked really good! It was like our own private “vintage market” tucked away in this grandma’s garage.
There was a huge table filled with old, really collectible pottery. The first thing I saw was that she had a Van Briggle vase. I was familiar with the brand because of Antiques Roadshow and knew that some pieces sold for thousands. It turns out that the pottery actually belonged to the old woman’s friend, who proceeded to tell Sarah and I all about his pottery collecting.
The Van Briggle piece he had marked $50, which was too risky for me to buy. I looked up a few similar pieces on ebay and they all sold for around $100. After last week’s ebay disasters though, I wanted to take a less expensive risk. I decided to buy three pieces of Roseville Mostique pottery for $5 each. Very reasonable.
We’ve seen Roseville pottery a lot at estate sales, and I’m not a huge fan of it. I know it is really collectible though, so I figured I could flip this set pretty easily.
And, I did!
The pottery guy at this garage sale even gave me this McCoy cookie jar for free! I had been looking at it and he decided I must take it home. Ok!
So our luck was definitely changing! It even continued when we visited a nearby thrift store. Thrift stores are something Sarah and I barely dabble in, although we have many blog friends who do their picking exclusively at these places. Maybe we should go more often, because there are certainly great deals to be had! You might as well call me Macklemore because I loved this thrift shop so much.
I got a whole garbage bag full of baby clothes for $30. Some still had the tags on them! And there was a bunch of Ralph Lauren stuff in there. (Also, can you tell I’m ready to pop? My face looks like a marshmallow.)
So cute.
I think Sarah bought these shoes:
Or maybe she didn’t. I can’t remember.
-Erin
Update from Sarah: I definitely bought those shoes for my next trip clubbin’. They are the perfect mix of sexy and schoolgirl. Ok, I’m lying. I did end up finding a nice lightweight cotton Land’s End cardigan and some books at the thrift shop, but that’s about it. Oh and this t-shirt for Baby Everett.
Erin and Zach LOVE cute little t-shirts with sayings on them like this, so be sure to send all your hand-me-downs their way.
The first estate sale was such a nightmare. It was one of those sales where you’re looking around for ANYTHING you might possibly want, and coming up shorthanded. For example, I actually considered buying this.
Then I saw it was marked $20.
The garage sale was the surprise of the day–Erin passed on the Van Briggle vase but I thought about it for a while and remembered how valuable Arts & Crafts stuff can be, so I asked if he would go lower than $50. The lowest he would go was $45, so I took the chance. It was a really beautiful piece, even though I don’t even really care about pottery!
I looked it up and ones like it seemed to sell for $100-150. So I listed it at $155 and let people make offers. After a couple of days, someone swooped in and the rest is history!
The only thing that Erin forgot to mention is that the guy selling the pottery drove and parked THIS THING in front of the house!
Overall, it was a very strange sale.