Dig This Treasure!

I had a really epic weekend of estate sales a few weeks back.  My purchases don’t really attest to that, but I FOR SURE visited some of the gnarliest houses ever.  This entry will be split into two parts because I took a million photos.  Keep an eye out for part two soon, in which Zach bolts from a house as soon as we enter it.

The first day of sales began pretty normally.  I visited a house that was full of treasures, lots of vintage military items and nice Christmas items.  I was the first one to the sale, although it was the second day.  I sat in my car for awhile and enjoyed the first snow of the season. 

Damn right I’m listening to Detroit’s Christmas station, WNIC.  Also, I should note, this was pre-Thanksgiving.  GET OUT OF THE WAY THANKSGIVING.

The problem with this sale was that everything was super overpriced.  It was so bad that people were audibly complaining. The guy running the sale finally shouted out, “OK! IGNORE THE PRICE TAGS.  JUST ASK ME AND I’LL TELL YOU THE PRICE.”  This created a new problem, which was a house full of people asking one dude prices for everything.  It was chaos.

This same guy was also straight up yelling at his employees, which was very uncomfortable.  They couldn’t do anything right.  One grandma-looking lady said to me, “All he does is yell at me.”  And I said, “I see that.”  It was a cry for help.  I told her to blink once if she needed me to secretly evacuate her from the property.

I didn’t buy much, although I did want this authentic Purple Heart from WWII.  Turns out though, these are actually fairly easy to come by, and sell for about $100 on ebay.  Also, I just realized how awful that sounds.  These aren’t “fairly easy to come by” for the people receiving them initially, just for terrible people who buy and resell them on ebay.

I did end up buying this book about booby traps.  I paid $5 and later sold it for $40 on ebay.  I know, I know, I JUST mentioned terrible people who resell.  I am one of them, just not when it comes to war medals.

I also bought some utensils from WWI.  I paid $10 for the set and sold them on ebay for $35.

So after this sale, I headed to one in my own neighborhood.  I had heard from other neighbors that the house was a total disaster, but I figured I had already seen worse.

From the outside, things looked pretty normal.

What is so sad about the photos I am about to post is that this house was super super nice underneath all the filth.  The layout was really cool and everything looked retro, but not tacky retro.  It would be a nice home for a vintage-loving family. 

I actually love a good hoarder sale.  Our best sale ever was technically a hoarder sale. The problem here though was that this house was LITERALLY full of garbage.  I do not mean that I personally classified the items inside as useless or meaningless.  What I mean is that nearly everything I saw was meant to be thrown away.  For example, there were tons of empty food containers.  TWICE I found an empty pizza box inside of a garbage bag.

It was so bizarre.  I cannot believe the people running this sale agreed to open up.  I didn’t see anyone buying anything.  It was basically gawkers watching a car crash.

That porn was maybe the one viable purchase in the house.  Still, it sat unclaimed. 

It was so bad that the deemed “garbage” had to be labeled.

There was one gem that came out of this sale, which was the following exchange I overheard:

Neighbor: Didn’t this house have a fire a few years back?

Guy running the sale: Yeah, a big one.  Everything burned up.

Neighbor: Oh really?

Guy running the sale: Yep. All the real good old stuff, it done burned right up.  Nice antiques and stuff.  Burned it all right up.

OH OK COOL.  WHY ARE WE HERE?!  That is what I was screaming in my head.

What I didn’t know at the time of this sale was that things can actually get MUCH MUCH worse.  The next day, Zach and I would visit a sale so horrendous that Zach actually walked out upon seeing the living room.  Stay tuned for part two!

-Erin

All that glitters isn’t gold, and apparently all that is purple isn’t actually, well, purple.  The saga of my purple insulators sure has been a roller coaster ride–one that I am sad I ever had to ride on.

I had been in communication with the buyer of my insulators as soon as I sold them.  He was super nice and I actually ended up sending him some other common insulators I had laying around.  I checked in with him to make sure the package arrived safely and that he signed for it and blah blah.  Then, I heard nothing.

A week passed and I felt comfortable spending the profit I made from this sale.  I hadn’t heard anything to the contrary, so I figured the buyer must be happy with his new purple glass buddies. 

And then I got the following ebay message:

I immediately felt ill.  I knew this wasn’t good.  F#$K F#$K F#$K.  I was at my parents’ house when this happened and I seriously felt like I got punched in the stomach.  It was that bad.  I couldn’t breathe.

Because $425 is a lot of money, and I had just gone on a Christmas shopping spree :(

Andy was actually really nice when I finally spoke to him on the phone.  I wanted to hate him.  And I wanted to blame him for this whole ordeal or try and prove somehow that he was the one scamming me.  I knew though that wasn’t true.

I should have realized something was up, because purple insulators are REALLY rare.  For me to find THREE of them all together was like lightning striking me not once, not twice, but, yes, three times.

What I can blame Andy for was the fact that he had a hunch these insulators were irradiated.  He kept saying on the phone that he was “taking a gamble” on them.  To me, if you are knowingly taking a risk on something, then you are assuming some responsibility for the fallout.  I felt as though Andy should’ve tipped me off that these might be tampered with.  I could have pulled down the listing and done some investigating.  Like my previous post, I did get tipped off by another ebay member, but he seemed really jackass-y about it.  I didn’t believe him.

I guess I should have.

Anyway, Andy told me not to panic quite yet, as he still had to blacklight test the insulators.  Irradiated insulators don’t glow under a blacklight because the xrays used to irradiate them have messed up the manganese composition of the glass (or something like this…you get the idea.)  Andy also told me that I could refund him little by little if needed–that he wouldn’t be filing any claims with paypal or ebay. 

While waiting for Andy to acquire a blacklight to test the insulators, I went ahead and sent photos to several insulator experts at the NIA (National Insulator Association).  The decision was unanimous.  Literally 6 different insulator experts (who knew the world had so many) said my insulators were irradiated.

I wanted to write back Dwayne Anthony and be like, “Damn. What a harsh and cruel blow you have delivered to me D.A.  Can I call you D.A.?"  Instead, I was all, "Bummer. Thanks.”

What is amazing about the NIA is that its Authentication & Classification Advisor, named Paul, offered to take up a collection among its members to help me cover my financial loss in buying these insulators originally. He was really impressed that I actually cared whether my insulators were irradiated and that I was refunding the ebay buyer.

I explained to Paul that only $4 was spent on the insulators when my parents originally bought them, so I wasn’t really out anything (EXCEPT MY AMAZING EBAY PROFIT, but I digress…)

Seriously, how nice is that?  Insulator people might be the most boring collectors of all time, but they sure are nice as hell.

Ok so, let’s wind this up.  The blacklight test went about as sh*tty as could be expected.  My insulators didn’t glow.  Andy sent me some photos:

That’s one of his legit purple insulators.

Here is one of my insulators:

WHOMP WHOMP.  You win this round Andy.

And in the end, I still kinda won.  Andy didn’t make me give him a full refund, just a partial one.  He said because it is Christmas, and because, like he said, he was “taking a gamble."  I think that is fair.

So still keep your eyes out for purple insulators everyone.  But before you buy them, turn your eyes into blacklights and look at the insulators REAL close.  Happy hunting!

-Erin

A few weeks ago, there was an estate sale in my neighborhood.  It wasn’t on estatesales.net but luckily a friend of mine spotted it and told me.  I am glad she did because the home was that of a former antiques dealer.  Everything in the house was high quality, and even better, there was tons of it. 

As you can see, it was a lot of paper stuff.  I had Everett with me so it was pretty much impossible to look through any of this.  I decided to come back the next day with Sarah.  Before I left though, I struck up a conversation with the women running the sale.  They seemed really nice and kept repeating that they were willing to make good deals.  Nearly everything in the house still had price tags on it from the woman’s antique booth.  The ladies running the sale were her daughters and said they would NOT be charging what the stickers said.  Ok great, I LOVE DEALS.

So Sarah and I come back the next day and it seemed like Sarah was in hogs’ heaven.  One back room of this house was completely filled with old postcards. 

The day before, one of the women running the sale said that a giant box of postcards would be about $60, which she then explained was about a penny a piece per card.  I told Sarah that if she bought a bunch of cards, she would certainly get a good deal.

I found two postcards for myself and let Sarah have the rest.  These Santas usually sell pretty well on ebay.

In the garage there was a ton more paper.  All of it was old brochures, programs, ticket stubs–all your basic ephemera.  I started digging.

I found a plastic sleeve full of old railroad stuff and grabbed it on a whim.  I haven’t sold any train stuff on ebay before, but it seems like something a lot of people are geeky about.

It was really hot outside so I peaced out and went to meet back up with Sarah.  I could tell she was losing steam.  The house had no air and the amount of stuff to look through was getting burdensome.

Not to mention that something else was becoming very clear–these women were totally lying about their “deals."  There would be NO DEALS.  Something had happened since the previous day that made these ladies less than thrilled about parting with their mom’s stuff.  Fair enough.  It’s tough to do.  That said, from our perspective, this was very annoying. 

Sarah’s loss of joy over this sale was pretty clear:

That’s her "Let’s GTFO of here face.”

Postcards were now “individually priced” and some were $12 each.  TWELVE DOLLARS.  EACH.  Sarah had a stack of postcards about 3 inches deep and they wanted to charge her $75.  $75, which they explained, was actually a VERY good deal.  No.

After going back and forth for awhile on prices, I was able to get a small pile of stuff for $17.  It included that train stuff and Santa postcards above, as well as the following:

Don’t old Halloween decorations sell?  These guys are in okay shape and pretty cool looking.

And this horrible card:

No seriously, WTF.  This card isn’t even that old!  JFC.

The best score I got (which should make me not complain so much about the prices at this sale) was an old railroad schedule from the 1890s.  It sold for $100 on ebay last week, which was a huge shock.  It was hovering around $20 and then shot up in the last minute.  So awesome.

Poor Sarah only got some overpriced postcards, although she didn’t end up paying $75.  I think she paid like $25.  Hopefully one of them is made of gold!

Oh and P.S. I went back to this sale for a third time with Zach.  I thought maybe on the last day these women would have a change of heart and really price to sell.  (They didn’t.)  I found this Indian doll that I had a sneaking suspicion was an Armand Marseille.  I had seen a really similar doll at another estate sale in mint condition that was AM and was priced $200.  This one was far from mint but I got it for a mere $5.  It sold on ebay for $36!

Cute huh? If it’s hair hadn’t fallen off, I would have kept it!  Anyway, keep an eye out for these because they are Armand Marseille but are not marked! 

Ok and here is totally-over-it Sarah again.  Just because.

-Erin

On Friday, Sarah had an important work meeting (apparently more important than treasure hunting), so I headed out alone.  There was a sale in Oak Park that looked AMAZING.  From the online photos, I could tell that the house was packed.  Everything looked kind of “tribal,” which either meant that the sale was of an extensive world traveler or of someone who shopped at Pier One. 

This guy above was $40.  I should have bought him.  He kind of looked like one of those apple face dolls we’ve unfortunately come across in the past, except he was way cute and not that gross.

How cool is that giant sun?  Seriously, it was amazing.  I have no room for it in my house, otherwise I would have bought it for sure.

Here’s that tiny dude from the Twin Peaks Black Lodge, except he is wearing his day clothes:

Garmonbozia, AMIRITE?

This sale was lots of fun because, as I mentioned, it was packed.  It was also stressful though because there were so many people and very little space to move around.  I was also on a mission to buy stuff to resell, so I was constantly trying to look stuff up on ebay on my phone.  This was problematic because I kept stopping and kept ending up in the way.  I knew there were valuable items here, I just needed to figure out the best ones to buy.

At one point in the sale, I said to one of the men working, “Wow, this person sure was a world traveler!"  To that, the man replied that in fact the owner was not.  He had simply bought all of these things at estate sales.  This made me kind of sad at first, but then I realized that our own home gives off the same impression.  We have items from all over the world, and barely travel.  All of the things in our house make me so happy and make me feel cool and cultured, so who cares really if we don’t travel much!

What did make me sad though was the basement of this sale!  It was like that Grey Gardens house we visited all over again!

Yikes.

Ok, so I bought 4 things at this sale.  The best two purchases were framed Carol Jablonsky prints.  These regularly sell on ebay for over $100.  I paid $15 each.  They already have bids and so far I have more than doubled my money.  Very cool!  These are so cute so I am glad I was able to list them for people who collect her art.

I got my dad this Tigers pennant for $1!  I don’t know why so cheap but I was thrilled.

Ok so my last purchase was maybe a bad one.  I bought this old wooden horse with some sort of inlayed shell or bone.  It was only $20 and I liked enough that if it didn’t sell on ebay, I would keep it.  The thing looks really collectible to me.

When I did some research though, I started to think that this is a tourist piece and similar objects like it are mass produced in India.  Whomp whomp.  If anyone has info, let me know.  They sell for all sorts of amounts on ebay, from as low as $15 to as high as $300, so I have no clue what the deal is with this thing!

-Erin