Dig This Treasure!

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

On Saturday night, Zach and I ventured out with Timmy and my sister, Lindsay.  Our plan was to attend our favorite honey hole–the Plymouth auction.  When we showed up though, things looked less than appealing:

It was pretty much all militaria, which none of us collect or know anything about.  Plus, military collectibles always sell for high prices, whether they are really worth it or not.  

There were also the usual garbage-y items, like this hilarious dinner tray:

There were a few cool items at the auction, but none worth sticking around for.  I’ll share them here though:

This soap box derby trophy from the 1950s was so cool and would look neat in our house.  We don’t have much room though, and I have no real attachment to soap box derbies.  

I bet this Captain Kangaroo tent would be an easy resell on ebay.  I figured it would sell for a high price though at the auction because it is so darn cute. 

Have you ever seen a Teddy bear with sleepy eyes?  I haven’t!  

It was in rough shape though, which makes sense because I think it was crazy old.

So we left the auction before it even started and decided to get dinner instead.  My sister ordered this meat and potato sandwich that was bigger than Everett’s head:

While at dinner, my dad remembered that there was another auction this night in Redford, only a few miles away.  It was being held at a comic book shop, but the auction apparently had other items too.  We raced over there.

I was shocked at how empty the place was!  And how amazing the items looked!  There was a mix of old Detroit Tigers items, comics, pin-up girl memorabilia, Confederate money, and photographs.  

What was nice was that the store itself was still open, so you could shop all of their merchandise while watching the auction.  Zach ended up buying a bunch of records.

Timmy ended up buying a whole boatload of Detroit Tigers items.  Everything was selling for less than $20, so this auction was true heaven.  Total, my dad spent less than $100 and had a whole armful of items to show for it.  

Here he is watching the auction and wearing a camouflage shirt.  I don’t know when my dad started wearing camouflage, but it is certainly a recent development. He’s not a hunter, but maybe this is a new Fall fashion trend?

Anyway, here are some things Timmy bought:

My sister by far got the best item of the night.  It was this little animal book with a bunch of fold out pieces inside.  It is seriously adorable.

I didn’t end up buying anything, even though they did have this giant cardboard cutout of me there:

I’m looking good, I know.

-Erin

While I’m incapacitated, there’s a whole lot of stuff I want to catch up on writing about. The first is something I discovered yesterday! At that folk art sale, I had purchased a big slide case filled with old stereo slides from the 1950s. It was marked $65 but that awesome lady sold it to me for $20. 

I started sorting through the slides yesterday afternoon, since it’s easy to do that while you’re laying on a couch. Most of the slides were family pictures of holidays and vacations, but toward the end of my sorting, I found this box: 

Unlike Erin (thanks to Timmy), I know nothing about sports or the Detroit Tigers, but thought this sounded promising. After a little digging, I discovered that Denny McLain was a pitcher for the Tigers in the 1960s, and is famous for winning 30 games in a season. Now he’s famous for a scandal involving gambling and broken toes. Oh the irony. I guess Denny and I have more in common than I thought.

Anyway, the slides in that Kodak box are of that winning/record setting game in 1968, and the pictures were taken very close to the field. 

Pretty stinkin’ cool! Anyway, if you’re a fan of the Tigers, they’re up on eBay right now! 

-Sarah

Last Friday night, I drove out to my parents’ house (about an hour away) to stay overnight and attend the Utica Antiques Market the next morning.  I’ve been visiting this market since I was a teenager, and Timmy has taught me that it’s important to get there right when the place opens.  [For new readers, here is pretty much all you need to know about Timmy, and that time he was on Cash & Cari.]

So Timmy, my sister Lindsay, and I got to the market bright and early, and it really felt like the world was our oyster.  

Here is Lindsay scoping out the goods:

See those tiny fuzzy chicks in the bottom left corner of that case above?  I loved them.  But what are you supposed to do with a giant box of tiny fuzzy chicks?

Oh here’s a thing:

And another thing:

All jokes aside, this market had some GREAT stuff.  And the prices were really reasonable.  I zeroed in first on a booth that had a bunch of cast iron banks and molds. We all know about my love affair (and money-making extravaganza) with old chocolate molds.

The heavy mold with the two babies was really the best, but it was priced around $150. I stared at it for a good long while though.  And see that little cast iron pig bank at the top of the photo?  More on him later.

We moved through the show for a good 45 minutes or so, and I was yet to buy anything.  That’s not to say I didn’t see lots of potential purchases.

Like this creature:

He was priced at $100 and carved out of solid wood.  I WANTED HIM SO BAD.  But alas, where am I going to put a giant wooden monster?  Probably right next to a box of tiny fuzzy chicks.

There’s Timmy and one of his “peers.”  They are probably reminiscing about the good old days.

I like to imagine that these Santas are all drowning in quicksand.  Don’t they look distressed?

I probably should have bought this for llama-obsessed Sarah.  Also, LOOK AT THAT TINY HEAD STRAPPED ON!  I died laughing at this for a good 5 minutes.

Ok ok, so what did I buy?  My first purchase was a Skookum doll.  You might remember that I already own one Skookum doll, purchased last Christmas in Holly, MI.

The little one is my new guy, and the larger one was the one I already had.  I paid a mere $18 for the new one:

I also went back to that booth with the cast iron stuff and bought a cast iron pig bank.  I debated between the pig shown in the photo earlier, and the one I eventually bought.  This was a little steep at $30, but he’s just too cute.  And, he is full of old coins, so maybe there is a good one in there!  I have yet to open him and check.

And my last purchase was another lead figurine for Zach.  This time not a soldier, but a cool-looking Indian.  I paid $10, and it was originally marked $15.  In an ideal world, this would only be $5.

Timmy bought a Little League bobblehead to go with the rest of his collection.  He hemmed and hawed over this purchase for a good hour.  It was $35, which is kind of high for a later bobblehead (1970s?), and especially one that doesn’t have pro team markings.  He negotiated down to $25.  Here it is in the middle of some of his other nodders:

Tim seemed kind of bummed that he might have overpaid for the nodder, when all of a sudden he found this Tigers pin for $5!  What a steal!

And what did Lindsay find?  I know she bought a rhino statue (she is a zookeeper) and a ceramic pumpkin.  Her best finds by far though were these little charms:

That man is giving some sassy face!

-Erin

Update: So Sarah just texted me with the following:

I’m still skeptical that that carved thing is an alligator.  Or a crocodile even.  It seems like a pretty obvious, run-of-the-mill land monster to me.

After my strikeout the day before, Zach and I decided to stop by a nearby estate sale last Sunday after we went out for breakfast.  The pictures of the sale looked good, but when we arrived, the signs told us that the sale was in the basement only.  I figured that this meant there wouldn’t be very much for sale, and since we were there on the last day, that everything would be picked over.  

The sale was in fact small, but there was still a lot to look at.  Because of the confined space, I didn’t take any photos.  Here are our great finds though:

I found two giant foam fingers (Tigers and Red Wings) for my dad.  These aren’t particularly valuable, but they make great display pieces in a collection.  In time, these will look “vintage” and will be a nice nostalgic reminder of going to the games.

You can also see there are two pieces of Brigg Stadium memorabilia.  Zach noticed these in a display case at the sale, and I completely overlooked them.  They were already priced reasonably, but the seller said he would reduce the prices even more because it was the last day of the sale.

My dad was so happy about the pin on the left.  He said it is really rare, and he doesn’t even have one in his collection (he has a HUGE collection of Brigg Stadium stuff).  The item on the right is a pen topper, which isn’t as rare, but still very cool.  

I found this great lead alligator:

He is currently living on our kitchen windowsill, guarding my bisque chickens.

So when we went to check out, Zach and I realized that it was a cash only sale.  The guy running it told us $20 for everything in our pile and we started counting our money.  We had $14.  I was about to ask the guy what I should take out of the pile when he said, “Good enough. It’s all yours.”  How nice is that?!  We were thrilled.

And then, as we are about to leave, the seller guy says, “Oh hey, have fun hunting for TREASURE this summer.”  First off, I have never seen this guy before, so I don’t know how he knows I go to estate sales in the summer (or ever).  This could have been my very first estate sale for all he knew.  Second, he used the word “treasure!”  This leads me to believe he is a secret reader of this blog, which is AWESOME if true.  

So hey mystery man, if you are in fact reading this blog…HELLO!  And thanks for the mega deals!

-Erin 

The Plymouth auction hadn’t been in action since before the holidays, and the crowd last Saturday showed just how excited everyone was for its return.

Zach, Timmy, my sister Lindsay, and I got there super early and snagged some third row seats.  The people in front of us had a clever way of saving their seats:

There were not enough chairs in the place to accommodate the crowd, and I am pretty sure there wasn’t enough oxygen either.  It was hot and stuffy, and very very loud.  The chaos was clearly annoying the auctioneer, and he would repeatedly yell for people to quiet down or to move away from the front tables.  Most of the time I had no clue what was being auction off, and in deja vu of last week, kept asking my sister.  She usually had no clue either.

For the most part, everything was garbage.  Actually, I shouldn’t say “for the most part,” I should say for the WHOLE PART everything was garbage.  We stuck around though.  Even if we didn’t buy anything, this auction is always entertaining.  In fact, our favorite “regular” was mincing about, wearing his pajamas and talking in a volume similar to when your ears are completely plugged up.  I think he ended up buying a box of markers or something.  

Zach ended up with some cool woodblock prints that he has already framed and hung up in our bedroom.  These were a steal at $5 for the whole lot.  No one else even bid against him.

He also bought this old “camel saddle stool” which I am not going to pretend I know anything about.  From what Zach has said, these stools are modeled after actual camel saddles, and were popular in home decor during the 50s and 60s.  Zach set a limit of $30 on this item, and luckily he won it for $27.50.  

It is all leather on top, which we have since cleaned and polished.  The stool is now being used as a footrest in our living room.  To be honest, I was skeptical of this purchase, but now that it is clean and has a nice spot in our house, I am on board.

Timmy bought some diecast toy car that was sold during the 2003 All-Star Game.  He actually worked this particular All-Star Game for the Detroit Tigers, and wanted the car in commemoration.  It came with a World Series car, which he is going to sell on ebay.  

Lindsay ended up with 2 giant boxes full of Beanie Babies and Beanie Buddies.  If I had known she wanted Beanie Babies, I definitely have some to offer.  Remember this?

At some point, everyone was ready to get the hell out of there…except me.  I had been holding out all night for one item, and I was NOT going to leave without it.  FINALLY, after being at the auction for almost 3 hours, and watching people pay $9 for scissors, my item came up.  And I won!  Here’s what I got for a mere $5:

A whole bunch of ornaments that look like Chicken McNuggets!  If you recall, I had my first ever McNugget a few weeks ago.  I can’t say I am a huge fan of real nuggets, but these ornaments are the cutest!

So overall, a fun night.  Not the most lucrative or unique treasures, but treasures nonetheless!

-Erin

So remember that time I got lured to an “estate sale” and instead ended up at a commune where they were spray-painting indoors?  I should have learned my lesson then about going off the grid, but apparently I didn’t.

I’ve been meaning to write about this insane adventure for awhile now, but haven’t had the chance.  So now, submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this story, “The Tale of the Bone Collector.” [Throws magic dust into the fire.]

P.S. If you don’t get that Midnight Society joke, get outta here (or google it).

Ok, so a few months ago, I was driving through Redford and noticed this weird little hut on the side of the road.  It was small, and junky, and said “Antiques.”  Perfect! I love antiques!

This man greeted me, and he seemed nice enough.  A little strange but nice.  As I chatted with him more though, I got that feeling in my stomach that Oprah used to talk about–the one where you are supposed to drop whatever you are doing and run.  At one point, the man said, “Where do you live?”  And I told him “Livonia.”  And then he said, “No no, what’s your address?”

My address?  Hmm, this man didn’t appear to work for the post office, so the request was questionable to say the least.  I laughed the question off, and went inside to look at the “antiques.”

Things were weirder inside.  And dirty.  Like really super crazy dirty.

The floor for all I know was 2 feet below me.  I was walking on compounded debris. And there were bones everywhere.  I am not making this up.  Here is a bucket of bones.

Which is cool.  I like bones.  I like taxidermy.  In this context though, things felt real spooky.

Ok, and see that muscle man photo in the ziploc?  Here, I’ll zoom in:

That muscle man runs the place.  I forget his name, but here he is now:

Well, the back of him anyway.  This guy told me he was 88, but he didn’t look a day past 75.  I liked him.  He was nice.  A little messy, but nice.  I started asking him about his place, and about antiques.  And he told me about when he was a muscle man.  Things were good, 15 minutes passed.

Then he pulled out this binder, and told me he was going to show me something.  Something he doesn’t show many people.  I had that Oprah run-for-your-life feeling again, but I stayed.  What if he wanted to show me (and give me) a bunch of gold bars?  Or maybe he had photographic evidence of UFOs or solid proof of a JFK assassination conspiracy.  I had to know what was in the binder.

So what was in the binder?  See for yourself:

Alright…baseball pics.  Cool…

Look at the pen writing on the leg of that player.  Every photo had commentary like this.

If you can’t read that pen writing, it says, “THIS IS SAD FOR BASEBALL.  IF YOU ARE A TEAM, DRESS LIKE A TEAM,” and, “IS THIS WHAT BASEBALL IS COMING TOO?  PAJAMAS?”  And there are arrows pointing to all of the players ankles.  

As it turns out, this man is single-handedly on a crusade against the length of modern-day baseball pants.  And I think he has a point here.  Those pants look sloppy!

He explained to me that he collects this binder of photos, writes his commentary on them, and then mails an example every month to Mike Ilitch, the owner of the Detroit Tigers.  He then told me that he hasn’t heard back from Ilitch, so he’s been sending examples to the newspapers and local TV news stations.  

I didn’t really know what to tell him except to keep up his crusade and that he was, “Fighting the good fight,” which I really think he is.  Pull up your pants you dummies!

I didn’t buy any antiques, but I did leave with an asthma attack, and with a new realization that you really can collect anything.  Sarah collects gross porcelain, and I collect nice porcelain, and this man, well, he collects an arsenal of scribbled on baseball pics.

-Erin

I’m almost scared to write again about the Plymouth auction that Zach and I frequent on Saturdays.  I don’t want all of you marching up in there and bidding on my goods.  So far, this place has been like my own personal ATM machine, only it is linked to someone else’s bank account.  Buying and reselling from this auction has seriously been a goldmine.  Last Saturday was no different.

When we arrived at the auction, it was so packed.  The seats were all taken and you could barely stand anywhere without having to bear hug someone next to you.  We decided to stay though because the items looked pretty good.

My first bid was on this illustration from 1968, which I bought for Timmy because it was Tigers and World Series related.  This is original art, not a copy, although probably not worth a TON of money.  It was just too cool to pass up.

Zach won an amazing cast iron bank for $17, when others go for upwards of $150 on ebay.  It is really neat and living on our bookshelf.

I then won the quilt squares that were mentioned here on the blog a few days ago.  I panicked that I had made a bad buy on these ($20) but they already have bids over that on ebay, so I am relieved.  

At this point, I noticed an old charm bracelet in one of the display cases at the front.  It was LOADED with charms, and when I looked closely, most of them were marked as sterling silver.  The rest were also silver but not as pure (marked 800).  My sister started me a vintage charm bracelet a few years ago, and I learned from her that sterling silver charms alone can sell for $20-50 each!  Sometimes more.  A whole bracelet full of them had to be super valuable.

I told Zach that I wanted to stick around for this bracelet, and so we waited and waited and waited.  During that time, people bid crazy amounts on crazy items.  $30 for a Superhero poster that you could get at Toys R Us, $50 on an old stereo receiver that no one knew if it even worked.  It is seriously unpredictable what people will pay for things.

I told Zach that my limit for the charm bracelet was $100.  I was hoping I would only have to spend about $50.  Finally, it came up on the auction block.  The charm bracelet was placed in a lot with a bunch of other bracelets, so I assumed that would kick the price up pretty high.  But then the auction started at $5 and it was only me and one other woman bidding!  When the price got to $18, the lady backed out.  EIGHTEEN DOLLARS.  

I went up to collect my bracelet lot and was shocked to see that not only had I just won the charm bracelet, but THREE other vintage sterling silver bracelets.

I will probably scrap these 3, which should pay for my $18 investment.  As for the charm bracelet, you can follow its progress now on ebay.  

Zach and I sat at the auction for a few more minutes because I was all sweaty and flush. I had gotten so worked up about the score I just made, and when I get excited, I turn into a beet.  A sweaty beet.

-Erin