Dig This Treasure!

I broke Erin out of Baby Jail on Friday while Granny Sandy watched lil’ E. We were both thrilled to see each other–while I love that baby, it’s just not as fun to estate sale without Erin there to harass me the whole time. 

We started out afternoon off right–by eating some garbage at Daly’s. Be sure to click that link if you want to see the jankiest website ever created. When it was time to get moving, we kept it close, just in case there was a baby emergency, and stopped by three sales in Livonia. The first was pretty grubby.

I stumbled upon this award winning title but decided to pass.  

Basically, everything was yucky.

I did find one treasure–a 1943 Esquire Vargas pin-up calendar, that’s complete and in good shape. I spent $40 which seems like a good investment. 

While in the basement, I started hearing some commotion above me on the main floor. The old lady running the sale had a really loud smoker’s voice. She yelled downstairs like a lunatic, “RALPH! HAVE YOU SEEN THE CALENDAR?????!!!!” as if some crazy ninja had come through the house and stolen it. I meekly let Ralph know that I had the calendar in my hand and planned on buying it. Ay yi yi.

Next up on our agenda was a sale that was at the home of an antiques dealer, who seemed to specialize in linens. Neither of us collect fancy linens but it seemed worth stopping at. 

That’s the linen room, and there I am, lookin’ like a big dummy (but sporting my cute buffalo plaid coat from last winter.) Shockingly, I have sunglasses on my head. I swear, one day I’m going to just do a post of all of the pictures of me on this blog with sunglasses on my head. It could be pouring rain and I think the picture would still have me with sunglasses on my head. 

Right away, I spotted these adorable Holt Howard Santa mugs inside a china cabinet. I bought them, so here they are. 

Are they not the most adorable? Anyway, as I was carefully removing these from the cabinet, I somehow knocked a tiny port wine glass off the shelf and it shattered all over the floor. It’s amazing how much attention you can attract by breaking glass inside a stranger’s house. (Note: I immediately offered to pay for the broken glass but the woman running the sale was very nice and told me not to worry about it.) 

The sale contained a mix of modern and antique goods…with some general garbage mixed in. 

Those were some awesome masks–but the set was marked $25 and it was too steep. They were made on really heavy boards, but still…too risky. 

I found a few other items at this sale but that was mainly when I went back the next day to pick up something that I’ll feature another day as a Fave Find. When we went back, I realized I hadn’t gone into the garage at this house and out there, I found a handful of very cute little dudes to put in my mini holder. 

The cutest is that teeny tiny kewpie. 

I also bought these cool Duralex mugs (set of 6) to resell. One of them had some very prehistoric dead bugs inside. 

Anyway, while I was trying to check out, the woman from the estate sale company kept talking to me about how I had a “great eye” and kept talking my ear off about it. I just thanked her and nodded politely because I got the impression she thought I had never been to an estate sale. 

The last sale ended up being the most fruitful, and it was a total accident! When we first got there, we had to walk down this super long driveway to get to the house, because it was in the middle of some woods. Here’s the first thing that caught my eye. I wanted Erin to buy it because she wears pins a lot, but she didn’t. 

The house backed up to a gorgeous wooded area with a little stream running through it. 

That picture doesn’t even really do it justice. It was so beautiful. 

I made my way upstairs and found a room of old children’s books, toys, etc. I noticed a box of old films right away and asked how much they were. The guy there said $5 for the whole box. I was super excited but didn’t want to lose my cool. I then noticed this packet of stuff that was marked $15. Inside, I noticed these old brochures about the Detroit Free Press, but then I saw that there was a record inside. 

WHOAAAAAA! You can listen to both of these things here. 

Anyway, while I was looking around, the guy in that room asked me what sorts of things I normally look for, and I told him paper, photographs, books, etc. He said, “Slides?” and I about leaped with excitement. I told him yes and he said he was going to check to see if there were any left. I expected him to bring down a little box of slides but when I turned to look for him, I saw him coming down the stairs with an enormous stack of carousels. 

I felt a little overwhelmed because, as he was walking, I could hear another guy asking him how much he was charging for the slides. The estate sale guy was pretty good at reinforcing that he was bringing them for me to look at, but the other guy was just relentless. As soon as he put the slides down, the guy zoomed over to me and was literally ON TOP OF ME, breathing down my neck. I don’t do well with people invading my personal space to that degree–especially when they seem to be interested in stealing my amazing merch–so I was not very friendly. He proceeded to grill me about what I was going to do with them, where I sell them, and how he could find my listings! WTF?! I asked if he wanted the slides and he said that he didn’t–he just knew the guy who lived at the house. It came out that he was just a neighbor, and in the end, all I could picture was a peeping tom, staring in this poor old man’s windows.

In the end, I was successful in buying ALL of the slides. 

And the man charged me ONE DOLLAR per carousel. Yeaahhhh! 

The only other thing I purchased at this sale worth mentioning was this awesome photograph of a girl and her great dane. 

I can’t reiterate how fun it was to get out with my homegirl. I guess absence does make the heart grow fonder! And for all you baby crazed folks, here’s a current picture of Everett, chilling in his Mamaroo. 

-Sarah

Update from Erin: I really did feel like I was breaking out of Baby Jail.  I felt like I was a wanted felon on the run and at any moment I would be picked up and escorted back to my house.  This was seriously like the third time I had been out in public during the last month.  It was amazing.

I didn’t buy anything at the first sale because it was indeed yucky.  At the second sale, it was the best ever when Sarah broke that wine glass.  I heard a huge crash in the kitchen area and immediately exclaimed, “Rut Row!”  (You know, like the Scooby Doo version of “Uh oh!”)  I then thought to myself, “Oh man, Sarah is right in the middle of that melee.” Then I realized that Sarah WAS the melee.  So good.  You could tell she was mortified.  

I did buy an amazing treasure at this second sale, but I will detail it in a “fave find” entry.  At the third sale, guess who was there to greet me:

Can you believe it?!  Those same g*ddamn snowmen came out to welcome me back to sale-ing! 

This last sale was seriously fun.  The house was like a weird dollhouse with a million tiny rooms.  There were also multiple levels of the house all separated by tiny half staircases.  And some rooms were too small to even stand up in.

I ended up buying two old, framed photographs.  I am going to display these at Easter.  They bring me such joy.  

I also found one of those old Detroit Zoo scrapbooks as shown in this entry.  I paid $1 for it and my sister said I could resell it easily.  It is in perfect shape.

All in all a great day!

You’ve seen a lot of Sarah’s and my “fave finds”, but recently I visited my sister’s house and realized she had a whole treasure trove of amazing collectibles.  Lindsay has been mentioned on this blog before, and if you don’t remember, she is the penguin keeper at the Detroit Zoo.  Her vintage and antique collection is centered mainly on old Detroit Zoo memorabilia, and also general zoo related items.  I hadn’t been to her house in awhile, and was super impressed by the way she displayed all of her finds.

This old library cabinet is the perfect way to display all of her zoology books and collectibles.  Sarah and I see these cabinets all the time at sales and they are usually around $300-$400.  Lindsay lucked out and got this for free when she found it thrown out in the trash.  She painted it the white color I believe.

This shadow box has an old Detroit Zoo charm bracelet and vintage pins.  It also has old “zoo keys.”

“Zoo keys,” I believe, are from the 1960s or 70s and were given to children to use around the zoo in “talking storybooks.”  These “storybooks” were basically signs that played audio when a key was inserted.  Very cool and very cute!

Old programs are fun to collect but often hard to display.  They usually end up in stacks on a bookshelf or in a drawer.  Timmy displays old baseball programs in a table with a glass top so you can see all of the program covers.  Lindsay, as you can see, framed her programs.  

So what is Lindsay’s ultimate fave find?

This old scrapbook was put out by the Detroit Free Press.  It came empty, and each week children were encouraged to cut out different zoo photos from the Sunday paper to fill it.  Lindsay was lucky to find a copy of this in which some diligent child filled the entire thing!

I love this scrapbook because it is so indicative of a bygone era.  I imagine a little kid waiting for the paperboy to swing by so they could collect their next zoo photo.  Adorable.

Again, if you have a “fave find,” we want to hear about it!  Visit us on our Facebook page and post a photo!

-Erin

So you’ve all heard now that Sarah is out of commission for awhile because she broke her toe.  I’m going to add some entries, and when she isn’t doped up, Sarah will write all about her finds too.  Before that though, here is a card I made her:

Just kidding.  I found that on the internet.  Also, let me point out, that this is the SECOND TIME Sarah has injured her toe while doing things treasure hunting-related.

Ok, so last Friday, we ventured out to a sale that looked BALLER.  It was in Oak Park and was jam packed full of folk art.  We knew that the sale would probably be pricey, but we stopped by anyway.  In particular, I saw a rug in the sale listing that looked amazing.  I speculated that it would be $500, and Sarah guessed over $1,000.  

When we got to the sale, the rug was way bigger than I thought it would be.  I wanted it for our nursery, but it measured over 9’ x 12’.  I was still in love though.  It was priced $495 (more on this later).

The house was gorgeous and literally everything in it was interesting and collectible.

The most common items in the house were wood carvings and other wooden folk art pieces.  The smallest items were all $15-$25 each, and larger carvings between $40 and $100.  The largest sculptural pieces were a few hundred dollars each.

This horse was from the turn of the century and priced $395.  I was obsessed.  More on him later…

There were also some general antique items (non-folky) in the house.  

I wanted to buy this Detroit Zoo sign for my sister because she is the penguin keeper there.  I sent my dad a photo to see if he wanted to go in on it with me as a Christmas gift.  Then I realized that the entire right side was rotted away and disintegrating.  It was also over 9 feet long, so it was a bit presumptuous to assume my sister could even have a place for it. 

I found this weird thing below and was obsessed with it.  It was marked as Native American, but my guess was that it was actually Victorian.  It seemed like an embroidery project/decoration type thing from that era.  

It was marked $250, which seemed insane to me, but I was also judging this thing without really knowing what it was.  When I got home later that night, I found out that it is in fact Native American, most likely Iroquois.  And guess what, it’s a pin cushion!  You can read all about these pin cushions here.  Amazing huh?

I couldn’t afford a $250 pin cushion, but I could afford this great wooden apple box.  It has a crack, but I’ll just turn that side towards the wall.  At $5, this was a steal.

This apple was actually the only thing I bought at the sale…well, on that first visit anyway.  Sarah, Adam, Zach, and I all returned to this sale on its last day, Sunday.  Everything was 50% off, so we were hoping to score some deals!

And boy did we ever!  You might have noticed that over that past couple months, I’ve barely been buying anything at sales.  It’s really been a bad streak for me.  So on this day, I was ready to drop some bones.

The rug was still there on Sunday.  On Friday, I had actually talked to the woman running the sale about the rug.  I offered her $150 if no one bought it by the last day.  I was super honest with her and told her I didn’t mean to lowball, but it was just what I could feel comfortable paying.  She was SO NICE and actually remembered me when I came back on Sunday.  She said that there was one bid higher than me, and so I flat out asked what it would take for me to be able to buy the rug.  She said $205.  

It’s a deal!  $205 was a great price on this rug and it was now ours!  Here it is in our living room:

The rug is a “dhurrie” rug, but I am not sure how old.  Rug people!  Help me out if you have any hunches on this!

So after buying the rug, Zach and I found a couple more cool items to buy:

Mexican folk art of David in the lions’ den.  This is a larger piece, even though you can’t tell in the photo. $30.

This wooden crest to hang somewhere outside.  $10.

And this Stag tobacco metal sheet, which I am guessing was used for stamping out the tobacco tins.  I got this to resell.  It cost $10.

So before we are about to leave, the woman running the sale stops me and says, “Make me some offers on other things.  Come on, I won’t be offended.”  I was apprehensive because, while I really loved a lot of things left in the house, I really did NOT want to lowball her.  I told her that and she said, “No, come on.  Lowball me!”  Seriously, SO NICE.  I wanted to hug her.

I immediately went to the giant carved horse I saw on Friday.  It was originally $395.  I offered her $80, and she accepted!  I was so thrilled.  Here it is again, in our house:

We are going to put this in the baby nursery once it’s ready.  My dad suggested putting rockers on the horse but I’m going to keep it as a decorative piece.  Maybe when Antiques Roadshow comes back, I’ll bring it there.

The Iroquois pin cushion was gone, so I couldn’t make an offer on that.  It will have to be a new “holy grail” item.    

Sarah bought a lot at this sale too and got some great deals, so hurry up and email her some get well cards so she can blog all about what she found!

-Erin