Dig This Treasure!

Happy (almost) New Year everyone!  It has been a really fun and hilarious first year of this little ol’ blog.  Thank YOU for reading, and for the emails/facebooking/comments/etc. that tell us you enjoy our sass.  We hope that 2013 brings even bigger and better estate sales and many more treasures.

To cap off the year, here are the top ten BEST moments of our estate sale insanity:

10. That time Erin bought a bear wearing a REAL GOLD necklace:  Sometimes you find perfectly fine treasures that you are happy buying as they are–say, a Muffy Vanderbear doll.  And sometimes, as an added bonus, that perfectly fine bear happens to be wearing a 14kt gold necklace.  In our “Cash for Gold, Part Two” entry,  Erin found out just how valuable gold is at the moment, when she cashed in a chain for $44.  Who puts real gold chains around teddy bears?  And who then sells that teddy bear for $12 at an estate sale?  Whoever that person is, we hope they do it more often–wrap all our purchases in gold please!

9. That time DTT had a huge ass garage sale:  The DTT garage sale put quite a twist on our normal routine.  This time we were the sellers, trying to convince people to buy our garage sale wares.  This was also a chance for us to unload all of the estate sale finds we had trouble selling on ebay, or that we fell out of love with.  Let’s just say, we had a lot of stuff to sell:

Check out the entry “Cold Ones Left” to see how the garage sale went, and to hear about Sarah taking a serious spill on the sidewalk.

8. All those times we found ourselves in “interesting” houses:  Hoarders? Check.  Survivalists? Check. Straight-up Grey Gardens style situations?  Check. We’ve seen it all, and somehow lived to tell about it. Take a peek at the entries: “Grey Gardens”, “Survival of the Fittest”, and “Hoarders. No Like Real Ones” for all the nitty gritty.

7. That time Erin interviewed Ryan Matthew Cohen of the Science Channel’s Oddities:  Somehow Erin scored an interview with fan-fave Ryan Matthew, and the resulting post here on DTT (Ryan Matthew Kind of Hates Christmas, and Other Revelations) turned out to be one of our most reblogged/linked out/googled entries. In a later turn of events, Erin met Ryan in New York, where he nervously informed her that he confuses our blog with the phrase “Take that Bottle.”  (That’s a phrase?)

6. All the times we made mad cash on eBay: And we are proud to say there were many! Check out our “Money Maker” entries to see just how well we did reselling our treasure finds.  Our biggest jackpots can be found in the entries: “Original Goonies Movie Posters”, “Old Duck Decoy”, “Valley of the Dolls II”, and “Crazy Horse”.

5. That time a guy asked Erin for her home address: You meet all kinds of people while out treasure hunting.  Erin happened to meet a guy who wanted to know where she lived…EXACTLY where she lived. Read all about it in the entry “Where I Live”.

4. That time we got in a CRAZY HUGE FIGHT with Cari Cucksey from HGTV’s Cash & Cari:  We get asked about this all the time, so of course we had to include it in the countdown: our infamous quarrel with Cari, from Cash & Cari.  If you remember, we started out in quite the love affair with the show, and with RePurpose estate sales.  But then we mentioned ONE sale they had that was overpriced and crowded, and next thing you know, we’re public enemy number one.  Find out just how loud ladies can yell in our entry “The End of an Era”.  

3. That time we fell in love with auctions:  Perhaps one of the biggest developments this year was our love affair with auctions.  Maybe in 2013 we will change the name of this blog to YO! We Love Auctions or something like that.  It all started with Erin’s fave honeyhole in Plymouth, featured in the entries: “Stand Down”, “Standing Room Only”, and “Trumpeting”.  Sarah caught the auction bug in the entry “Open for Bidding”, only to have it explode into auction frenzy in the entries “Auction Crashers” and “Blacktop Surprise”.     

2. That time we hunted down the person whose stuff we were buying at an estate sale and became cross-country friends with him:  Despite our humor, estate sales are a really emotional thing, and we recognize that.  Most sales happen because of a death in the family or because of other sad events (financial trouble, divorce, hoarding, and so on).  At the time when we wrote our entries “House of Horrors Part One” and “Part Two” we had no idea that a charming California man had just lost his mother in Michigan, and it was her home we were shopping at.  Our blog entry focused on the amazingly bizarre and intriguing items we found in the home, items unlike anything we had ever seen.  And before long, Erin tracked down the aforementioned Cali man (entry “REAL LIFE”) and Sarah wrote a heartfelt entry all about him and his mother (entry “Be My Little Bumblebee”).  You couldn’t have scripted it any better.  In fact, we are all now friends, and for Sarah, even in real life! 

OK, drum roll please!!!  The BEST moment of the year, as you’ve probably guessed, is…

1. That time we went to the BEST SALE EVER:  “Best Sale Ever”, as it is known, was, well, the best sale ever!  We both still dream about this sale (literally…at night, in our dreams).  Featured in the entries: “Best Sale Ever: Round One” and “Round Two”, this estate sale will forever live on as the perfect storm of all things wonderful about treasure hunting.  The owner of this estate loved shopping, and the packed house showed it.  Everything though was high quality, clean, and most importantly, CUTE!  There was a great mix of antiques and newer items, and somehow we got the most incredible bargain bin prices on everything.  Erin bought a brand new Pendleton blanket with the tags on it for basically pennies, and Sarah took home half a Hallmark store worth of books, ornaments, and Christmas decor.  We visited this sale twice over two days and hauled our items out in a wagon each time.  

So cheers to estate sales, and “junk”, and antiques, and to all of the people and places we encountered this year.  To 2013, bring it on, we are ready for your treasures!

Happy New Year!

xoxoxox

-Erin & Sarah 

So this entry is a teaser for a SERIOUSLY AWESOME entry that will launch on Friday.  If you are not familiar with the TV show, Oddities, then you should check it out.  It airs on SCIENCE, and the second-half of the third season picks back up in June.

Oddities explores the fascinating world of scientific artifacts–taxidermy, quack medical devices, preserved specimens, and so on.  The show is based out of Obscura, an antique store in Manhattan that wheels and deals in this type of collecting.  It follows co-owners Mike Zohn and Evan Michelson, as well as their buyer Ryan Matthew Cohn, who finds the treasures being sold.

(Photo courtesy of Discovery Channel Networks.)

So we thought, “Hey! Who better to talk about antiques and treasure hunting with than Mr. Ryan Matthew himself.”  Luckily, he was gracious enough to spend some time on the phone with me last week, and talk all about his wild and wacky collection.

(Photo by Sergio Royzen, courtesy of Ryan Matthew)

But before the interview is posted on Friday, we wanted to brush you all up on the show.  So watch the video below, check out the Oddities website, and get ready to hear about one of the strangest hobbies out there.  You think we buy crazy things?  Well, just wait… 

-Erin