Dig This Treasure!

I wasn’t going to go sale-ing on Friday because, as I mentioned, I still had tons to do for my charity relay on Saturday.  I am SO glad I decided to go though!  We headed out to a house in Royal Oak that was formerly home to a professor.  The house was gorgeous, and packed full of really interesting things.

I wanted this chair so bad:

You can’t really tell, but that chair was HUGE.  It would never fit in my car or our house really.  Here is what I did take home though:

This bell jar is really large and heavy.  I found it hidden under some stuff in the basement of the sale and the guy working down there told me it was $6.  At the time, it had some old coral in it, but I later found a giant Abalone shell to put in it.  The shell was $2 I believe, which is a steal.  I love both of these items so much and am happily displaying them in our living room.

I also found some weird old glass photo plate.  It seems like an old negative but on glass.  This is probably a super common thing that I am just uneducated about.  Anyway, it is from 1905 and has some sailors on it.

And by “sailors” I guess I really mean fishermen.  

The last item I will mention had some drama attached to it.  It is a little brass bust of George Washington.  I figured Zach would want it, so I asked a lady at the sale how much it was.  She said $5.

I wasn’t sure that I wanted to pay that so I set little Washy back down.  As soon as he hit the table, the woman exhaled really loud and frustratedly, like I was totally wasting her time.  I ignored it and moved on to look at a desk and as soon as I touched it, the woman snapped at me, “THAT’S SOLD!”  I apologized and said that I didn’t see any sort of SOLD sticker on it, and she informed me that that was because there was no sold sticker on it.  Uh, ok.

I had made an enemy.  Not sure how, but I did.  By the time this lady rung me up later, I had picked back up the little Washington.  As she was writing down my items, she wrote,  "Jewelry $5.“  Now, I hadn’t bought any jewelry so I thought maybe this was a mistake, and I asked her about it.  She exhaled her hatred for me again and then announced that the "jewelry” was the little Washington statue that she had CLEARLY ALREADY GIVEN ME THE $5 PRICE ON.  I apologized to her, even though I think it is totally fair to assume a brass statue is NOT jewelry.

-Erin 

Update from Sarah: Erin has a terrible memory. Worse than mine, which I didn’t even think was possible. The professor sale was the second sale we went to, unless she found something out that I didn’t know. She didn’t even mention the second sale!

The first sale was cool, though. And don’t you think it’s obvious that the woman just wanted Erin to wear that bust around her neck, Flava Flav style? Anyway, these people had a lot of very old, nice things. They also had a lot of very old, not as nice things. Once again, the whole basement was covered in books and they were all pretty damp. Not a great idea. Especially since all of the books were either older or actually antique. I did, however, find some good treasures in the basement. I found a stack of memorabilia from the Mission Inn in Riverside, CA. At first, I put all that stuff back where I found it, but then I looked on eBay and Mission Inn memorabilia seemed like it might be collectible.

Also, while I was in the basement I noticed this woman sorting through an enormous stack of cards. I just sort of hung around the area for a while because I couldn’t tell which ones she was keeping and which ones she wasn’t. After a few minutes of just lumbering around, I decided to act like a human and actually ask her if any of the cards were ones she didn’t want. Turns out the big stack were ones she didn’t want! Score. Here are some of them:

I also found a cool wooden box that I forgot to take a picture of, and two really nice quilts for our couches. Here’s one of them after one of my dogs “made her bed” on it:

After this sale, we hit up a garage sale run by four women who were a little older than us. They had some cute stuff for sale but after leaving, I was shocked by the fact that I had spent $12 there. I guess ultimately it was worth it, though, because I found this: 

Felted Mr. Toad Christmas ornament?!! Heck yeah. I bought him even though he was $2. 

After this sale, we hit up Treat Dreams in Ferndale. I was really excited for this because I was fiending for something delicious to eat, but was then sadly disappointed by my choices. It’s my own fault. I really wanted something fruity and got salted caramel and lemon olive oil as my two flavors. I was so annoyed with myself that Erin finally convinced me to go back up and get the sorbet. I got some coconut lime sorbet that was so terrible. It was like… pure ice with coconut flakes in it. It tasted like nothing. Anyway, next time… if there is a next time… I will go with my gut and get something good. 

The last sale of the day (the one that was in a professor’s home) was a sale in Palmer Woods. Erin was shocked by this neighborhood. It is fairly strange–a gorgeous old neighborhood in the heart of a very not so great area. I bought some books, a piggy bank, and a couple more quilts. Here is an obese cat sitting on one of them: