Your Mom’s Buying a Bagpipe?
Wow… with all the Antiques Roadshow posts and garage sale planning, we’re really behind on our normal Friday wrap-up posts.
Two Fridays ago, Erin, my mom and I went to some sales that looked pretty good. The first was in Dearborn and seemed like it had a decent amount of antiques.
There’s Cindy, inspecting the valuables.
A lot of the older pieces were pretty pricey.
This was a handmade high chair that Erin was obsessed with. To me, it looked like something the Dothraki made.
In the end, I found an old Pyrex travel thing–you know–the kind of thing with a warmer/carrier? Can you tell I cook ALL THE TIME? I also got a really cute sunhat that I’ll hopefully be able to use next week. Spoiler alert: DTT is going on vacation!
I found some other items but it was so long ago that I’ve forgotten about them. The one complaint about this sale was that a) the employees were a little pushy and b) they had too many people collecting money! Whenever you went into another area of the house, they would “ring you up” there, which just made everything take so much longer. Look people, nobody is going to steal that grandma’s old clothes.
Next up on our agenda was a sale that looked pretty high-end. We could tell because of the company running the sale. Anyway, even though it was high-end and a little pricey, I found some cool stuff. These people had a lot of really neat things in their house:
I was mesmerized by this thing:
We have these in our teaching labs at work and I could not figure out why in the world someone would have one mounted to their kitchen counter. Maybe they do powerpoint presentations for fun.
A few minutes into being in this house, my mom asked me to look on eBay to figure out if bagpipes were worth anything.
I tried, but in the end it was too complicated. I could not figure out which ones were or were not valuable, or whether this thing was even real! A few minutes after this, Erin came up to me and said, “Your mom’s buying a BAGPIPE?” Hey, she’s bought crazier things!
My favorite part of the house was the basement, where they had their collection of (repro) cast iron banks.
When I was down there, I also found this little model of me zooming around in my convertible:
(EIGHTEEN DOLLARS?!)
For some reason, I really liked this picture:
In the end, I came away with this really adorable model of a carnival ride.
I love it so much. Adam does not.
The women running this sale were not very friendly at all. They were also completely unwilling to negotiate, which is a drag. I’m sure Erin will tell you more about that. My mom bought this thing:
I have no idea what it is.
The last sale on our agenda looked good to me because there were TONS of books:
In the end, I didn’t find much that was interesting. Except this old book about “sexual glands”:
I also found some cute little minis and some old Garfield placemats. Here are some things I didn’t buy:
And of course, this entry wouldn’t be complete without some info about what we ate that day. As I’ve mentioned, these days Erin only likes to eat at places with “family dining” in the name, so we ended up somewhere where she could eat this:
I think my mom and I would like nothing more than to forget this meal forever and ever.
-Sarah
Update from Erin: Sarah is right, the first sale had way too many sales people, and they were mega aggressive. I got in one room by myself and the guy there said, “I’m not letting you out of this room unless you buy a pair of shoes. We got too many shoes.” Um, ok, that seems kind of not fair/illegal. (I mean kidnapping women at an estate sale, not owning too many shoes.)
I actually did buy a pair of shoes which was hilarious. They were black Keds tennis shoes, brand new, and were $2.
I didn’t buy much here. I got Zach some soap from Saks Fifth Avenue because he loves fancy soaps and once had a soap blog. I know, very exciting.
The soap looks grody there, but it wasn’t. I also bought this (vintage?) cigar that says, “It’s a boy!” because we found out the day before that our baby is going to be of the male gender. (Do boys like estate sales? I HOPE SO.)
The second sale was fun to look at, but I’m really not into reproduction antiques. There were a few real-looking antique pieces in the house, but it was hard to trust them when everything else was new. These Toby mugs were real, but super super pricey:
I will buy a repro if it is MEGA cute. Some of the cast iron banks were contenders:
Ultimately though, I didn’t buy any. I did want to buy this large Santa bulb (I pulled this pic from the internet). While the one I found looked “vintage,” you could tell from the markings that it was brand new…probably from Pier One or something. The filament inside was broken so it wouldn’t light up, but I thought it was still pretty cute as a decoration.
The woman running the sale told me $20 for this and I was astounded. I told her I’d pay $10 (still a stretch) and she seemed really irritated. I apologized and said I didn’t mean to offend her and then put the bulb back. At this point, Sarah and her mom were still shopping and I was out of breath from going up and down stairs while being pretty hugely pregnant. I asked the same woman if I could sit on the couch in the living room while I was waiting (it was a nice couch so I thought I’d ask) and she looked like she wanted to kill me. I did end up sitting there but I just barely put my butt on the edge. Oy.
The last sale was nothing to write home about, except that I found these adorable snowmen. They were missing their hats which I found nearby, and then proceeded to place back on each one of them. I didn’t buy these, but I was happy that with their hats on, someone else might.
P.S. Sarah’s mom didn’t buy the bagpipe after all.