Dig This Treasure!

Sarah and I have been hitting up estate sales and garages sales pretty regularly.  Finding the time to blog, however, is another story.  We have been active over on Instagram though, so if you haven’t followed us already, please do!  Here’s Sarah at a garage sale describing a butterfly she saw:

She’s still kind of salty about me secretly recording that.

Anyway, to make Sarah feel better, here is a tale of my absolute stupidity…

We visited a sale a few weeks ago that upon entry seemed promising.  Everything seemed old and I figured many treasures awaited us.

And this bird mobile?! Omg so cute!  Why didn’t I buy this? I should have bought it.  The better question is why didn’t Sarah buy this? It looks like something she would totally buy. 

And how come we didn’t buy this beauty of an art piece:

I have lots of questions.  Why is this person wearing like a wig of white hair over top of their regular hair?  Or is that an aura? Or reflective light?  Why is this person wearing a jacket with no shirt underneath? Why does that microphone seem very very small? And who is this? Bonnie Raitt?  I’m not good with music stuff.  I once thought John Popper was the singer of Meatloaf.  Turns out that the singer of Meatloaf is Meatloaf.

It started to become clear that this house was just full of “things.”  Not treasure-type things, just things.  Lots and lots of things that had fallen into the bottom of a closet for years or were stuck in a junk drawer.  I have things like this too, so I don’t mean to judge too harshly.

There were also lots and lots of homeopathic medicines and supplements, which was kind of heartbreaking.

Ok, so where does my stupidity come in?  Since this sale was a bust, we headed to another one.  This time, the house was a little more upscale and organized. They had a lot of art and books.

There were still lots of great vintage items.  Look at this dining room set!  Love it.

Like look at this adorable bathroom! I love this adorable bathroom!  If I could’ve bought it I would have. Except for that filthy rug.  Eff that.

Alright, so here goes…at this sale I found this amazing piece of embroidery art.  I loved it so much.  It brought me joy.  Look closely at it and really take it in:

Now I want you to guess what this is an image of.  Even a general guess will do.  Think hard and lock in your guess before you scroll down…

Got it?

Think you know?

Well let me tell you what I thought this was…

I thought this was a picture of mermaids.  I THOUGHT THOSE WERE TAILS. 

I took the picture over to Sarah and was all, “Look at these mermaids!”  She about died.  Apparently this is some sort of Jewish art.  (I am not Jewish so how should I know.) Apparently this is obvious.  Apparently I should have known this was religious in some way.

I mean, I guess I see it now.  I was just super distracted by those adorable mermaid children to even notice.

I left empty handed. Well, except for shame.  I left with some of that.

-Erin 

A few weeks ago, Sarah and I vacationed together in South Haven, MI.  It was glorious.  Lake Michigan was not only surprisingly warm, but super clear.  I’m down with being a lake person, but you bet your ass that I wear water shoes.  In Lake Michigan, I didn’t even need to!  It wasn’t gross at all!  Yay nature!

We spent a lot of time swimming and lounging, but also made time to go antiquing.  The go-to strategy among dealers here seemed to be setting up shop on your front lawn.  We saw a lot of antiques just laying in people’s yards, with little explanation to how they survive the elements or if any effort is even made to protect them from rain or theft. 

It looked like American Pickers, where the dudes just drive around and look for people with junk outside.  They call it “freestylin” on the show, but because I am a disgusting and juvenile person, I kept telling Sarah we were “freeballin.”  We just drove around until we found places to stop.

And boy did we find a place…

The place we found was called something like “Junktiques” which was a fair and honest assessment.  It turned out to also be some dude’s life work of creating arguably insane art.  In true Sarah fashion, she told the guy that his sculptures made her laugh, which the guy reacted to with a blank stare. 

TBH, the sculptures were funny and also totally delightful.  I would put one in my backyard in a heartbeat.

All I bought from this bro were some cookie cutters for Everett to use with Play-Dough. I did not buy this life-size wood carving of Sarah.

Also did not buy this hilarious elephant.

And I did not buy this mask, even though I looked great in it.

We also stopped at a nice little shop inside a house, which was clearly geared towards shabby chic moms (me, basically). 

I wanted to buy that big metal ball and put Christmas lights in it, but decided not to because the woman revealed it was from a wholesale gardening place.  I figured I could find one cheaper online since that was the case.

I did end up buying some cool wooden slats that I plan to put in my garden.

And I got this neat old egg carton to put up by my egg scales.  It was so darn cute and only $8!

Zach and Adam went out shopping too, without us.  Zach bought this giant painting of a dude yelling? crying? who knows…

If someone can identify this man, that would be awesome.  I want to know so badly who he is and what he is doing.  He lives in our living room now.

I am lol’ing hard at the amount of bags I have hanging on the dining room chairs.  Apparently I need two purses, a gym bag, and a backpack to exist in life.

And just for a little life update, here are our dudes!  Everett will be 3 in October! Arden will be 2 in November!

Cheers!

-Erin

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

Yesterday my parents surprised me with a gift to kick off the Christmas season.  It was this amazing Russian lacquer art pin.  I actually saw this pin LAST YEAR in Holly, MI (you can read about that trip here).  My parents snuck back and bought it to give me this year.  I know, seriously nice (and kind of insane).

I didn’t know anything about Russian lacquer art until I went to San Antonio last year and saw some elaborately painted boxes in an antique store.  The owner explained that they were hand painted in Russia using super fine horse hair.  The process was labor intensive and artists used magnifying glasses to create ultra detailed scenes.  Most lacquer art features fairy tale imagery.

Most boxes are pretty little, so you can just imagine the work it takes to create such intricate paintings.  Besides boxes, Russian lacquer art can be found on cigarette cases and pins.  

Antique lacquer art sells for big bucks, so keep an eye out!  Lacquer art however is still made today, so it is easy to buy an affordable piece should you want one.  Here is a sampling though of just how high prices can go on this stuff:

Neat, huh?  I love all of these pieces!  They are so gaudy, yet whimsical. 

-Erin

A few weekends back, I went with Timmy to “The Super Auction” being held in Ann Arbor. The auction was in a giant pole barn on some farmland, and was actually several different auctions all happening at the same time.  Timmy of course went to the sports auction, while I minced around at the others.

I should note that my dad isn’t crazy about us calling him “Timmy” on this blog.  I learned of this recently, but told him that the readers would have a hard time following along if I suddenly started calling him “Tim.”  Anyway, here he is picking up some of his winnings:

There were lots of great items at this auction, and prices seemed to be pretty high as a result.

That box of arrowheads in the photo above sold for over $500!  

I didn’t stick around to see what that casket sold for, but no bones about it–it probably sold for lots. 

One of the auctions taking place was all pottery.  Pottery is actually something I could see myself collecting.  I just don’t know enough about it yet.  

Most of the pottery was Roseville, which Sarah and I have seen at estate sales before.  I can’t say I’m a Roseville fan.  It seems kind of boring. 

I did see two non-Roseville pieces right away that I loved.  I couldn’t make out the signature on the bottom, so I asked someone to look at the auction catalog.  Turns out, these are made by Common Ground Pottery, and more specifically, a man named Eric Olson.

Gorgeous, right?  I liked how these looked kind of Art Nouveau.  Unfortunately, I didn’t buy either of these.  Each vase sold for $275.  This price is actually pretty good, because looking elsewhere, Common Ground stuff usually sells for over $500.

I started an ebay alert for Common Ground pottery on the off chance that someone is selling some cheap.  Otherwise, it will remain a holy grail.  One day, when I am rich, after buying Sasha dolls, I will buy Common Ground pottery.

Here are some other amazing examples I found online:

Ok, and to finish up, here are my dad’s auction treasures in the back seat of his car:

He seriously spent about 5 minutes flipping these around to find the safest travel position for each one.  

-Erin

The same day that Zach and I scored those Briggs treasures, we swung by another sale and bought two items that are now  “fave finds” of mine.

When we arrived at the sale, I instantly noticed all of these wood carvings.  They were ADORABLE.  The woman running the sale informed me that the deceased owner of the estate had been quite the woodworker.  He made all of these figures and sold them throughout his life.  

I was immediately happy that I was going to be able to buy some of these, but also MEGA SAD that the family of this man didn’t want to keep these.  I started to stress out that all of these figures would be thrown in the trash when the sale ended.  

Unfortunately I couldn’t buy all of these guys because they were kind of pricey!  Originally they were $15-20 each!  Since it was Sunday, and the last day of the sale, they were all around $5-10.  

The first guy I found was this skiing rabbit:

If there are two things I love, they are skiing and rabbits.

Next I found this country singer lady:

Look at that little cowboy hat she is holding!  This is truly the greatest thing of all time.

Here is another view:

These carvings make me so happy.  They are funny and cute…important characteristics of any fave find.

What’s funny is I was writing this post and dropping it in our queue about the same time that our friend over at Monkeybox Blog was writing this great post about her own folk art collection.  I’m glad to see some fellow admiration for the effort that goes into woodcarving.  Very cool.

Ok, so last thing.  This is too hilarious not to mention.  When Zach and I left this sale, we noticed this yard:

And then this crazy guy ACROSS THE STREET AND IN A DITCH:

Penguin on the run!

Ok and for good measure, here is an old photo of me with a real penguin:

-Erin

So I’ve never hidden the fact that I LOVE me some Native American art and artifacts, as long as they are authentic and not stolen Indian designs made in China.  In particular, I really like Inuit art.  I’m no expert, but a lot of it seems to present everyday, mundane life in more meaningful and whimsical ways.  And a lot of it has animals in it, particularly whales and narwhals (always cool).

Until recently, my closest attempt at owning Inuit art was this book I bought on ebay.  It was essentially a catalog of Inuit art that I would never actually own.  

I considered at one point cutting out and framing the photos in this book, which would probably end up being sad and embarrassing.  Is that some original Inuit art on your wall?! No? You cut it out of a book?  That’s sad.  Go buy yourself some Inuit art.

Around the time Sarah and I started getting into auctions, I discovered that there are live auctions online!  This seems obvious, but was actually a huge epiphany for me.  And sure enough, there was an online auction scheduled out of Vancouver featuring ALL Inuit art.  I was thrilled.

I figured this would be my chance to buy a piece more affordably.  Pieces on ebay always sold for high prices or were listed expensively to begin with.  Maybe I could catch a deal in this live bidding.  

The items up for auction were all great.  There were sculptures, fabric art pieces, prints, and more.

I zeroed in right away on the piece below:

It’s called Fox Traps and Anxious Hunters by Jamasie Teevee.  It’s a lithograph (#22/50) from 1976.  I entered a pre-bid of $150 and went to bed (the sale was happening on Pacific Time and it was getting late).  Sure enough, when I woke up the next morning, I had an email saying I was the high bidder, and the bidding ended at $120!  SO AWESOME.

Jamasie Teevee died in 1985, and all of his prints I’ve found for sale are listed for upwards of $400.  I feel like I got a really great deal, and a really amazing piece of art.  I’ll cherish it for a long time to come!  Now I just have to find me a narwhal sculpture like the one above…

-Erin

P.S. LOOK HOW CUTE THAT WALRUS IS.

Update from Sarah: Oh my gosh! I heard the story of the Inuit art print but have never seen it or a picture of it until now. It is so stinkin’ cute. I’m actually really jealous of this.

Gosh, last Friday seems like it was so long ago. Erin and I have been spending so much time prepping for this garage sale that I can’t even remember much about the day. 

I do remember we started in Farmington Hills, where there was a sale with no pictures. Now, these are incredibly hit or miss. But sometimes they’re great because all it means is that there are some older people running the sale who have no idea about technology and they have a ton of treasures in their home. But the serious collectors don’t come, because if they can’t see pictures in advance, it’s not worth their while. I can remember a couple of sales that lacked pictures where I found some seriously cool stuff.

Unfortunately, this sale was not of that variety. Instead it was this little old lady and her daughter, selling a bunch of household items that were generic and cheap. The woman had clearly been moved into assisted living or was in the process of doing so. However, this sad tale is not without its highlight: When we were in the basement, Erin made a friend. This crazy woman was talking to us NONSTOP about whether we had been to any other sales that day, if we found anything good, etc. Then she picked up a pair of exfoliating gloves and proceeded to tell us about how she loves finding them at sales because she uses them to clean her body, and then throws them in the wash, and then uses them to clean her house–especially the bathtub. We escaped as quickly as possible. 

I am racking my brain to try to remember where we went next…I have no idea. I have this picture as proof, though, so it wasn’t good:

Anyway, onto the more memorable moments: At some point, we ended up at a sale that was in a sort of bougie house that contained some cool items. There was a lot of modern/mid-century art, books, and records. But it was abundantly clear that the guy running the sale was a tool and a half. He was wheelin’ and dealin’ the whole time, and his phone kept going off and he would say things like, “This thing’s gonna sell no matter what, so it might as well be YOU who gets it.” Anyway, I found some Stevie Wonder albums, a Disney picture disc, and some books that looked interesting, but absolutely nothing in the home was priced except the artwork and furniture. Speaking of which, here are some pics: 

For some reason I was really interested in that head statue but I think it was marked something crazy like $300. Ugh. 

Anyway, I got to the front of the line after some waiting and had approximately 6 records and 5 books. While in line, Erin and I were guessing how much he was going to ask for all that crap. $30? $60? And we were also guessing what I’d actually agree to pay. Anyway, he looked at my stack of stuff and was sort of distracted because he was talking to a long lost chum that he ran into. So he said, “Fifteen bucks.” I said ok right away and then he started backpedaling, saying he didn’t see the records. He went on to tell me that the records were $5 a piece. I just looked at him and said, “But…they’re not worth that,” and he told me that people had been telling him that all day. HA! Anyway, he said $30 for all of it and I said no, but that I’d pay $20. He said $25 and I just kept saying no… so he finally agreed! Score! The worst part is that none of what I bought was worth anything, but I did get a couple of cool things that I’ll hang on to, including an illustrated copy of Jane Eyre. Which I’ve never read, and I was an English major. Whoops. 

The next sale we hit up was run by the same company, and as soon as we walked in, we saw our favorite phone talker. Greeaaaaat. Just like the last sale run by this company, nothing was priced except big ticket items. Right away, I saw an adorable old teddy bear. I was shocked that Erin didn’t spot him right away. I also found some pretty cool stuff in the basement of this sale, including a few old children’s books that might be worth a few bucks (and had their Detroit Hudson’s price tags still attached–so frickin’ cool!) and some knee huggers! 

When we were ready to check out, the woman did the same thing as last time: “What’s up?” Uhm isn’t it obvious that I want to buy these items? Anyway, first thing she looked at was the teddy bear. She scrutinized him and said, “40 dollars” because he might be “worth $300.” Uhm, that raggedy ass teddy is not worth $300. Trust me. I told her that was fine–I didn’t want him for that much. At some point she actually looked these bears up on her iPad, even though I was insisting that I was not buying him to resell. Eventually I made it out of there with all of my finds (including Mr. Tedders) for a total of $55, which seemed reasonable to me.

Once we got out of this sale, we were starving (shocker), so we looked for the closest place. Erin refused to eat fast food so we stopped at some place called McVee’s. It ended up being a typical bar/grill, filled with barflies in the middle of the day, and the menu sounded better than the food tasted. When I’m really hungry, I often can’t make up my mind, so I order everything I might possibly want. In this case it was waffle fries, a Chicago dog, and mac & cheese:

Oh, and a beer. Totally not excessive. Also, for the record, I only ate about 1/3 of this food. Worth noting: Erin was totally reasonable and got a beer and a BLT:

And now she’s blonde. Clearly trying to slowly become me.

We also indulged in a crappy dessert that looked excellent on the menu, and Erin wasted some money playing Keno. Actually, she may have made two dollars.

The last stop of the day was a sale in Detroit that looked like it was really packed. I’m not sure how they did not capture the fact that this was a true hoarder sale in the pictures, but they managed to fool us. The only thing I can say about this house is that it was insanely depressing and gross. It was obviously an older Russian or Czechoslovakian woman living there, and she liked to keep stuff. Lots of it:

This is actually the attic, which, because it was 95 degrees out on Friday, was about 110. I could only stand up there for about five seconds.

When I showed Erin this picture, she almost cried:

The basement was, by far, the worst:

I did find a little bin filled with vintage cards down there, so I purchased that. Another fun fact about this sale was that there was a full human poop floating in the toilet in the bathroom.

After this depressing and horrifying sale, we called it a day as far as sale-ing goes. We stopped at a nursery I needed to go to to pick up some hydrangeas, and then lost some money at the casino.

-Sarah

Update from Erin: There are so many things I love about Sarah’s description.  First of all, I can’t believe she hasn’t read Jane Eyre.  That is my favorite book of all time.  Second, Sarah scoffs at paying $300 for original art and yet she will pay $15 for a Sesame Street cookie jar…BEST.

While phone lady was busy trying to charge Sarah $40 for a bear, I was busy paying a mere $8 total for some vintage Chanel No. 5 and a Tigers World Series newspaper from 1968.

Both are currently blowing up the ebays.  

The hoarder sale was the worst.  So heartbreaking.  We breezed through it pretty quickly because it was actually sort of dangerous.  I got hit on the head with a box while rummaging around in the basement.  I did end up buying a gold Raymond Weil watch for $20 because I thought Zach might want it.  It’s a little small for him, but it looks like we can sell it easily: