Dig This Treasure!

Two weeks ago, Sarah and I hit the streets again after a brief hiatus.  There was a sale nearby run by one of our favorite companies. When we walked in, I was very excited. The place was packed and everything looked pretty neat.  

I was interested in those old glass pharmacy bottles in the photo above, but they were $5 each.  That seemed a little steep.  They sell on ebay for around the same price, so I would have needed to buy the whole box for cheap.  I moved on.

There was an abundance of Native American items at this sale.  Many of them were legit (they had a gorgeous Zuni fetish necklace but the string was broken and the beads were loose.)  That said, they also had some super wacko sh*t like this:

To Sarah’s delight, there were a million books.  There was even a light up sign that said, “BOOKS.”

Look at that baby bump!!!  Adorable.

Ok so Sarah totally wanted that big sign.  It was marked $150.  It should’ve been marked like maybe $50.  Sarah had me text Adam to ask if he would be down with her buying it.  This is how it went:

Whomp whomp.  No sign for Sarah.

Sarah did buy a boatload of thing she will update us later on.  I ended up buying just one thing, a piece of Hadley Pottery with an Indian chief on it. 

Our friend Jen was with us at this sale and when she saw me carrying this around, she questioned whether I was buying it to resell.  I shushed her instantly.  Man, what a noob!!  I told her to never let on that you are buying stuff to resell.  If you do, you’re pretty unlikely to get any deals.  This company in the past has been really awesome about discounting for us, so God forbid we jeopardize that.  Next time, Jen stays in the car.

-Erin

Holy moly! This is a late update!

On my birthday (end of August), Adam and I stopped at a book & treasure store in Ann Arbor, located in what’s called “Kerrytown.” He actually wanted to go inside and I did not, because I had a vague memory of having a semi-bad experience at this place in the past. But the store is my kind of place–a huge space filled from floor to ceiling with books, paper, and collectibles, so I agreed to go. 

The guy who runs this place is my kinda guy–besides old books, he has TONS of old postcards, greeting cards, and stereoviews. 

Check out that creeper. 

These are all semi-organized in card catalogs throughout the store. I started really getting excited because I found whole drawers of Christmas postcards…

(Note–this was the day after Erin and I got manicures for my birthday. Check out those nails!)

…but then I started noticing the prices located on the backside. Each of these awesome postcards cost between $15 and $40. What the heck?! 

Amid the adorable postcards, I also found some hilarious and scary ones. 

If that’s what Santa looks like, I’m not sure I want him coming down my chimney. 

Have you ever seen a kid so scared to hear Santa? That dog sure is excited, though. 

In the end, I did buy a few postcards and greeting cards–the ones I selected were between $3 and $5 each. 

I went to check out, and when I was doing so, the store owner started chit chatting with me, asking if I saw all the other postcards. I told him that I did see them, but that they were super overpriced. He started lecturing me on rarity and how you determine the value of something–like I was a total dummy. Then I immediately remembered why I didn’t want to go in the store in the first place. The guy was so condescending and thought everything was worth a billion dollars! Many things in the store had tags like this: 

One of his favorite words was “scarce”. 

I told him that I knew they were valuable, but I’m not sure they were worth THAT much… I think in the process of talking to me, he realized that I was not a total idiot, since I do collect paper. So then he insisted that I look at a special box he had behind the counter of his most prized postcards. I went along with it because Adam was giving me The Look (he wanted a good story), but really, some of the postcards in the drawers were way cooler than the ones in his special box.

Then I happened to mention that I collect photographs so he insisted that I look at these groups of photos he had. Well, it turns out he had a whole envelope filled with people and their pets, so I was actually pretty excited. Here’s what I bought: 

Sorry for the darkness/quality–I took those pictures in my dark living room.

The big prize was this cabinet card: 

It was marked a hefty $16 but I really wanted it. 

I brought up my second round of treasures to the checkout desk and he seemed very impressed with my selections. Then he took one look at that cabinet card and said, “This is a $30 photograph.” I said “NO WAY DUDE.” Those words exactly. He said “Oh no I’m going to honor the price on the back but I want you to know this is a very rare, valuable photograph." 

But then things changed. He started telling me about his dogs. If you know me at all, you know that all you have to do is talk about an old dog around me and I fall apart. He went on to point out the freakin’ professional photo/glamourshots he had of his three pugs hanging on the walls. There is so much crap in this place, I hadn’t noticed them until then. He then told us the story of Taz, his oldest pug (16), who he had to put down this year. He and his wife do community theater, and when they took him to the vet, it was Valentine’s Day. He sang "My Funny Valentine” to his 16 year old pug, as the vet euthanized poor little Taz. Oh my gosh. 

As he told us the story, he got a little teary, and I could not help but end up liking this guy. I think he must just be really attached to all of the things in his store. The high prices seem to be a way to allow him to keep holding on to all of it. He asked me to send him a photograph of the cabinet cards, and I haven’t yet. I should go do this now. 

-Sarah

We got a fairly late start on Friday due to the fact that I have a real job with real hours that need to be really worked in real life. There weren’t any exceptional looking sales (or even GOOD looking sales) once again, but we made it work.

The first sale we stopped at was very close to Erin’s house, and was clearly a “man sale.” But that’s ok! There were some cool things to see, along with a lot of chaos.

Cool things:

Chaos:

This guy obviously worked on cars, and possibly even planes. He had a lot of old literature on both of these things, but the space was so destroyed and crowded that it was hard to get a really good look without wondering if some structure was going to collapse on your dome. Erin decided to take a chance.

I saw a little crawl space that was filled with boxes and other nonsense. Of course, rather than sacrifice myself, I pulled Erin into the room and told her to get in there because she’s smaller than me. She obeyed and even had a mini flashlight. (Sidenote: I HATE when guys whip out their Maglite minis at sales. They’re always the SAME kind of guy–big, scruffy, and wearing dirty Hanes sweats. Do you think you’re on Storage Wars or what?)

Anyway, she pulled out a dainty keychain light (which is acceptable) and got down to business. She found a treasure of her own that I’ll let her tell you about, but she also unearthed this decent sized box of pictures and other paper.

She also found a few 8 mm and 16 mm films but the woman running the sale told me that she must have missed those–the family wanted to keep any and all movies (but apparently not still pictures?) I didn’t let her know she missed them because they were in the deep dark depths of the dirty crawlspace. But it left me wondering what was on those films–something scandalous, or just family memories?

I ended up getting the box of stuff for $10, which seems reasonable, though I haven’t looked through it yet. Erin spotted another big stack of photos in the garage, and the guy out there sold them to me for $5. All in all, an excellent deal.

One last thing that Erin considered buying:

The next sale on our list was out in Warren. We made the trek because it looked packed. Turns out, it wasn’t packed at all, and instead was primarily filled with cheap garbage. HOWEVER, I found one box of absolutely incredible items at this sale. I’ll maintain the suspense by first showing you some items that we did not buy:

Uhm. What? Wait… now that I think about it, why did I not buy this? Actually, I’ve got a new New Years Resolution: From now on, buy any and all ‘70s resin figurines with sad and/or nonsensical sayings on them. We see them so often that I think it’s a sign. We need to start collecting them.

I’m not positive but I think these guys are made of cotton balls.

We were LOL-in’ about that cover and byline for a good while.

Ok, so here is the gold that I found:

Ok, so I realize that for everyone else on Earth, this looks like kindling for your fireplace. However, this box of books made me squeal with glee. I’m a librarian at a university and I manage a children’s and YA collection. Some of the books in this box are things I’ve never even heard of. I think I might feature one of them every so often on here because the summaries on the back covers alone are amazing.

It turns out these are a combination of “problem novels” and “female junior novels,” all ranging from the late '50s through '70s. I know this thanks to my friend Amanda who is a children’s lit professor who wrote her dissertation on NEGLECTED female junior novels. There were a few books in this lot that were things she’d never even seen in paperback!

So if you couldn’t already tell, this was really exciting for me. It’s just another example of the serendipity that sometimes happens–connecting you with a perfect item. I could tell that Erin was pretty much like “WTF” about my excitement, but she hid it well, and I applaud her for her efforts there. 

The other thing I purchased at this sale was an antique 8x10 wedding portrait:

Isn’t it so cool? Also, there was a little note tucked inside that made me feel better about purchasing more old pictures of strangers.

Apparently even the previous owner had no idea who these people were.

-Sarah

Update from Erin: If Sarah sticks to her resolution of buying all 70s resin figurines, there are going to be a LOT more TTFYHO entries.  I feel like a better 2013 resolution for Sarah is to buy NOTHING from the 70s.  In fact, I was watching Market Warriors last night on PBS and the challenge this week was to buy stuff from the 70s and resell it at auction.  Everyone on the show lost money…like a lot of money.

Anyway, the first sale on Friday was pretty grody.  I came out of there covered in dust.  Like Sarah mentioned, my trek into the crawlspace was fruitful.  I found a bunch of boxes and inside one was an old Gruen automatic watch.  

What is so amazing about this watch is that it sat so long without ticking (decades for sure) and the metal hands left little tarnish marks on the watch face.  But because I had jostled the boxes in the crawlspace around, the watch started ticking again and was running great when I discovered it.  How automatic watches are able to do this is beyond me…even more incredible than putting a man on the moon.

I paid a mere $5 for the watch, and it is blowing up ebay now.  

Also, why didn’t I buy that dog portrait?!  UGH.  It was so great.  I will kick myself over this for a long time.  

The second sale was my worst nightmare.  There was nothing for me to even look at while Sarah practically read each book she found cover to cover.  I kept mincing around behind her like pacing animals do at the zoo when they are bored.  I’m sure she appreciated it.  

Our day didn’t end here though, stay tuned for a report on the auction we attended later that night.

-Erin