Dig This Treasure!

Alright, so, as mentioned, Sarah and I hit one more sale last Friday.  I believe this one was in Trenton.  When we arrived at the sale, it was immediately clear that this person was rich, and that they had a lot of time to buy rich people things.

The first room was filled with these elaborate dollhouses.  They were all pretty remarkable.

What’s interesting about these type of dollhouses is that you never actually see little miniature dolls inside of them.  What’s up with that?  

Upstairs at this sale was a room completely full of designer purses, all of which still had the tags on them.  At first I was sure they must be fake or something, because who buys $400 purses and doesn’t use them?  All of the tags though had Macy’s stickers on them, so certainly they were real.

I think Sarah and I both would have loved to buy some of these.  There were at least 100 to choose from. All of the bags were priced pretty close to retail, so we had to pass.

Back in the dollhouse room, I found a Muffy Vanderbear.  When I was a child, my Aunt Cathy (who comments on this blog often and also publicly called my blonde hair “FRIGHTENING”) gave me Muffy bears and accessories every Christmas.  They were by far my favorite childhood toys, even beating out Beanie Babies.  I still have all of my Muffys and hope that one day I will have a daughter to play with them.

Anyway, this particular Muffy was one I already had in my collection, but it was in PERFECT condition, so I decided to buy it.  I was carrying it around, and kept thinking, “Hm, I don’t remember my original Muffy having this gold necklace on it.”  

Looking closer at the necklace, it was pretty clear that it was REAL gold.  Someone had put a REAL GOLD chain on Muffy.  

Knowing that gold is like crazy valuable right now, Sarah and I started speculating what it could be worth.  I looked online and it said 14K gold was worth around $18 per gram.  I then speculated that a gram was like one paper clip.  However, neither of us could figure out how many imaginary paper clips might make up the necklace I had.

On our way to lunch we spotted one of those “Cash for Gold” places.  When I say “spotted” I actually mean that we drove down the street specifically looking for any place that might buy gold.  We were just way too excited.

So we got buzzed into the store, had the necklace weighed, and ended up selling it for $44!  That price actually covered all of the purchases I had made that day, including lunch!  Pretty exciting!  

The lesson here people is not to store your gold jewelry on teddy bears, and then sell those bears.  The other lesson here is that if someone does store their gold jewelry on a teddy bear, then totally buy that teddy bear.

-Erin

Sarah and I headed out on Friday a little disorganized.  Neither of us had really looked at the sales for the day, so we haphazardly chose a route based on which sales were closest. I’ll probably screw up the order in which we actually went to the following sales, but you’ll get the idea.

We started out at a sale in Livonia that could only be described as a bunch of “stuff”.  I can’t think of a single item I even considered buying.  Everything seemed kind of sad and unloved, stored improperly and dirty.  The basement had a pantry with expired food for sale.  

I didn’t buy anything at this sale, and Sarah probably bought some things that she now regrets.  And yes, I know what you’re thinking, what about all those magazines?!  You guys love old magazines!  Those magazines were sticky and gross, although I think Sarah did buy a couple of them.

After this sale, we stopped at some garage sales.  One was advertised as “HUGE SALE” so of course we were interested.  When we arrived, there wasn’t much in our style, and also, nothing was priced.  I did however find some small dessert plates I liked.  When I asked the price, the lady informed me that the sale was a fundraiser for a mission trip to Africa, and that all reasonable donations were accepted.  I offered her $2 for the plates, and she looked at me with horror.  She then said, “Oh no, I’d have to get at least $5 for those.”

So here’s the deal, that’s TOTALLY fine.  This is your sale.  The plates could be $100 if you wanted.  But here’s what happened next:  I told her “oh ok, no thank you then”  and she looked at me with absolute disgust, a look of wrath that made us hightail it out of there.  Let me just say, that if the fundraiser was for the Otterhounds of America charity, or A Hugga Bunch for Every Child charity, then I would have gladly paid $5.  I’m just not sold on the idea of mission trips to Africa.  Too bad, because I liked those plates!

I have no clue where the next sale was at, but it had some pretty nice things.  A little overpriced, but not terrible.  I got this adorable old mail scale to add to my scale collection:

I also found this cool, old sterling silver necklace.  I bought it to keep or to give as a gift at some point, but after doing some research, I put it on ebay.  The necklace turned out to be from Shipton & Co. in England, and was made around 1935.  

At first I refused to believe that jewelry from the 1930s had lobster claw clasps, but turns out that it did!  I suppose since we had cars and planes back then, surely someone could have invented the lobster claw clasp too.

Alright, I’m going to stop here, but GET READY because after this sale, we went to another one, and what happened there turned out to be the best.  As a teaser, I will say that gold sells for about $20 per gram, which pretty much means nothing when neither Sarah or I can figure out what a gram is.

-Erin

Update from Sarah: I don’t have much to add here. Erin documented all of this fairly well. One thing that I found at one of the garage sales that she missed was this set of Josef Originals. Normally she sells these, but I found them first, and they aren’t something I’d consider HERS, unlike things like Wagner Cast Iron, sports memorabilia, etc. Anyway, it’s a koala family: 

Pretty cute!

At this same sale, I found a pair of suede bowling shoes in my size for $3. Another great score! 

Anyway, she’s right that the first sale was incredibly dirty and dismal as far as offerings go. But you’re in luck because I did purchase some of those magazines. Just three of them. But allow me to show you a picture of one that I did not purchase: 

I also did not purchase this issue of Life, which I sort of wanted: 

I also did not buy this shirt by a super cool brand: 

I did purchase a few things at the sale where Erin found that scale, but the best of these items will be saved for a Fave Find entry.