Dig This Treasure!

A few weeks ago, I saw a listing for a sale in Ann Arbor that started on a Saturday. Adam and I hit it up BEFORE breakfast, which is pretty unheard of, but I needed to get there early. It looked like it was a retired professor’s home, and there were TONS of books. As mentioned in the past, I love me a sale with a lot of books. (Remember that store in Montague?!) I’ve also been known to make a killing on books that people don’t realize are valuable. 

We arrived and man, were there books. 

Nearly every single room I entered looked like this one. It was so overwhelming and so awesome. The non-awesome thing was the pricing on these books. I was pretty disappointed by this because we have been to other sales run by this company, and their pricing was really reasonable. At this sale, hardcovers were $4 each, no matter what. Softcovers were $3. Oversized books were $6. Little paperbacks were $2. I’m sorry but if you have THAT MANY books in a house, you’re gonna want to make those prices a little lower. I grabbed a bunch of books but put a lot of them back once I saw the pricing list and the quantity throughout the rest of the house. 

Adam quickly moved through the house and I could tell he wanted to cry because he knew it would be a long visit. It was also hot as hell in the house because there was no AC and it was during a heat wave. 

There were a lot of vintage Heritage Press copies of classics, which can sell for a decent amount of money on eBay, especially if you get them for cheap (meaning, not $4 each). I ended up with just two–a copy of Pride and Prejudice, and a copy of The Moon and Sixpence. 

The Austen book sold right away–for $28. Woo! The Maugham didn’t sell, and I’m sort of surprised because it’s got some beautiful illustrations. Oh well. 

Even the basement was filled with books on every available surface.

The other cool thing that I saw in the main room (first picture) were these old wood carvings/molds that were hung on the wall. There were a few very large ones and then a bunch of small ones. The small ones were all marked $20 a piece, which seemed reasonable. I was interested because I know that primitive butter molds can be very valuable. If you ever seen something like this, and it’s cheap, BUY IT.

These things can sell for A LOT of money. 

I asked the people running the sale what they knew about the carvings. The company is a couple and their daughter who is a little younger than me, and the daughter immediately said, “I think they’re printing press blocks.” Adam and I just looked at each other because they clearly were not blocks used to print a design onto a flat surface–the pattern was cut into the wood–not sticking out from the wood. I tried explaining this to Erin in the car the other day and she lost her mind. YES, in both cases the design is carved INTO the wood. But the actual design of a stamp/press block sticks OUT from the rest of the wood, and in a mold, the design goes down INTO the wood. In other words, you put a stamp ON something to see the design, and with a mold, you put things INTO it, in order to get the design. This is simple to me, but Erin’s brain did not get it for about 20 minutes. 

Anyway, the dad interrupted and said, “No, I think they’re just decorative carvings from somewhere in Europe. I know they bought the whole lot at auction at Schmidt’s.” This made me more intrigued, because Schmidt’s is a fairly high-end auction house down the street from me. I ended up taking a risk and bought two of the molds, so we’ll see if they’re worth anything. 

The first says “PIG” in chalk on the back, and the second says “CHICKENS.” You have to use your imagination to see either of these animals in the wood. They’re up on eBay now, so we’ll see what happens! 

-Sarah 

Last Friday, I saw a listing for a sale that sounded amazing and awesome.  It was described as being on 12 acres and packed with antique delights.  I thought the sale looked so good in fact, that Sarah and I should make a special effort to leave extra early that day to get to it.  Sarah seemed to disagree:

The “look at my horse” part was related to the cast iron horse I blogged about the other day.  At this time, it was blowing up on ebay.

Anyway, we did end up going to this sale.  And Sarah did end up being partially right.  The sale was not 12 acres of treasures after all, but it was still a really great sale (Sarah will disagree on this part).  There was a lot of glassware/dishware, including Wedgwood and Johnson Brothers.  One of the “Game Birds” plates I featured on Thanksgiving was found at this sale. 

There was also cool taxidermy to look at, although it was priced really high.

And check out this pool!

That’s a big ass pool.  You could look down on it from nearly every room in the house.  

Anyway, the first item I found to buy was this old baseball game for my dad.  I don’t know why I didn’t just buy it and give it to him for Christmas.  Instead, I stupidly sent him a picture of it and said, “Do you want this?”  He was all excited and said that he did.

I also found these amazing bisque chickens from Germany.  Their legs are springs so they bob up and down.  They are in the kitchen near my egg scales. I am crazy about them.

I would love to have a whole army of these little chickens.  And maybe other farm animals with spring legs.  The man running this sale only charged me $2 for these, which was astounding because he was SUPER GRUMPY.  People kept asking him prices and he would exhale really loudly each time before answering.  He would then tell them some crazy price.  

After leaving this sale, we made our way to Huntington Woods.  I was leery of this sale right off the bat.  This bumper sticker greeted us:

WTF?  I don’t even understand what that means.

The inside of this sale actually felt like taking a beating.  It was really filthy and I instantly had asthma.  

Look at that poster hanging on the wall.  It was one of those old cat ones that says, “Hang in there!”  I felt like it was cheering me on, even though I was suffocating and my skin felt all itchy.

Oh hey, a car:

At one point during this sale, I saw some containers I thought were filled with old buttons.  I had found a similar container elsewhere that WAS filled with buttons.  When I opened these containers though, I found some super old rotten corn flakes.  Needless to say, I didn’t buy anything at this sale.  One cool thing I did see though were these old ticket stubs.  The person who went to these shows wrote on the back of each ticket who played:

Sarah got in a fight at this sale, so I’ll let her break that insanity down for you.  I also think she bought stuff here, which is even crazier than the fact that she got in a fight.

-Erin 

Update from Sarah: The first sale was seriously the worst. The guy who runs the company hosting the sale is such a turd. He prices things SO insanely high and is, as Erin described, ultra grumpy when you approach him or ask him anything. Hey bro! Answering my questions is your job! Erin doesn’t remember, but she left another sale he was running empty-handed and annoyed after he told her some crappy repro she was interested in was $100 or something insane like that.

I didn’t mind going I was just so confused about why Erin was so obsessed. The pictures looked bad to begin with, and the sale was no better in person. I bought three old books–two of them were Nancy Drews. I haven’t figured out if they’re first editions or not (they look like it!) but I’m going to be super careful before listing them because one time when I accidentally listed a Hardy Boys book as a first edition and it wasn’t, the Hardy Boys Police (eBay Unit) came after me hardcore.

Anyway, as I was saying, the sale was the worst. Here is proof:

These masking tape signs were all over the house and most of them said, as this one does, “Watch U Step.” Excuse me?

Actually, this one that was taped to a chandelier made me laugh.

I really like the added touch of the smiley.

Erin forgot a sale we went to in between the two she wrote about. I have two things to say about this sale. The first is that we each paid $15 for an item of clothing, which I believe is unprecedented. Erin bought a pair of pink Minnetonkas and when the woman told her they were $15, Erin looked at me and asked if she should buy them. The women said to her, “They sell these for $59 in Petosky. They’re worth it.” Oh really? You go to Petosky for your Minnetonkas? Because I just go to Marshall’s. I bought a Ralph Lauren sweater, but again, $15 is extremely and insanely expensive for an estate sale.

The second thing I’ll mention about this sale is that I spotted this silver rabbit platter that looks strikingly like kokopelli!

Of course I couldn’t remember that word, so I stared at the plate and excitedly said to Erin, “Look! It’s the Native American pipe man!!!!!” She had to sort of calm me down because the sale was high end and I was REALLY excited about spotting the pipe man, so I think she was a little embarrassed.

Erin is actually right about the last sale. It was dirty and gross, but I got a bunch of old photographs for $15. I haven’t really looked through them yet so I don’t know if they were a good buy. I also got this old set of J.D. Salinger paperbacks that’s in great shape, so that was a good find.

She did forget to mention the wonderful art throughout the house.

I’m not sure who would want to document a woman’s body in that position, but there you have it.

Check out the creeper.

Ok, so the “fight” that Erin mentioned was not really a fight… more of an “altercation.” Erin’s pictures accurately represent the condition of the basement of this house. I was unprepared for what awaited me down there, so when I got to the bottom of the stairs, I just made a sharp right and went into this room of junk. There were art supplies and boxes and just CRAP all over. I was really overwhelmed and saw this wicker hamper filled with old books in front of me. There was a woman nearby bending over a box on the floor.

I picked up one of the books in the hamper and she WHIPPED around and said, “HEY HEY HEY that’s all mine! OK, WHERE IS IT?!”–meaning, “Where is the book that you clearly just stole from me?” I was sort of stunned because as soon as she whipped around, she startled me and I had put the book back down immediately and raised my hands. I then looked at her and demonstrated how I had picked up the book and set it right back down, saying, “That is exactly what I just did. I’m sorry. I had no idea that this stuff was yours.” She said to me, “Oh, yeah because it’s not obvious!!!” Uh…. whut?

I said, “It’s really obvious that an overflowing basket of books belongs to someone when you’re in a hoarder’s basement?” She said, “That’s what I’m saying! Don’t you think it looks a little out of place?!?!” Clearly she thought that her items looked particularly special and not junky. I just stared at her in disbelief and then left the room.

Hopefully this weekend our adventures will be filled with less confrontation and kokopelli and more treasures and misspelled signs.