Dig This Treasure!

On Saturday night, Zach and I ventured out with Timmy and my sister, Lindsay.  Our plan was to attend our favorite honey hole–the Plymouth auction.  When we showed up though, things looked less than appealing:

It was pretty much all militaria, which none of us collect or know anything about.  Plus, military collectibles always sell for high prices, whether they are really worth it or not.  

There were also the usual garbage-y items, like this hilarious dinner tray:

There were a few cool items at the auction, but none worth sticking around for.  I’ll share them here though:

This soap box derby trophy from the 1950s was so cool and would look neat in our house.  We don’t have much room though, and I have no real attachment to soap box derbies.  

I bet this Captain Kangaroo tent would be an easy resell on ebay.  I figured it would sell for a high price though at the auction because it is so darn cute. 

Have you ever seen a Teddy bear with sleepy eyes?  I haven’t!  

It was in rough shape though, which makes sense because I think it was crazy old.

So we left the auction before it even started and decided to get dinner instead.  My sister ordered this meat and potato sandwich that was bigger than Everett’s head:

While at dinner, my dad remembered that there was another auction this night in Redford, only a few miles away.  It was being held at a comic book shop, but the auction apparently had other items too.  We raced over there.

I was shocked at how empty the place was!  And how amazing the items looked!  There was a mix of old Detroit Tigers items, comics, pin-up girl memorabilia, Confederate money, and photographs.  

What was nice was that the store itself was still open, so you could shop all of their merchandise while watching the auction.  Zach ended up buying a bunch of records.

Timmy ended up buying a whole boatload of Detroit Tigers items.  Everything was selling for less than $20, so this auction was true heaven.  Total, my dad spent less than $100 and had a whole armful of items to show for it.  

Here he is watching the auction and wearing a camouflage shirt.  I don’t know when my dad started wearing camouflage, but it is certainly a recent development. He’s not a hunter, but maybe this is a new Fall fashion trend?

Anyway, here are some things Timmy bought:

My sister by far got the best item of the night.  It was this little animal book with a bunch of fold out pieces inside.  It is seriously adorable.

I didn’t end up buying anything, even though they did have this giant cardboard cutout of me there:

I’m looking good, I know.

-Erin

Erin and I went out sale-ing today (Thursday) with her dad, Timmy, who has been featured on our blog in the past. Her dad loves treasure hunting too–he’s a pro. Anyway, I was charged with making our list of sales as usual, and unfortunately I served us up with some real duds. 

We decided to start in Detroit (almost to GrossePointe) at a house that was advertised as having a lot of nautical themed items, because it was on the water. Unfortunately, it didn’t really have a whole lot going on. I came out of there with this big bag of overpriced vintage cards, but I didn’t mind too much because I enjoy going through them. However, when I asked the younger kid working the sale if he’d go lower on the price, he said no and that that was a “great price” for what it was. Uhm, no it’s not. 

After paying too much money for those cards, we stopped by a weird sale being held at what I think was a vintage resale shop closing down, called Little Vera. Sounds like the same girl who runs Good Girls Go to Paris Crepes was a partner in this store–their original location was next door to the shop. 

I found a few cool looking comic books for Adam to look at and then me to resell, along with a first edition Nightmare Before Christmas book… not sure if either of these things are worth anything, but I figured they’d be fun to look at regardless. 

Then we went to a house where I came out with nothing except two free cookies (I know–weird but good.) Here is something that I did not buy, but that Erin and I laughed and laughed about: 

After leaving this dud, we went to lunch and had some delicious food. The last sale on our list was in West Bloomfield, and it looked like a “man sale”–meaning, there were a lot of electronics in the pictures. However, I convinced Erin and her dad that this would be a good sale to go to because of the sheer quantity of items. Turns out I was wrong about that, but I did find some crazy stuff. First, an x-rated puzzle: 

I also found a bunch of records for Adam. I told him that I just looked for the weirdest looking ones and bought those. 

I also bought this record, and it turns out not only does Adam already own it, but so does Zach. Anyone else dying to take this off my hands?

Here are some items at this last sale that I did not purchase: 

Even though there weren’t a lot of treasures to be found, it was still a fun day! 

-Sarah

Update from Erin: “Dig this Dud” was a joke from my dad, who kept saying that we should change the name of the blog.  He only found 2 treasures yesterday and calling them “treasures” is quite a stretch.  He got a box of old paintbrushes (that he can use “for glue”) and an old San Francisco bank because he is going there in September.

I was equally empty handed.  My only good find was a pair of vintage Clubmaster Ray Ban sunglasses that I got for $5.  Unfortunately, they have prescription lenses, so I have to get those replaced before I can sell them.  They sell for quite a bit, but I might also keep them because they are adorable and fancy.

I am kind of glad we went to the first sale even though it was a letdown.  The house, as Sarah mentioned, was on the water.  This was the coolest.  Waterfront property in Detroit?  So cool.  The house itself was for sale, at a mere $92,000.  Here is the backyard with water access and a boathouse:

And as for the last sale, I’m not sure if Sarah captured its essence well enough.  Every room was literally boxes and boxes of broken electronics pieces, other junk, and records. They only had a portion of the house open for this weekend’s sale and it was so packed that I can’t imagine what’s waiting in the other rooms. Also, the homemade video tapes that Sarah showed were in full effect.  We’re talking hundreds of tapes.  This is just a sample:

All of the boxes on the left were tapes, just FYI.  Anyway, I didn’t buy any of these because I don’t actually know what a VHS tape is.  I only watch my programs on giant laser discs.  

There were also thousands of cassette tapes for sale.  Again, I don’t know what a cassette tape is, but they were selling them for $2 EACH, which seems slightly unreasonable.

Update from Sarah: Turns out that the x-rated puzzle was missing pieces so it wound up in the trash. Adam still managed to put together part of the woman side, though. Can you guess which part? Also, when he was sorting the pieces, he exclaimed, “Found a testicle!"