Loungin'
We’ve been having a lot of luck at auctions lately, but estate sales as of late, especially for me, have been disappointing. Last Friday, I was hoping this would all change. There were tons of sales, and some looked pretty decent. We set out first to Huntington Woods because the house looked packed with old stuff.
There was a lot of old stuff, just nothing very exciting. This thing in the foreground above was a knitting machine, but it looked all broken. It would be very neat to see it in action though.
Everything at this sale was just “stuff.” Stuff we didn’t really have a use for, and stuff that we couldn’t resell. I did see this though:
And a questionable coloring book page:
And this doll that looks like Sarah:
This doll reminds me of every Friday when Sarah says, “Can you tell I didn’t shower?” and then I say, “Yes, yes I can.”
Speaking of Sarah, she found this:
And can you believe she didn’t buy it for me?! RUDE.
I didn’t buy anything at this sale, or at the next sale actually. This one was in Ferndale, at the same location as the Girl Scout sale a few weeks ago.
Looks like Sarah is holding some porcelain dogs in the photo above (shocking). I don’t know if she bought them. Everything else here looked like thrift store overflow. And to top it off, our favorite jabber jaws (you know, “THAT GUY”) was here shopping. I overheard him telling a story about stealing from another sale. In this story, he explained how his crime was totally justified. Here was his logic:
“That guy” went to a sale and it was a totally packed “digger” sale. He rummaged through a bunch of stuff, found something super valuable (I think he said it was something gold or silver), and took it to the register to ask for the price. They told him a couple hundred dollars. He then said to the sellers, “This is the last time I work so hard to rummage through stuff for you and find the good stuff you’ve missed. How dare you try to rip me off with that price. Next time, I won’t be bringing the item up to you after I find it.” "That guy" then proceeds to tell his buddy how sure enough at the next sale run by these sellers he dug up a fine, fancy treasure and pocketed it.
Not okay. Not even like a little bit ok.
We left this sale and noticed a vintage store nearby. We stopped in and I lounged on this spaceship chair:
Sarah tripped over a table in this place and knocked it over. I looked the other way while repeating, “Don’t knock stuff over.” We scooted out of there right after and headed to our next sale, which I don’t remember the location of. The house was adorable though:
There were all of these dollhouse room diorama things:
This one reminded me of the style in our house:
Sarah made some good finds at this house, but again, I came up empty handed. I couldn’t believe it! I hadn’t bought anything all day! We had one more house to visit, and when we got there, things didn’t look promising.
Hmm, I don’t need any bullets. And we all know I hate shells.
I did find two treasures. They weren’t magnificent, but they were treasures nonetheless. First up was this set of vintage duck drinking glasses:
I put these up on ebay because I saw that others like them sold for about $30.
I also found this tablecloth, which if I remember correctly is Polish.
I only spent $8 this day, which is nice, but like I said, I am really itching for some better scores!
-Erin
Update from Sarah: Even I didn’t spend much on this trip, which is unheard of. At the first sale, I found the two best things in the place, which were this adorable sweater and a Napco planter:
I could tell Erin was super jealous of this find. She made me promise to give it to her if I didn’t want it anymore. The Napco planter features Mary and Jeezo. It’s so cute! But I’m going to sell it. I guess Jesus was last week’s theme.
When I parked the car at the second sale, I looked in my rear view mirror and saw my mom crossing the street with her friend Joyce. As mentioned before, my mom and her friend have become estate sale junkies ever since my mom first came with us to a few sales in the summer. She had a giant box of stuff in her hands, which is more proof that we are related. I had never met Joyce and wanted to, so Erin and I ran across the (main, busy) road and I began waving my hands wildly to get my mom’s attention. You could tell my mom just thought I was a wild maniac stranger until she opened the car door and got a closer look. In her defense, I did have on a giant puffy coat and huge sunglasses. We actually bumped into them again later in the day, which tells you something about the sale quality–there were only a few good ones.
Anyway, I bought some dog statues and a cool vintage drinking glass featuring “Miss Miracle Mile” from Traverse City. It’s not dated but my guess is 1950s.
At the cute house, I bought two things but one of them I want to feature separately. Here’s the other:
Nothing in the house was priced, so when I checked out the woman told me these were $3. That’s pretty outrageous but I paid it because they were brand new in a box and one of my dogs recently chewed apart all of my cork coasters. And these ones are super adorable.
At the last sale, I found a few cool things. A vintage Diane von Furstenberg plaid flannel shirt, some old colored vinyl children’s records, and some cool wrapping paper.
I also bought another cool antique wedding portrait with something written in another language (Polish, Swedish, Slovak?) on the back side.
I tried Google Translate with no luck. Anyone know what it says?
Cold Ones Left
So as you heard, this past weekend was the big DTT garage sale. I’ve been really busy with work lately, so this was a good chance to relax outside with some beers and meet the neighbors. It was also a good chance for Sarah to sell a million things you’ve seen her buy on this blog.
We were rolling pretty deep with items, but neither of us thought to take a photo at the start of the sale. Here’s a pic though after we sold a whole bunch of things.
The garage was packed full too, mostly with knick-knacks, art, and housewares.
There were definitely some hilarious moments. I had some unopened pepper spray that I bought back when a creepy man was breaking into my apartment in Dexter and moving stuff around. I told everyone ahead of time that I would sell the pepper spray to anyone except teenage boys. Literally five minutes into the sale, a group of teens came up to us with spray in hand. I made the nerds promise that they wouldn’t spray anyone with it (yeah right), and if they did, then to tell everyone they bought the spray at any sale except ours.
That wasn’t the only questionable transaction. Zach gave 2 old ladies some beer to take with them, which they then announced they “would drink in the car.” Um, no. That seems not okay. That’s about as “not okay” as selling pepper spray to teenage boys.
Speaking of Zach, here is a picture of him modeling a sweater vest and scarf at the sale.
At some point, Sarah and I convinced Zach and Adam to watch the sale while we went to shop around at some others in the neighborhood. We weren’t finding any treasures, but we did meet some baby ducks.
Here’s me holding one of these adorable dummies.
Turns out that ducks actually make really good pets. Their owner said that ducks are super loyal and snuggly. After this interaction, I wanted a duck for like the next hour or so, and then I forgot about them and went back to wanting a dog.
The day was not without tragedy though. While out shopping, Sarah tripped on some uneven concrete because she was busy texting and walking. Here she is with the front of her toe ripped off and sitting on the ground trying not to pass out. My parents had gone to get some bandaids from the neighbors, but they were walking slow and probably shopping some sales before they made it back to us 10 minutes later.
Good thing my mom was mysteriously carrying a towel around when this happened, because it stopped Sarah from bleeding out right there.
Alright, here’s the last story I’ll share. At one sale, this little girl was selling popcorn and bottled water. I ordered up a water from her and she opened her little cooler to grab one. She then looked at me and said, “We only have cold ones left. Is that okay?” I told the little minion that a cold one would do, but to never pull that shit on me again in the future. Cold water? What is this? Soviet Russia?
Here is Sarah and I at the end of the sale, celebrating our massive success.
And here is a photo from moments before of Sarah yelling at me for the way I was holding my money wad.
It’s not my fault that I had so much money that it wouldn’t fit properly in my little muffin hands.
-Erin
Update from Sarah:
First clarification I want to make: I was trying to text a picture of those ducks to Adam when I had my toe accident.
I don’t have a whole lot to add, but I do wish that we had taken a picture of the sale set up. It was so busy during the “preview” (the neighborhood is invited to come out Friday night between 6:30 and 9 to get first dibs) and all day Saturday, that it didn’t even occur to me. Also it was raining most of the night Friday but people were still extremely compelled to come buy our garbage.
We had many run-ins with cheapskates, but my favorite person was this teenager (I didn’t realize he was a teenager until a little while into his visit). When he got to our sale, he kept telling us how our sign really enticed him and made him come to our sale. At first I didn’t realize he was a sort of awkward kid (he almost seemed like maybe he was homeschooled, but after our extensive conversations with him, we discovered he wasn’t), so I told him that if he knew anyone who wanted some playboys from the ‘70s and '80s to send them my way. He got all weird and quiet and told me he wouldn’t be able to bring those through his front door. Then I realized that he must still live with his parents.
Two hours later he came back and had a very long conversation with Zach and kept hovering around our table. After 45 minutes he said to me, “well, I went home and talk to my sister about THOSE THINGS [my emphasis] you mentioned and she said, 'I thought all boys your age have those’ so I decided to come back and buy some.” But he just kept standing there, not selecting any of my choice '70s porn. Finally, he handed me a $5 bill and said, “I’m going to buy five” and pulled out his own plastic bag!!! I told him to pick some good ones. My friend Matt made a good point yesterday when I was telling him the story. If we really wanted to do that poor kid a favor, we would have given him a free NetZero trial and upgraded his porn for him. He’s going to be so confused the first time he sees a real live naked woman.
So I bring this kid up because he had mentioned that his own garage sale wasn’t that successful so far. When Erin and I started walking around looking at the other sales, I noticed his right away–there were like 14 kids running this sale (see? homeschool!) and I immediately noticed a giant box of Legos. I called Adam and before I could get the words, “big box of Legos for $20” out of my mouth, he said yes. I asked them if they’d take $15. In retrospect, this was a pretty bogus thing to do to kids but all is fair when it comes to Legos.
The best thing is that on Sunday when Adam was sorting through this massive quantity of Legos…
…he found this:
A toof!
Oh one last thing: Turns out that one of Erin’s neighbors was a Playboy Bunny at the Detroit Playboy Club (Mandy)! She gave us her contact info and invited us over to take some pictures of all her old bunny stuff and interview her! SWEET!