Dig This Treasure!

Right before I broke my toe, one of my best friends told me that her mom (who I know pretty well) had a bunch of stuff at home that she was interested in getting rid of, that once belonged to her mother and aunt. I agreed to help her out by looking at the stuff and listing those things that were valuable (while taking a small cut of the profit).

I started listing some of the items last weekend. She had this cool, super old B.F. Goodrich rubber hot water bottle that had really lovely advertising (the box was in great shape, had all it’s paperwork, etc.) I didn’t think it was worth anything but Adam insisted that someone would want it because it was in such good shape and the advertising was so clean. 

I got it all set up and took out all of the attachments, etc. I don’t know if I’m dense or naive or both, but I almost died when, while taking pictures, I noticed this: 

In case you have poor eyesight, that says, “Douche and enema pipes and fittings for syringe use.” I’m not sure WHAT I thought all of the piping and attachments were for (filling the water bottle?!) but I had NO CLUE. 

I had just handled said attachments and so I promptly ran downstairs screaming, “ADAM! ADAM! ADAM!!!!” I explained what had just occurred and he said, “You didn’t know that’s what that was?!” NO I DID NOT. 

Also, another lesson was learned. That sucker sold for $41 and had a ton of watchers/bidders (including someone named something like RonPoo567… no joke), so apparently people like to collect old enema bags. Don’t think I’ll be selling another one anytime soon, though. 

Stay tuned–I’m selling a lot of other cool things for my friend’s mom so I’ll feature those another day. 

-Sarah

Ok, so last week I had some crazy bad ebay luck.  I’m going to blame this on bad karma I racked up by telling this guy on my street that he “looks more pregnant than me.”  (I’m huge.)  I know, I know, so awful.  In my defense, his dog chased George and I across the street and this is the second time it has happened.  This guy refuses to leash or fence his dog.  And he told me to “Get a Life,” when I asked why he can’t restrain his animal.  Before you all give up hope on me, I am remorseful and did cry about it.  ANYWAY, that still didn’t stop the bad ebay karma.

The good news is that my bad ebay luck has some good lessons for all of us.  So hold on to your butts, here are my takeaways:

The first item that was a huge bust for me was this Captain Hook marionette.  You may remember him from this sale.  I paid $10 for him and he sold for $8.  While only $2, a loss is a loss, and losses add up.  The lesson here is that condition matters…a lot.  When I saw this guy at the sale, I thought he had the right amount of age and wear to make him look extra vintage-y cute.  

Except that I didn’t notice he is completely missing his left hand…you know, the one with the hook…the one that makes him CAPTAIN HOOK.  Oy.  Seriously people, take the extra 30 seconds and look things over closely.

Last week, I also bought this cool porcelain bathing beauty lady.  She had this mark on the bottom which I figured I could just google and find the maker.  No such luck.  This mark proved impossible to locate.  I spent $20 on her and she sold for $26.  Not a loss, but I really thought this lady would end up as one of our “money makers.”

The lesson here is that if you don’t know what you have, no one else will.  I couldn’t properly advertise this item on ebay because I didn’t know the maker.  To top it off, I didn’t even realize that this was actually The Little Mermaid, which one of our readers pointed out to me in our comments section.  A double whammy.  I could have taken this to a porcelain store, or asked about it on a message board before I listed it, but I got too hasty.

Ok, so seriously, know what something is before you buy it.  Or try REALLY HARD to figure out what something is before you list it.  I bought the metal sign (?) above for $10 and it sold for $9.99.  Again, I didn’t know what I had.  This thing is obviously Stag Tobacco related, but is it a sign?  Or is is an uncut sheet of metal used to make tins?  Is it a mold of some sort?  Who the hell knows.  I sure as heck didn’t, and I paid the price for that.  

Are you feeling bad for me yet?  This is a lot of ebay failure for one week.  Hang in there, I’ve got more.  I bought these Ohio State glasses for $3 each and the pair sold for $6.99.  The lesson here is to know your buyer.  I bought these because Ohio State stuff is usually mega collectible.  What I didn’t realize though, is that it is specific Ohio State stuff.  

You see, mostly men collect sports stuff.  And I’m sorry to generalize, but it seems to me that men like old ticket stubs, programs, pennants, etc.  Not drinking glasses apparently.  So my cups just didn’t appeal to collectors like other memorabilia would have.

So to top it off, I also sold a pair of candlesticks for $9.99.  I paid $10 for them.  This was particularly frustrating to me because the same pair had sold the week prior on ebay for $40.  I blame this on my bad karma.  I also blame my karma for the fact that one of the candlesticks broke during shipping, and I had to refund the buyer.

Seriously, some bad buys (and bad luck) here!  I hope all of you are having much better ebay successes.  And to save my ego, be sure to take a look here, here, and here for some of my greatest ebay sales.  Trust me, I used to be the ebay master.

-Erin

On Monday, I hit up the secret auction with Adam and we met my parents there. As I’ve said in the past, this auction often has a mix of garbage and gems. But that night, basically everything up for auction was hilarious. 

Saw these homies right away. They were each about 2 feet tall. 

I have a deep love for Beavis and Butthead so this was really hard to resist. 

Nothing better than a Tweety Bird needlepoint. 

That, my friends, is a HUGE plastic Halloween mask–the eye holes are up in the hat area. 

In the end, I came away with a cool set of playing cards with naked ladies on them, and a pile of paper, including this awesome antique invite to a “social hop”!

There were two things that Adam wanted, both of which sold for way too much money. First, there was an Eddie Cantor game amongst these huge piles of old games. Someone ended up buying each stack for between $70 and $40, and the pile with Eddie Cantor went for the most. 

But the main thing Adam wanted was this box of NES games in their original packaging. He was most excited about this lot because it contained a Flinstones game, and one of the two NES Flinstones games is worth a boatload. 

This box contained the less valuable game, but still probably would have had a high resell value. However, it ended up going for $90. C'mon y'all. 

-Sarah

While I’m stuck being semi-reclusive (and I have a job where I have partial summers off), I’ve decided that I need to try to list as much as I can on eBay before I have to go back to work in the fall. There have been many occasions where Erin and I discover that we have something valuable that we had no idea was worth anything, and that’s what this post is about. 

Sometime in the winter, Erin and I hit up a sale where I spotted this very cute handmade toy ark. 

The top opens up and holds all of the little animals, and the bottom also opens up and reveals a tiny staircase and more storage. It’s so cute. I bought it for $15 and thought I might keep it, but then realized that one Noah’s Ark is enough. (You’re welcome, Adam.) 

One of the reasons I bought it, was that it was marked “Made in Germany” on the bottom. I’ve learned from my mom that things made in Germany or Sweden are often very collectable and people running sales often don’t know this because there are so many new cheap reproductions. Anyhow, in the process of looking this up before listing it, I was very pleased to discover that some of these old handmade German arks are worth LOTS of money.

I’m not going to count any eggs before they hatch, and I don’t think mine has as much character or age as some of the others I’ve found, but there are already 32 people watching this thing. So I’ll keep my fingers crossed!

In the meantime, check out some of the coolest ones I found while doing my research. 

I want them all!

-Sarah

Last week, Erin wrote about that awesome folk art sale we went to twice, and I wrote about one find that ended up making me some serious money. But I forgot to tell you all about the cool things that I bought to keep!

The first day we went there, I was really overwhelmed because things were priced on the high side and there were so many things I wanted. I came away with two dog carvings. Erin spotted both of them for me. I love this one so much:

Looks like a Brittany Spaniel, and that’s close enough to a beagle for me!

The other dog statue I think Erin also found, and it’s mechanical:

When you turn the crank, the dogs mouth opens and closes, and his tail spins. Adam loves anything mechanical in nature, so I thought he might like it but I was unsure of the face. He ended up loving it, so score for me!

I also bought this two-drawer box. I’m not sure how old it is but I really like it and will probably put it in my living room and keep junk in it.

I’m sure Adam is thrilled to hear that.

On the day we went back, I mainly bought stuff to resell, and once I saw that the woman there was making deals, I stepped up my game. I came away with a poster I saw on the first day that I thought was funny.

I also bought this doll that was priced $95, but sold to me for $30.

I also bought these adorable wool dolls to resell. Here’s a picture that I took of them cuddling.

Besides the Tigers slides that I sold, the case of slides I purchased also had a ton of other slides in it, and I sold the case and slides for $150. I separated the slides into groups by theme—adults, kids, cars, etc. So that was my most fruitful purchase. If you ever see a bunch of those slides for cheap, snatch ‘em up! People collect them. Here are a few of my favorite pics from the group.

Love me some kids being weirdos.

Finally, Adam dropped some major bones at this sale. But we’ll save his find for another day, because it was really unique and interesting!

-Sarah

Adam and I met up with my parents at our old fave Tecumseh auction on Sunday, and I’m still kicking myself for this one. Toward the end of the auction, they put this big box up and said it was a “stimulator”… it just looked like a big meter/reader in a box–that you’d measure electrical current with or something. The bids started low and my mom turned around and said, “I think that’s a shock therapy machine!" 

I thought she was full of it but it turns out, she was right. A guy and his wife who were sitting next to us won the thing for $300 and told me it was the one thing they came to the auction to buy. When they were given the box, I asked what it was and the told me it was a machine to give someone a lobotomy. I think you’ve got that a lil’ confused, brosef.

Anyway, I knew what he meant, and I had also heard one of the auction helpers say he saw one like it sell on eBay for $999.99. I also ignored this because the people who work at that place often have no idea what they’re talking about. That’s what makes it so fun. 

But it turns out that he was RIGHT! One identical to it sold for a grand a few days ago!

Here are some more pics so you can check it out… 

So, the moral of the story is… keep your eyes peeled for old medical devices! 

-Sarah

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 

Yo dawgs! Someone called me a c#nt tonight! Twice! 

Aww… Buddy! You messed that sh*t up at the end! 

This person is referring to the post I wrote today about the woman who asked me 1000 questions about some dolls I had for sale on eBay. 

Erin texted me about this anonymous “question” before I saw it in my inbox. 

So the icing on the cake is that I received ANOTHER annoying message about those stupid dolls earlier tonight!!  

Raggedy Ann Police in the hizzy! I like how she acknowledges their cuteness in the middle of her tirade. 

For the record, I actually wasn’t very nice in response to this eBay user because clearly she is a bully. So that C#nt-Caller probably should have saved his insult for now. 

-Sarah

Update from Erin: Ebay has definitely weathered us.  Our tolerance is low.  We are beat down and broken.  

That said, I am SO GLAD this person won’t be shopping from Sarah (and hopefully not from me either).  They sound like the type of person who would buy a $5 item, say that it broke in transit, and then ask if we bought insurance on it.  No, we didn’t buy insurance BECAUSE THE ITEM COST FIVE DOLLARS.  Then you ask them for a photo of the broken piece so that you can confirm it is in fact broken (and then you refund their money), and they never send a pic because they are actually lying.

Of course, this is all contingent on them actually paying you for the item in the first place when they win the auction, which lots of people don’t.  

Warning, I’m feelin’ a little sassy today, folks.  

It’s been a while since either of us complained about a buyer on eBay. Remember when Erin pwned that crazy guy who tried to buy her Apple Newtons? I just re-read that and LOLed at her message back to him, so be sure to read it if you’re new to this blog. 

Anyway, (potential) buyers do lots of annoying things on eBay, but this one put me over the edge today. 

I found these dolls at a garage sale the same day Erin freaked out about seeing nachos. 

I actually noticed them and couldn’t decide if I wanted them, but then when I got back to the car, I decided that I did want them, and I made Erin go back and buy them for me. Say what you want about these cuties, but I love their little expressions and they are SO soft. 

Anyway, they’re up on eBay now, they end later tonight, and I received this message this morning: 

Normally, I’ll have someone ask me ONE of these questions (Can I pay later than the terms of the auction? Can you ship a different way? Etc.), but the fact that she asked me approximately 100 questions just made me crazy. For sh*ts and giggles, let’s make a list of what she asked me: 

1. Do the dolls have rips?
2. Do the dolls have mends?
3. Do the dolls have stains? 
4. Do the dolls have fading?
5. Basically, can you describe these dolls to me as if I am Helen Keller, since my computer is so old that it does not show images? 
6. Can I pay you a week later than you explicitly say you need payment in your listing? 
7. Can you ship these dolls USPS priority, which you do not offer in your listing?
8. Can you tell me how much it will cost to ship these dolls USPS priority (which you do not offer) to my specific address? 

I’m glad you have 100% feedback. You should not. 

Shockingly, I was very kind to her in my response, but please, if you buy things on eBay, don’t do this to a seller. 

-Sarah