Dig This Treasure!

Two Saturdays ago, Sarah and I ventured out to two sales that looked kind of alright.  The first one turned out to be just plain weird.

(I cannot GET OVER how weird this cross stitch is.) 

I’m not sure what the deal was with these people.  They seemed kind of churchy.  I think Sarah mentioned that the man of the house was a principal or something.  Anyway, they didn’t really have much for us to buy.  I kind of wanted this spaceship pinata, but it was stained:

I also don’t really like outer space.  Anyway, I didn’t buy anything here, although I am sure Sarah did.  I’ll let her indulge you.

As for the second sale, it was much better.  There was definitely stuff to buy.  The problem was, we couldn’t really get to any of it.  IT WAS SO CROWDED.  They seriously let like my entire high school graduating class into this house.  It was insane.  I couldn’t move at all.

The other issue was that there was a staff of people working this sale hell bent on rearranging and organizing things as this hoard of people was trying to shop.  So you’d finally get a chance to look at a shelf of things, and suddenly a worker bee grandma would step in front of you to tidy up the porcelain figurines. 

Sarah was in heaven because there were tons of books and paper items.  Note the sunglasses AGAIN on her head.  Seriously, if Sarah had a dollar for every photo she did NOT have sunglasses on her head, she would be broke.

I bought one thing at this sale.  A tiny trinket box featuring a sheepdog.  It is in my trinket box collection now.

-Erin

Update from Sarah: Out of all the weird pictures we took of that first sale, I cannot believe Erin left this one out.

Why didn’t one of us buy this to save as a white elephant gift?!

Also, Erin spotted this guy and said it looked like something I would want. Turns out I already own that exact dude, so her Sarah-dar is totally on point.

Anyway, this sale was a major bust but I did buy that awesome folder full of notes, as well as the following: 

What you’re looking at there, friends, is a JUKEBOX TISSUE HOLDER. Fits in with my existing collection of plastic canvas needlepoint goods. AND I didn’t realize this until this past weekend but there’s a built-in button on the back that plays a little tune when you press it! Stellar craftsmanship. 

At the second sale, I felt incredibly overwhelmed. There was some cool stuff, but… it’s all relative. The sales lately have truly been BAD, both because of the contents but also because there aren’t that many, so everyone who goes saleing ends up at the same 5 sales and has to elbow their way around. I got really excited when we got into the attic of the house, because there were boxes and boxes of paper.

But it ended up being a bunch of high school drama club stuff, which I’m not into. It was a real letdown. 

Because she’s a good friend, Erin gave me this envelope of negatives. 

I also found some photographs and books, but nothing worth writing home about. The real highlight of the day came when we ate Mexican food with a bunch of babies. 

That is a picture of me holding Everett, while he gazes lovingly at this girlfriend, Emily. She’s the daughter of our friend Jen who did our Cash & Cari dirty work last month. No sunglasses on my dome in that shot! Erin does owe me a dollar after all. Also, look how big that baby is now! 

This is, hands down, one of my favorite ever greeting card finds. These fold-out cards seem to have been popular in the 1950s. I found a ton of them from “Jim” to his “honey” (AKA Goldie) and vice versa, back when I unearthed that giant lot of greeting cards a very long time ago. They were all kept in envelopes so that’s why they’re in such good shape. 

Even though it’s sexist and all, I still love it. It captures the time period perfectly, and I just adore the design style that was popular during this time period. I also love that almost all cards to and from adults contained cartoon animals in clothes. 

-Sarah

We are working on a post from this past Saturday. In the meantime, I’m going to share something awesome that I found while we were out. We went to two sales and the first was a real dud, but when we were in the basement, I spotted a bunch of file folders containing lots of paper–news clippings, notes, etc. This caught my eye: 

Mom’s poems sounded like they were worth investigating. I bought this envelope of poems, along with a file folder full of clippings, with this note at the top: 

As it turns out, Mom’s poems are super boring. They’re all about God. HOWEVER, the other file folder did not disappoint. It contained clippings and notes belonging to a retired elementary school principal, and the “amusing school notes” he saved are incredible. So I think for a while, I’m going to post a note or two from his collection, for your enjoyment. First up is this little note: 

-Sarah

Whoa. I was just looking through tomorrow’s sales and discovered a sale where, I swear to god, the woman only owned purple clothing. 

Now, I think we all know who lives here: 

Am I right? 

-Sarah

On Friday, Sarah and I decided to just hit one nearby sale because we weren’t sure if it was going to snow.  The photos for the sale looked pretty good,  but when we showed up, it seemed like everything had been sold already.  This is interesting because we later heard that a dude who was first in line for the sale walked in the house to mysteriously find several items from the sale photos already marked “sold” or missing from the house completely.  Not cool.

There were some old things, but also some pretty lame stuff.  And there was only one room so it felt very garage sale-y.

Someone please tell me how to know if a head vase is collectible!  These were all marked around $30, which seemed like a steep risk to take on trying to resell them. 

Same with Raggedy Anns.  Are these ever collectible?

The annoying thing about this sale is that the people running it clearly thought I was some sort of poor person vagabond.  EVERY TIME I touched something, before I could even focus my eyes to see it clearly, the people would go, “OH, THAT’S FIFTY DOLLARS."  The insinuation here is that I can’t afford that so I better hurry up and put the damn thing down.  It was very rude and awkward.  When they kept doing it to me, I would say, "Oh, OK” and then continue to fondle the item for many moments before putting it down. 

It happened with this tin cat toy thing that I thought was cute.  I later looked the thing up on ebay and it is definitely not worth $50.

I did end up buying one thing at this sale that was shockingly priced at a reasonable $5. It is a Fisher Price Happy Hoppers roll toy thing.  I figured Everett could play with it when he eventually starts walking.

We were pretty disappointed that this sale was a letdown so we decided to swing by that weird warehouse place where I bought the Pabst Beer Sign. 

I’ll let Sarah discuss this place more, but what turned out to be crazy was that any item we found to buy was either “going in an auction later that night” or “going up on eBay."  So basically, they opened this place up to the public and then wouldn’t let us buy any of their stuff.  Oy.

Things they probably would have let us buy include this guy, who is clearly craving a home in a garbage can:

And they might have let Sarah buy this frog she was OBSESSED with, but being a good friend, I wouldn’t let her buy it.

So gross.

-Erin

Update from Sarah: Oh, so the truth comes out, does it? Erin told me that frog was cute but that it would end up in our next garage sale. What a liar! Here’s a cuter picture of it. 

It was soft and shaggy and unique. 

Erin started rummaging through this area behind a bar-like structure in the building and I questioned whether she should be there, but figured she was an adult. I spied these weird anti-drug posters from the ‘70s and admired them for a minute. 

I also admired these "cassingles." 

In all seriousness, there was a bag of antique photographs on a table and I asked how much they were. The guy at the place told me he had to call his boss and ask. When she returned his call, he informed me that they weren’t for sale–they were going to be sold at their auction that started at 5 p.m. Erin was incensed and then asked the guy, "Can you tell me exactly what is for sale in here?” and he told her that basically anything else in the building was up for grabs. WTF? 

So the best thing is that late Saturday night, I get a barrage of texts from Erin: 

Yes indeed you are reading that correctly–they are trying to sell those posters for $600. 

The joke was on us, however, when we looked at their completed listings. 

Excuse me while I vomit. 

They made sure to explicitly state that the penis pump AND sanitary underpants were both UNUSED. YEAH. RIGHT. Ughughghghghghg. 

In all seriousness… we might not want to know the answer to this question but… we sort of do. Why would anyone want old sanitary underpants? 

On Friday, Sarah and I were eager to hit a sale in Farmington Hills because it had a bunch of Herend fishnet animals.  Ok, so I was more excited than Sarah, but she still seemed interested in the other items at the sale.  Everything in the photos looked high-end and collectible.  The sale was run by the same people who put on that amazing folk art sale where we scored some mega deals.

Sure enough, the person who owned this house had expensive taste.

That lamp was so badass, but it was priced $395 :(

As for the Herend I mentioned earlier, I didn’t buy any because it was all priced pretty close to retail.  I decided to return to this sale on Sunday when they were discounting.  Unfortunately by then someone had already scooped up all of the fishnet pieces!  That’s what I get for singing the praises of Herend on this blog!  Now everyone loves it.  Sheesh!

I did buy one piece of non-fishnet Herend.  This tiny rabbit box for $20:

I know, that is about the most precious thing you have ever seen.

One more story about this sale is that Sarah got busted by the police on our way home.  She made a questionable pass through a yellow/red light and a cop car started following us.  He didn’t put on his lights right away so Sarah and I were living in terror for a good couple minutes. 

Finally, the lights and sirens went on and Sarah and I sat in scared silence as we waited for the cops to approach.  I thought about asking Sarah what she was going to say to the cop, but I realized she was silently freaking out so I figured it best to just keep my mouth shut.  I’m sure she appreciated that gesture.

Then the weirdest thing happened and this young, cool dude cop strolled up and said all nonchalantly, “Watch those yellow lights ok?"  And then he started to walk away!  Sarah was like, "Do you want to see my stuff?” (meaning her license, etc.)  He said, “No, I already know who you are.”

So then the BEST thing happened.  I said really loudly and shocked to Sarah, “YOU KNOW HIM?!?!"  In my brain, they were like high school buddies or something.  Sarah pointed out that I was in fact the dumbest person of all time and that the cop simply meant he had already run her license plate and knew her name and info.

DUH.

-Erin

Update from Sarah: Erin covered this sale expertly. The only thing I’ll add here is… yes, these people are very nice and get lots of very nice high end sales. But sometimes I want to take items up to them and say, 

For example: 

Yo, dawg. A full sheet set should cost about $10 at an estate sale. FORTY FIVE DOLLARS? And we all know that Style&co. is the cheapo Macy’s brand. It’s not like those are some high quality Calvin Klein sheets. The things that are most offensively overpriced at their sales are things like this! Everyday items that do not need to be marked up a billion dollars. 

I did buy one item at this sale. A very cute, super fat "art glass” bunny (that’s what it said on the tag.) It was marked $20 which is a little steep for a brandless bunny but it’s still pretty unique and cool. 

She fits right in among all of the other bunnies that live in our dining room. 

And thank god that officer was so awesome! I would have totally deserved that ticket because the light was right at the questionable level. And thank god ALSO that Erin made the wise choice to keep her mouth shut during the whole transaction (until the very end when she thought we were long lost homies)… it’s a true miracle that she didn’t say anything else. 

Ev didn’t come with us on our adventure, and when we got back, it looked as if he was pretty pleased with that decision. 

Also, I feel sad that Erin didn’t get any of her fishnet pieces. That baby bear was adorable. 

Wow… If only I could properly illustrate the extreme horrible-ness of the sales being offered these days. Erin and I had some time to go out on Friday. Erin didn’t have a sitter so baby Ev came with us, and so did our friend Jen. It was a horrible first sale-ing experience for both of them! We literally couldn’t find a single sale that seemed worth going to, so we decided to stay close to home and hit up a sale in Livonia. 

I noticed these cool old mugs but… they weren’t worth $40. 

Basically, there was nothing remotely good to be found at this sale. Unless you wanted some old Drano or a really scary clown candle. 

I did find one thing at this sale: A TON of oversized cash, yo. 

I actually knew Adam would be thrilled with this find. And he was. 

Anyway, Erin was really desperate for some good sale-ing and Jen was desperate for some action on her first trip out with us, so we went to the warehouse. Erin was acting all brave and ready to just go in there…until we pulled into the parking lot! At that point we decided that we needed to send Jen in as our lookout. She was to enter the warehouse and then come back out and let us know if the coast was clear. It’s worth noting that Jen had never seen an episode of Cash and Cari so she had no idea what Cari looked like. We showed her a picture and she went on her way. Erin and I anxiously sat in the car. 

She jumped in the car and told us that public enemy #1 was inside the warehouse. MAAAAAAN!!! We were bummed. That was our last option so no other sales were visited, and we’re hoping that this weekend’s offerings are a bit better. In the end, we had some good Mexican food and Everett was a little angel the whole time. Until we got home. He was p*ssed about the sales that day. 

-Sarah

The sale we hit this past Friday looked packed full of vintage goodness.  It was in Lincoln Park, about a half hour or so away.  There were no other sales near it, so we were taking a risk by driving out.  If the sale was a bust, we’d end up going home empty handed.  Luckily, things turned out hilariously good for us…

The living room had tables and tables full of jewelry.  That’s a photo above of Sarah perusing the goods.  I haphazardly glanced and the moved on because it was clear that everything was costume jewelry, broken junk, or cheapy Avon-type stuff. 

Things seemed like slim pickings elsewhere.  I was starting to feel discouraged.

Check out the back leg of that horse.  Someone stuck a pen cap or something on it.  I was cracking up when I saw this.  Total pirate/Robocop type sh*t right thurr.

In retrospect, I should have bought these sunglasses that said “To Hot."  They are kind of the best.  I thought that people only confused to/too/two on the internet, but it just goes to show you that grammar has been long gone for awhile.

Things were looking pretty dire.  Then we hit the basement and a guy working the sale started chatting my ear off.  He was clearly lonely down there in the cellar and was looking for any company he could get.  He started telling me about sales long past (we’re talking decades) and how some dude still owes him $25,000 for his share in a giant lot of gold coins  he found.  He then proceeded to share with me that this particular house we were at had its own hidden treasures.  See this shelving:

That bottom shelf was actually a secret hiding spot that was filled with rare baseball cards and coins!  The guy who owned the house had two giant safes, both of which were kept empty to fool robbers.  All the real goods were hidden away in this cabinetry. 

This seriously peaked my interest.  There had to be treasures in this house! I just wasn’t looking hard enough!  OK, time to work…

Sarah was still hard at work looking through jewelry, so I joined her.

And then I found this:

It was a vial filled with broken and mismatched earrings.  I chuckled because what are the actual odds that this might contain a REAL diamond?  I showed it to Sarah and jokingly mentioned how crazy it would be if in fact there WERE diamonds in here.  Sarah told me to take my chances and buy the container, and at the very least, we would have a funny story about returning to that Cash 4 Gold place we visited once.  The lady charged me $1 for the vial!

This entry is getting really long, so I will hold off on telling you about the contents of the vial until Part Two.  In the meantime, check out my final purchase from this sale.  This cool old automatic watch was still running just great, and will be an easy sell on ebay.  They charged me a mere $2 for it!  I had Zach put a new band on it so it might sell better.

-Erin

Update from Sarah: That watch right there is a beaut! Maybe I’ll buy it if she puts it up on eBay. 

So Erin summarized pretty well. The only thing I want to reinforce (if it wasn’t already crystal clear) is that there was not an abundance of really great treasures at this sale, even though the pictures online made it seem like there was. Here’s a basic summary of the sale: 

So Diamond in the Rough is truly a perfect title for this post. 

The one blog-worthy treasure I found I have to keep secret for now because it’s a gift. What I will say this sale had going for it was that the prices were insanely cheap. So cheap, in fact, that I felt sort of like I ripped these people off. When we got outside, I said to Erin, "Did we just rob them?” She answered in the affirmative. 

Anyway, I ended up with some classics of children’s literature, and some cool costume jewelry. 

Oh, and also this teeny tiny cow. 

My total, including the really awesome cool find that I can’t blog about, was $6.50. WTF?! 

Stay tuned for the second part of this story! 

I like to tell myself that I purposefully saved some of these sale-ing wrap-ups for busier times of the year, but the truth is that I’ve just been lazy. At the end of SEPTEMBER, Adam and I tried to stop at a sale in the late afternoon that was supposed to be open until 7. When we got there (literally at 3:55), there was a note on the door saying they were going to close for an hour and re-open at 5, when, at that point, everything was going to be half off. Because this was in the front of the house, I did make the choice to come back at 5. 

The sale was close to our house so that made it an easy decision. When I arrived back, there was a super long line out front, but I stuck it out. When I finally got inside, things were pretty picked over, but it was worth the wait. 

This is mainly because the house basically looked as if nothing new had come inside since 1974. 

There were lots of books but this guy was the owner of all of them, apparently. He had been behind me in line and was huffing and puffing the whole time, and was also located about negative 3 inches away from me at all times. This is one thing I will never understand–do people think that invading your personal space will get them inside more quickly? Anyway, he was not allowing me to get anywhere near those books so I had to get on with things. 

The thing I loved the most about this house were that the bedrooms of the kids who grew up there were completely untouched. That means that every single wall hanging and poster was still on the wall. My favorites, of course, were these handmade emo banners. 

The second one is courtesy of David Bowie. I wanted these banners so badly but everything was so old and dried out that as soon as you tried to remove it from the walls, it crumbled. 

I left with a few treasures, and also a lot of sadness because I’m sure the house was just completely packed earlier in the day, so I know I missed out on some cool things. But here’s what I did find. First, these cool old valentines. I featured one of these that looked like Adam the other day. 

I also got some cute flannel baby blankets (for our dog beds) and kitschy little books, including one of my faves by Joan Walsh Anglund. 

Finally, I got some great records for myself and Adam (the Zombies, what what!) and a cute illustration of a beaver or otter taking a bath.

Here’s something I passed on. 

I know, you’re shocked. 

-Sarah

Shortly after Everett was born, there was a sale being put on by our favorite Ragamuffins, but it was really far away, so Erin passed on the opportunity and I went alone. It was a former antiques dealer, according to the ad, so I was prepared to find some cool stuff! 

I ran into my parents there, and they were in the market for “guy stuff”–so this sale did not disappoint. They bought some of those very trucks pictured above. 

The guy on the left is my dad, checking out some high quality items. 

My only complaint really, was that there was cool stuff–but it was all priced super high. We’ve had this problem with the ragamuffins in the past. The good thing was that there wasn’t anything I was dying to buy that was overpriced. If there was, I would have been really annoyed. For example, look at how some of this vintage Christmas stuff was priced: 

That flocked Santa is marked $25!! Now, if those were a bunch of knee huggers or Joan Walsh Anglund Christmas items, I would have been ticked. 

Another example: Playboy puzzles marked $20 each. No.

Actually, I shouldn’t say I wasn’t disappointed because I was. This person had a ton of books, but they were priced so outrageously that I didn’t get any. 

Promising room: 

Disappointing reality: 

Oh well! 

I also spotted these cuties but they were a little too dirty for me. 

I did end up finding some deals because the basement was filled with boxes and boxes of vintage Playboys–which I have admittedly vowed to stop purchasing. However, they were selling them for $1 each, and if you had patience, you could find some cool super old ones. So that’s what I did. While I was down there, this guy told me that if I put together a big box, they’d give me an even better deal. So I did that. 

You can see both the deal maker and some of the boxes of Playboys in the picture above. One thing I learned during this trip–a big cardboard box of Playboys is hella heavy! 

The ragamuffins ended up charging me $50 for everything in my box, and I made that up quickly by selling the two “Coca Cola” issues that I found. If you ever stumble across one of these and it’s priced cheaply (meaning less than $5 and it’s in good shape), snatch it up. 

I sold each copy of this for $35. I have a ton more old issues to sell, but the first lot did pretty well. It included issues from 1959-1962 and sold for $30. 

Cha-Ching! 

-Sarah