Dig This Treasure!

Sarah and I headed out on Friday a little disorganized.  Neither of us had really looked at the sales for the day, so we haphazardly chose a route based on which sales were closest. I’ll probably screw up the order in which we actually went to the following sales, but you’ll get the idea.

We started out at a sale in Livonia that could only be described as a bunch of “stuff”.  I can’t think of a single item I even considered buying.  Everything seemed kind of sad and unloved, stored improperly and dirty.  The basement had a pantry with expired food for sale.  

I didn’t buy anything at this sale, and Sarah probably bought some things that she now regrets.  And yes, I know what you’re thinking, what about all those magazines?!  You guys love old magazines!  Those magazines were sticky and gross, although I think Sarah did buy a couple of them.

After this sale, we stopped at some garage sales.  One was advertised as “HUGE SALE” so of course we were interested.  When we arrived, there wasn’t much in our style, and also, nothing was priced.  I did however find some small dessert plates I liked.  When I asked the price, the lady informed me that the sale was a fundraiser for a mission trip to Africa, and that all reasonable donations were accepted.  I offered her $2 for the plates, and she looked at me with horror.  She then said, “Oh no, I’d have to get at least $5 for those.”

So here’s the deal, that’s TOTALLY fine.  This is your sale.  The plates could be $100 if you wanted.  But here’s what happened next:  I told her “oh ok, no thank you then”  and she looked at me with absolute disgust, a look of wrath that made us hightail it out of there.  Let me just say, that if the fundraiser was for the Otterhounds of America charity, or A Hugga Bunch for Every Child charity, then I would have gladly paid $5.  I’m just not sold on the idea of mission trips to Africa.  Too bad, because I liked those plates!

I have no clue where the next sale was at, but it had some pretty nice things.  A little overpriced, but not terrible.  I got this adorable old mail scale to add to my scale collection:

I also found this cool, old sterling silver necklace.  I bought it to keep or to give as a gift at some point, but after doing some research, I put it on ebay.  The necklace turned out to be from Shipton & Co. in England, and was made around 1935.  

At first I refused to believe that jewelry from the 1930s had lobster claw clasps, but turns out that it did!  I suppose since we had cars and planes back then, surely someone could have invented the lobster claw clasp too.

Alright, I’m going to stop here, but GET READY because after this sale, we went to another one, and what happened there turned out to be the best.  As a teaser, I will say that gold sells for about $20 per gram, which pretty much means nothing when neither Sarah or I can figure out what a gram is.

-Erin

Update from Sarah: I don’t have much to add here. Erin documented all of this fairly well. One thing that I found at one of the garage sales that she missed was this set of Josef Originals. Normally she sells these, but I found them first, and they aren’t something I’d consider HERS, unlike things like Wagner Cast Iron, sports memorabilia, etc. Anyway, it’s a koala family: 

Pretty cute!

At this same sale, I found a pair of suede bowling shoes in my size for $3. Another great score! 

Anyway, she’s right that the first sale was incredibly dirty and dismal as far as offerings go. But you’re in luck because I did purchase some of those magazines. Just three of them. But allow me to show you a picture of one that I did not purchase: 

I also did not purchase this issue of Life, which I sort of wanted: 

I also did not buy this shirt by a super cool brand: 

I did purchase a few things at the sale where Erin found that scale, but the best of these items will be saved for a Fave Find entry. 

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! 

It’s time again for some items that were seriously hard to resist purchasing.  

Alright, so people say Psycho is a movie classic, but have you seen Psycho II?  Oh you haven’t?  You say that no one saw Psycho II?  Hm, ok.

What about some “art” that we found at a garage sale?  I call it Devil in a Pink Dress.

I love this little raggedy ass doll.  Look closely, he has a random plastic baby leg glued to his right hand.  I don’t even want to guess what he did with the rest of the baby.  AMIRITE?

Alright, and here is the deal on the last HTR.  When Sarah and I hit up that ice cream place awhile back, they had all these INSANE ice cream flavors.  Not insane like Jalapeno or the Lemon Basil that Sarah got…I’m talking truly insane.

GROSS.

-Erin

It’s time again for a “Hard to Resist” post, featuring all sorts of great items we just had to leave behind while out at sales.  First up is this box of arguably racist Halloween masks:

You can be an Asian person, a gypsy lady, or a…um, not sure what that is…Native American wrestler?  Anyway, we passed on these because I already found a Charles Manson/Rob Zombie mask at a previous sale.

Need a place to keep all of your valuable jewels?  What about a bag that is clearly labeled “jewels”???

Oh wait, you think it might be totally irresponsible and risky to keep your jewels in a bag labeled “jewels”??  Yeah, maybe you are right.  What I do know for sure though, is you can’t stop the cake machine…

Don’t even try to stop the cake machine.

-Erin

Since Friday was sort of a bust, Sarah and I decided to wake up bright and early to hit more sales on Saturday.  Actually, that is only half-true.  I wokeup bright and early thinking that Sarah did too, and that she was picking me up at 10am as promised.  We got rolling around 11:30.  ANYWAY…

The sales were awful.  We rolled up to the first house and instantly panicked.  It was the SAME HOUSE as the one where our Cash & Cari blowout went down.  We were so confused at first, thinking that maybe we were just delusional.  Sure enough though, this was the same house.  Another estate sale company had been brought in to try and sell more of the items that were left after the first sale.  

I felt like I had PTSD the whole time I was at this sale.  I got nervous stomach as soon as we walked it.  It was hilarious and absurd.  In the end, I didn’t find any treasures.  In fact, I only found sad things…like the following:

I also found a bunch of old wedding photos, dirtied and shoved under a bunch of boxes, as well as a crumpled marriage license.  Such a bummer finding those types of things.  

Since I mentioned it, I’ll say that Sarah and I did find disguises should we ever have to attend another RePurpose sale.  We picked these up at a garage sale Saturday for 50 cents.  The man who sold them to us was super drunk and kept calling us “ladies,” as well as constantly apologizing to us for every move he made around the garage.

We saw a rummage sale sign after visiting this garage sale, and despite Sarah’s objections, we stopped.

The sale was in the clubhouse of some neighborhood development, and all clothes and shoes were $5 per bag.  I was excited about this, but I could tell that Sarah was less than enthused.  She busied herself with the book table while I dug through the clothes.

I ended up with some surprisingly nice scores…Ralph Lauren corduroys, a Pendleton blazer (that Sarah found and kindly gave to me), some unworn Mossimo shoes in my size, and two Banana Republic sweaters.  I also found this old pair of Nikes that may turn out to be quite lucrative.  They are from the 80s and similar pairs sell for anywhere between 80-100 dollars.  I already have one bid on them and have had 3 people message me asking for more details.  Very exciting!

-Erin

Update from Sarah: Ask Erin how late she is to my house any time she has to be at it.

ANYWAY…When we were walking down the street from our car to the first sale, I said, “Something about this walk reminds me of the last Cash & Cari sale.” We hadn’t even gotten to the house yet! Damn, I’ve got a good memory. Anyway, it wasn’t another company that came in to sell the rest of the stuff there–it was family. I only know this because I overheard the main woman running the sale telling a buyer that these large pictures in the house were her ancestors. I think the owner of the house was the woman’s aunt. ANYWAY… somehow I ended up spending almost $40 at this sale but I’m too lazy to take pictures of what I spent it on. I do know that I purchased a Beavis and Butthead book. 

Erin left out a horrible sale between the first and the neighborhood rummage sale. It was horrible, and was sort of the “third strike” for me with this particular company. Who shall remain nameless because they’re not on TV. Anyway, the guy who runs these sales is crazy and overprices literal junk. There wasn’t a single thing in this home worth purchasing. Also, he had a “Cash for Gold” sign outside the house. Where he was supposed to be SELLING things. Not buying them. But the worst part was that the house had a hot tub in the basement which is about the grossest thing ever. I’d rather find guano in a barn than a hot tub in a basement. At least I learned officially that from now on even if pictures look ok, this dude’s sales aren’t worth going to. 

At the rummage sale, I found a huge stack of ‘80s ARTnews magazines for $2. I actually don’t think they’ll sell but they’ll be cool to go through. One of them featured Cindy Sherman so why not? Also, while I was walking around with them in my arms, one of the women running the sale came up to me and said, “What books did you find?” I showed her and she said, “Oh I think I know what house these came from. The woman was a wonderful artist. She’s in heaven now.” I’d like to know how she confirmed this information. 

Erin left out the best part of the day, which was going to Pastries by Ellen, which, if you’re ever in Sylvan Lake before 4 p.m., you should hit up. They had macarons and I asked for a lemon one even though they were $2 each, which is simply outrageous. But to my delight, when I opened the box I discovered that the guy at the pastry counter had given me THREE: a lemon, a strawberry and a chocolate. Dude ruled.

Sorry for the lack of pictures of the delicious treats. Eating them was top priority. 

Sarah had Friday off of work this week, so we were pretty excited about getting out early and hitting some sales.  We realized pretty quickly though that not only did Good Friday mean Sarah had the day off, but it also meant that our choice of sales was pretty limited.

We thought about just going to Loehmann’s to shop (Sarah had a coupon) but because our ebay listings were getting slim, we decided to sale.  On the way to the first estate, we stopped at a garage sale.  They had some $3 DVDs, clothing heaps, and half-used candles.  We didn’t buy anything.  I did test-drive this Charles Manson-esque Halloween mask though…

After that detour, we made it to the first sale.  This sale was so bad that Sarah didn’t even buy anything, which I believe is unprecedented.  Remember that insane hoarder house we went to?  Even then, Sarah bought some Christmas gift tags.  

I did buy a couple things at this sale.  Some brown craft paper that I use for packaging things, and some brand new OPI nail polish.  That stuff is like $8 new!  I got it for 50 cents.  I also got these crazy magnifying/reading glasses that have flip up lenses.  I plan  to try selling them, and if not, Sarah said she wants them for reading.  Part of me just wants to give them to her because the thought of her wearing them is hilarious.  For now though, here is a photo of me wearing them:

Very chic.

The next sale was just as awful, which was a bummer because we drove pretty far to get to it (about 30 miles).  Upon entry, it was pretty clear what kind of wares we were going to be encountering…

I’ve never been a big reptile fan, and considering the amount of furry animal-related things that Sarah buys, I’m guessing she isn’t either.

We also prefer our beer cans to be full of beer, so the empty can collection was of no interest…

I think that some beer cans are probably collectible, but the effort of trying to figure out which ones might be seemed too tiresome.  We hadn’t eaten yet and were really excited to go to Grand Traverse Pie Company and get some food/treats.

I ended up buying two silver-plated Gerber baby spoons from the 1950s.  I paid $1 total, but it seems like they might not be worth much.  Whomp whomp.

On the way out, I noticed this treasure that we had missed.  $30 is pretty steep, but I hear that LAN parties are pretty awesome.  Actually, I have no clue what a LAN party is, but I know it is something super nerdy. By the looks of the box, it might be tons of fun.

-Erin

Update from Sarah: What a bummer of a sale-ing weekend. Easter had to go and ruin all our fun. 

Ok, so I need to just clarify a few things. First, I might have a hard time leaving a sale without buying something (and FYI this is not true at all at garage sales), but Erin is the worst when we’re at sales where it is obviously just a bunch of garbage. She loves to just linger and make sure she’s dug through every bit of grossness there. Perfect example: I could tell within 20 seconds of being at that Manson mask garage sale that there was nothing good there. But of course, Erin has to slowly and thoroughly browse through the piles of used slippers, dollar store candles, and cheap picture frames, just to make sure she hasn’t missed anything good. You really think there’s gonna be a hunk of gold on that table? 

Second thing: I did not say I wanted to use those glasses to READ. I said I wanted to use them as magnifying glasses, which is what they are! The other day I told Adam that I needed a magnifying glass because I have a hard time reading the really small copyright dates on plastic and metal toys. What Erin also didn’t mention is that she wanted to sell those glasses to a STEAMPUNK on eBay because there was another pair listed that way. I then reminded her that hers are made of giant cream-colored plastic, rather than METAL, which is a necessity for steampunks, and she said, “oh… yeah.” Anyway, obviously she’s going to just keep them since she looks so adorable in them. 

That last sale was the worst, except I found a sealed crystal radio kit that already has two watchers on eBay. The rest of the stuff in that house was pure garbage. This picture perfectly summarizes the experience: