Dig This Treasure!

This past weekend Zach and I hit two sales in nearby Grosse Pointe.  Normally, sales in this area are overpriced but, since it was Sunday, we figured we could find some deals.  The first sale was actually supposed to be in the Boston Edison neighborhood of Detroit, but the address said it was in Grosse Pointe.  This was really confusing.  I LOVE going to sales in Boston Edison because all of the houses look like this:

I know what you’re thinking…THAT’S IN DETROIT?!  Yes, yes it is.  I filmed a “behind the scenes” making of a music video for a band in one of these houses once.  You can see it here if you’re curious about how baller these places are.

So basically, I was so excited to go to this sale because even if we didn’t find anything to buy, at least we got to scope out a cool mansion.  Turns out though that the company running this sale had simply removed items from one of these houses and stuck them all in a retail space in Grosse Pointe (hence the address confusion).  UGH.

Things were kind of thrown around and it was pretty cramped.  This girl was sitting on the floor right in one of the walkways sorting through tangled jewelry.  Since it was hard to move and because things were scattered everywhere, I kind of gave up looking.  We were about to leave when I noticed a box of old horse ribbons on the ground.

I love old horse ribbons because they are colorful and pretty.  I had a gut feeling that people must buy these and so I consulted ebay.  Sure enough, they do sell.  I bought the whole box for $12.  Did you know that there are all sorts of horse ribbon crafts you can make?  Indeed there are!

Here is a whole entry about these old ribbons from fellow antique blogger Mitzy from Mitzy’s Miscellany.  The best ribbon in my box was this super huge one:

After leaving this place, we hit one more sale nearby.  The house was gorgeous and they were selling mostly furniture.  There were some smaller items though, except that everything was priced extravagantly.

Even tiny decorative boxes were marked $50-$75 each.  Usually we see them for $5-$10.  Zach found this little plate he liked but it had two price stickers on the bottom.  One said $25 and another said $2.  I went to ask which price was correct, although I was SURE they would say the $25 one.

Lo and behold, the guy told me that this was only $2!  I realized then that maybe these people running the sale were willing to wheel and deal.  They did have a lot of stuff left in the house, and it was all mega overpriced.

Zach bought this old print for $10 and then I found this weird old plaque.  I wasn’t really sure what it was from, but I loved the look of it.  Give me some old metal and wood and I’m sold.  

I thought this would be great on a wall in our house.  I also thought it might be equestrian-related (I must have been on my horse kick from earlier), but after some googling, it turns out to be from a church mission group in the 1950s.  Here’s the thing though…this was priced TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS.  I know right?!  That is insane.  

I carried the plaque around for awhile and then got the courage to ask one of the workers about the price.  I was totally honest with him and said how much I loved the plaque, but that it was way too high for me.  I then asked him outright if they were trying to get rid of stuff or if the homeowner would rather keep what was left over.  He said that the owner was an interior decorator and would probably just keep everything.

He then told me that he could go $75 on the plaque.  I told him I didn’t want to be disrespectful, but that I could only be in on it for $25.  He gave me a pretty resounding “NO” but I could tell that the wheels were turning in his head.  I held onto the plaque and waited a few seconds until he said, “Ok ok, how’s $30?”  I took the deal.  I think this guy realized that he could get his commission on $30 or on $0 and he chose the former.

Driving home, I noticed that the little medallions on this plaque are stamped “SILVER” really tiny.  I don’t know much about scraping metals, but maybe that is why the thing was priced so high?  And maybe now I should scrap it instead of hanging it on my wall!  If someone is an expert on this, let me know.  My only experience with scrapping was that time I bought a Muffy doll accidentally wearing a real gold chain.

-Erin

Alright, so, as mentioned, Sarah and I hit one more sale last Friday.  I believe this one was in Trenton.  When we arrived at the sale, it was immediately clear that this person was rich, and that they had a lot of time to buy rich people things.

The first room was filled with these elaborate dollhouses.  They were all pretty remarkable.

What’s interesting about these type of dollhouses is that you never actually see little miniature dolls inside of them.  What’s up with that?  

Upstairs at this sale was a room completely full of designer purses, all of which still had the tags on them.  At first I was sure they must be fake or something, because who buys $400 purses and doesn’t use them?  All of the tags though had Macy’s stickers on them, so certainly they were real.

I think Sarah and I both would have loved to buy some of these.  There were at least 100 to choose from. All of the bags were priced pretty close to retail, so we had to pass.

Back in the dollhouse room, I found a Muffy Vanderbear.  When I was a child, my Aunt Cathy (who comments on this blog often and also publicly called my blonde hair “FRIGHTENING”) gave me Muffy bears and accessories every Christmas.  They were by far my favorite childhood toys, even beating out Beanie Babies.  I still have all of my Muffys and hope that one day I will have a daughter to play with them.

Anyway, this particular Muffy was one I already had in my collection, but it was in PERFECT condition, so I decided to buy it.  I was carrying it around, and kept thinking, “Hm, I don’t remember my original Muffy having this gold necklace on it.”  

Looking closer at the necklace, it was pretty clear that it was REAL gold.  Someone had put a REAL GOLD chain on Muffy.  

Knowing that gold is like crazy valuable right now, Sarah and I started speculating what it could be worth.  I looked online and it said 14K gold was worth around $18 per gram.  I then speculated that a gram was like one paper clip.  However, neither of us could figure out how many imaginary paper clips might make up the necklace I had.

On our way to lunch we spotted one of those “Cash for Gold” places.  When I say “spotted” I actually mean that we drove down the street specifically looking for any place that might buy gold.  We were just way too excited.

So we got buzzed into the store, had the necklace weighed, and ended up selling it for $44!  That price actually covered all of the purchases I had made that day, including lunch!  Pretty exciting!  

The lesson here people is not to store your gold jewelry on teddy bears, and then sell those bears.  The other lesson here is that if someone does store their gold jewelry on a teddy bear, then totally buy that teddy bear.

-Erin

Gosh, last Friday seems like it was so long ago. Erin and I have been spending so much time prepping for this garage sale that I can’t even remember much about the day. 

I do remember we started in Farmington Hills, where there was a sale with no pictures. Now, these are incredibly hit or miss. But sometimes they’re great because all it means is that there are some older people running the sale who have no idea about technology and they have a ton of treasures in their home. But the serious collectors don’t come, because if they can’t see pictures in advance, it’s not worth their while. I can remember a couple of sales that lacked pictures where I found some seriously cool stuff.

Unfortunately, this sale was not of that variety. Instead it was this little old lady and her daughter, selling a bunch of household items that were generic and cheap. The woman had clearly been moved into assisted living or was in the process of doing so. However, this sad tale is not without its highlight: When we were in the basement, Erin made a friend. This crazy woman was talking to us NONSTOP about whether we had been to any other sales that day, if we found anything good, etc. Then she picked up a pair of exfoliating gloves and proceeded to tell us about how she loves finding them at sales because she uses them to clean her body, and then throws them in the wash, and then uses them to clean her house–especially the bathtub. We escaped as quickly as possible. 

I am racking my brain to try to remember where we went next…I have no idea. I have this picture as proof, though, so it wasn’t good:

Anyway, onto the more memorable moments: At some point, we ended up at a sale that was in a sort of bougie house that contained some cool items. There was a lot of modern/mid-century art, books, and records. But it was abundantly clear that the guy running the sale was a tool and a half. He was wheelin’ and dealin’ the whole time, and his phone kept going off and he would say things like, “This thing’s gonna sell no matter what, so it might as well be YOU who gets it.” Anyway, I found some Stevie Wonder albums, a Disney picture disc, and some books that looked interesting, but absolutely nothing in the home was priced except the artwork and furniture. Speaking of which, here are some pics: 

For some reason I was really interested in that head statue but I think it was marked something crazy like $300. Ugh. 

Anyway, I got to the front of the line after some waiting and had approximately 6 records and 5 books. While in line, Erin and I were guessing how much he was going to ask for all that crap. $30? $60? And we were also guessing what I’d actually agree to pay. Anyway, he looked at my stack of stuff and was sort of distracted because he was talking to a long lost chum that he ran into. So he said, “Fifteen bucks.” I said ok right away and then he started backpedaling, saying he didn’t see the records. He went on to tell me that the records were $5 a piece. I just looked at him and said, “But…they’re not worth that,” and he told me that people had been telling him that all day. HA! Anyway, he said $30 for all of it and I said no, but that I’d pay $20. He said $25 and I just kept saying no… so he finally agreed! Score! The worst part is that none of what I bought was worth anything, but I did get a couple of cool things that I’ll hang on to, including an illustrated copy of Jane Eyre. Which I’ve never read, and I was an English major. Whoops. 

The next sale we hit up was run by the same company, and as soon as we walked in, we saw our favorite phone talker. Greeaaaaat. Just like the last sale run by this company, nothing was priced except big ticket items. Right away, I saw an adorable old teddy bear. I was shocked that Erin didn’t spot him right away. I also found some pretty cool stuff in the basement of this sale, including a few old children’s books that might be worth a few bucks (and had their Detroit Hudson’s price tags still attached–so frickin’ cool!) and some knee huggers! 

When we were ready to check out, the woman did the same thing as last time: “What’s up?” Uhm isn’t it obvious that I want to buy these items? Anyway, first thing she looked at was the teddy bear. She scrutinized him and said, “40 dollars” because he might be “worth $300.” Uhm, that raggedy ass teddy is not worth $300. Trust me. I told her that was fine–I didn’t want him for that much. At some point she actually looked these bears up on her iPad, even though I was insisting that I was not buying him to resell. Eventually I made it out of there with all of my finds (including Mr. Tedders) for a total of $55, which seemed reasonable to me.

Once we got out of this sale, we were starving (shocker), so we looked for the closest place. Erin refused to eat fast food so we stopped at some place called McVee’s. It ended up being a typical bar/grill, filled with barflies in the middle of the day, and the menu sounded better than the food tasted. When I’m really hungry, I often can’t make up my mind, so I order everything I might possibly want. In this case it was waffle fries, a Chicago dog, and mac & cheese:

Oh, and a beer. Totally not excessive. Also, for the record, I only ate about 1/3 of this food. Worth noting: Erin was totally reasonable and got a beer and a BLT:

And now she’s blonde. Clearly trying to slowly become me.

We also indulged in a crappy dessert that looked excellent on the menu, and Erin wasted some money playing Keno. Actually, she may have made two dollars.

The last stop of the day was a sale in Detroit that looked like it was really packed. I’m not sure how they did not capture the fact that this was a true hoarder sale in the pictures, but they managed to fool us. The only thing I can say about this house is that it was insanely depressing and gross. It was obviously an older Russian or Czechoslovakian woman living there, and she liked to keep stuff. Lots of it:

This is actually the attic, which, because it was 95 degrees out on Friday, was about 110. I could only stand up there for about five seconds.

When I showed Erin this picture, she almost cried:

The basement was, by far, the worst:

I did find a little bin filled with vintage cards down there, so I purchased that. Another fun fact about this sale was that there was a full human poop floating in the toilet in the bathroom.

After this depressing and horrifying sale, we called it a day as far as sale-ing goes. We stopped at a nursery I needed to go to to pick up some hydrangeas, and then lost some money at the casino.

-Sarah

Update from Erin: There are so many things I love about Sarah’s description.  First of all, I can’t believe she hasn’t read Jane Eyre.  That is my favorite book of all time.  Second, Sarah scoffs at paying $300 for original art and yet she will pay $15 for a Sesame Street cookie jar…BEST.

While phone lady was busy trying to charge Sarah $40 for a bear, I was busy paying a mere $8 total for some vintage Chanel No. 5 and a Tigers World Series newspaper from 1968.

Both are currently blowing up the ebays.  

The hoarder sale was the worst.  So heartbreaking.  We breezed through it pretty quickly because it was actually sort of dangerous.  I got hit on the head with a box while rummaging around in the basement.  I did end up buying a gold Raymond Weil watch for $20 because I thought Zach might want it.  It’s a little small for him, but it looks like we can sell it easily: