Dig This Treasure!

Just in case you were worried, Erin and I are once again officially BFFs and made up after our Jerry Springer style argument in her driveway last week. We started our adventure in Warren at a sale run by the same woman who ran the sale from last week that I speculated was actually held at her house. Erin had some mad love for that lady when leaving the sale last week but the tables turned this time around. Erin has a habit of fluctuating between feelings of love and hate toward the people who run these sales, while I’m usually more ambivalent (except for my favorite guy ever–the guy who tried to hook us up hard at the Best Sale Ever.)

Anyway, this sale was the worst but we did find some funny things. This is the best of the bunch: 

If you’re struggling to determine what those are, they’re two handmade refrigerator magnets. The one on the left is a pig that says (in little alphabet noodles glued on), “Porky are you eating again?” The one on the right is a cow that says, “Holy cow are you eating again?” I had to buy the cow. 

Basically, everything at this sale was either made by Avon or found at the dollar store. I’m not into either of these things, so I was sad. 

Here are some items that I passed on: 

I can’t even remember what I bought at this sale, besides a little pile of letters that I thought were affair letters, judging by the first few lines of one of them. I haven’t read them in their entirety but Erin read some of them aloud to me in the car and it turns out they’re really depressing letters from a sister to her brother about having cancer. That’s what I get for being nosy! Also insane: I had a tiny stack of cards and the lady told me it was $5. I am talking like, three cards. In this stack was an old brochure about Cedar Point that I wanted to buy for a friend’s kids. She told me, “that brochure alone is worth $3!” Really, lady? ON WHAT PLANET? You should be thanking me for getting rid of the crap that nobody wants! I told her to forget the brochure and I’d give her $2 and she told me she had to recalculate the cost because she was giving me a “bundle deal”… WTF?!

Next stop was a sale in Mt. Clemens. This sale contained a ton of antique furniture, but most of it was in really bad condition. I got a box of really old wrapping paper that was in great shape, and a vintage little girl’s pea coat. Erin got a box that had visible bird poop in it. I wanted this thing until I saw the made in China sticker. I ONLY BUY AMERICAN.

Just kidding. I just didn’t realize it was a reproduction at first. I still don’t know what it was supposed to be, but it reminded me of a card catalog (but real card catalogs have labels on the drawers.) 

The next sale we hit up seemed promising but ended up not being that great either. But it was really weird and time-warp-y and there were the most lawn ornaments I’ve seen in a while. It was also worth going to because the house was arranged really weirdly (it seemed like over half of it was a screened-in porch) and there were lots of funny things to see: 

Again, what is UP with these depressing statues? We see them basically at every sale now. 

Classy lady, classy car. 

Spuds MacKenzie. 

Private parts statue. 

…and… a ladyman with very large penis under her skirt. 

I found a few good things at this sale. First, a real deal garden gnome. I have a handful of lawn ornaments and he will be a good addition. I also got a couple of cute things to sell. Here is one of them: 

Yes, that is a kitten wearing a yellow beret and blue glasses. 

It’s past my bedtime, so I’ll let Erin update you on the Grey Gardens Man sale. 

-Sarah

Update from Erin: I was disappointed with the seller lady at the first sale because she was being outrageous with her pricing.  Last week she gave me all sorts of deals, even when I didn’t ask for them.  Yet this time, she tried charging me $1 each for a stack of old dirty Christmas magnets.  The magnets were handmade out of felt and had some sequins glued on them.  They were cute obviously, but as a general rule, ANY magnet in the world should be 25 cents.  $1 each?  You’re out of your mind.

The second sale was great.  Sarah thought the furniture was all gross, but she was wrong.  It was like the movie Aladdin, you had to be willing to see the diamond in the rough here.  I bought an old cabinet for my new porcelain pieces.  

After some windex and Lysol, it looks amazing:

As for the “box with visible bird poop” that Sarah mentioned, this was actually an old DRAWER, that I planned to turn into a shelf.  It wasn’t really covered in bird poop, it had drops of old paint on it.  It did however have some mouse poop on it.

All you gotta do is hose that shit off, sand it, and stain it…WHICH I DID.

Look! Room for more porcelain!

At this sale I also got an old Minnie Mouse wind-up watch from the 60s.  It is apparently collectible, and most people start it on ebay at over $100.  I have it up now and it’s doing great.  I paid $10.

The next sale was awful, despite having a million cute sheep lawn ornaments.  

They were selling things like this:

Watch, that doll is probably like CRAZY VALUABLE.  

Ok, this entry is getting so long.  You all need to email us if these jumbo posts are annoying, and we can try condensing…

The last house was in Detroit and was a crazy mansion.  Rooms up on rooms up on rooms.  

Things started out promising, but the further you went in the house, everything got weird and abandoned.

Look at those walls and the ceiling.  They needed me to get up in there and hang some bird poop shelves and fill them with porcelain.

Oh wait, looks like someone already was moved in:

OK, one more Grey Gardens-esque pic…

I bought an old, giant Mae West poster at this sale for $3.  That’s it I think.  I didn’t buy this poster which some perv had drawn all over:

-Erin

Our sales this week were pretty interesting, not really because of our purchases but because of the weird-ass houses we visited.

The second house we visited on our journey was in Bloomfield Hills, and by all appearances, was about to be one of the fanciest (and largest) homes I had ever entered.  This was pretty much true, until things got weird.

Turns out that this house was the PLAYHOUSE of a larger home behind it.  In the 1960s, it was finally separated from its master home and sold as a residence itself.  The first sign of its former playhouse glory days was the front entry:

Looks normal enough, but this entryway used to be a POOL!  Check out that tile floor.  The drop-off on the right was the deep-end.  And check out the former pool wall and drains:

The first few rooms of this house were really impressive.  They had a tavern, a wine cellar, and a crazy opulent ballroom.

As we got further into the recesses of this house though, we started noticing a severe change of scenery.  Things went the way of Grey Gardens pretty quickly.

An upstairs bedroom had a once-beautiful atrium with a hot tub.  It now looked like the apocalypse had set in and people were long vanished from these parts:

The carpet in nearly all of the upstairs’ rooms was either horrifically stained or looked like this:

To be honest, it was just WEIRD.  I looked at Sarah and said, “Something is not right.” The house felt increasingly sad, and creepy.

We found out before leaving that both owners of the home were still alive, but had moved into a condo after getting Alzheimer’s.  The home was a fading testament to their high-style living.  

Again, it all felt very sad.  But it also felt just really, really weird.  Who leaves behind a gorgeous mansion to sit and decay?  Where was their family?  We didn’t get answers to those questions, but here is what we did get (not much):

I found a cool hand-painted Mexican plate for $5.

And a book about the wilderness because I am OBSESSED with anything relative to Into the Wild.

Everything else in the house was too weird, too dirty, or too expensive.  I was really happy with my 2 finds though, and at seeing the inside of this wild home.

-Erin

Update from Sarah: Erin’s description is perfect. Also, the house started having a grody smell after a while and my gag reflex started kicking in.

Another thing–I tried to buy the sellers’ magnifying glass by accident. What can I say? It looked cool and was left sitting there on a table with other old things! 

I did find some cool vintage sheets that say “SLEEP” all over them: 

They smell pretty musty but you can tell they’re clean and aren’t stained. I need someone who can sew to make me a little throw quilt out of them. 

I also got a little gnome Christmas ornament and some greeting cards to add to my collection. 

We went to two other interesting houses on Friday that I’ll post about ASAP. 

P.S. Look at the giant chip in that plate Erin bought. WTF?