Dig This Treasure!

If you haven’t read part one of this entry, you can do so here.  If you have read it, you know that my weekend of estate sales had started out rather interestingly.  It is always memorable when you enter a particularly horrifying home.  That said, nothing could have prepared me for the house Zach and I visited on Sunday.

The sale was listed as an emergency one day event.  There was not a clear explanation of what the urgency was, but I assumed the house needed to be cleared out quickly so it could go up for sale.  Sorry to say, however, this house won’t be on the market anytime in the near future.

When we walked in, I was astounded.  “Shocking” is an understatement.  This was the worst I had ever seen.

I hate using the phrase, “the pictures don’t even do it justice,” but it is true.  They really do not begin to describe what it was like being in the house.  You could not see the floor in any rooms except the bathroom and kitchen.  It smelled.  It was filthy.  And it was really, really effing sad.  There were TONS of children’s items.

It was just so, so awful.  Zach left as soon as we walked in the house.  I assume most people did. 

My strategy for the sale was to completely ignore everything out in the open.  I would literally skip whole rooms.  My assumption was that most of the things on the floor had already been rummaged through, and if they weren’t, then they were most surely broken from people trampling all over them.

If an area wasn’t already searched or trampled, then it was full of porn that no one wanted.

So instead, I looked for areas of the house that had not been accessed.  There were several crawlspaces upstairs, as well as parts of the basement completely blocked by debris. 

The guy in the photo above could not fit completely into that crawlspace.  When he moved out of the way, I climbed in and started moving boxes out of the way so I could get fully inside. 

This old trunk was empty, which was a huge disappointment for all my effort. 

I did find tons of boxes, however, that had not been touched in decades.  A lot of it was cheap Christmas decorations.  I found some baby shoes from the 1950s still in their original boxes and ended up buying them.  I also found old games, practically new.

There were also old children’s records, which I later sold on ebay for $25.

In the basement, I moved some boxes and climbed under a giant table to access an area previously blocked.

This guy is like WTF are you doing.

My efforts paid off though because I found some neat jackets stored inside sealed garment bags.  This meant that they were not completely filthy like everything else in the house.

Well, this shop jacket IS filthy, but at least not from the house itself.

I also found these old Detroit bank bags and a baseball for my dad.

The downfall in my strategy is that people started to notice, and would then try to follow me into crawlspaces or other tight areas.  This was super stressful because I am claustrophobic and also did not want to share my finds.  There was one lady at the sale who would snap at people who even glanced at her pile of items.  In general, she was just being a loud bully.  When she tried to climb into the crawlspace with me, I informed her that 1. there was no room, and 2. there were already people in line waiting to get in the crawlspace after me.

The bully explained that that’s “their problem” if they want to wait, and that she was “coming in.”  NOPE.  NO YOU ARE NOT, SALE BULLY.  I told her that she needed to “cool her jets” (God, I am such a mom), and that I could tell she was very excited but that no, I was not letting her in with me.  She was pissed but eventually gave up.

I just kept throwing things in bags I had found along the way.  I had old Disney drinking glasses, old hotel barware, old McDonald’s cups, some Christmas garland from the 1950s, a baseball bank from the 70s that will go to Timmy, plus all the stuff you see above. 

I paid $40 for everything, which turned out to be a steal.  Most of the items have already sold on ebay.

So that’s it.  Pretty remarkable if you ask me.  You really never know what is behind closed doors, even in today’s overshare culture.  And while interesting, I am hoping to avoid another sale like this for awhile.

-Erin

I had a really epic weekend of estate sales a few weeks back.  My purchases don’t really attest to that, but I FOR SURE visited some of the gnarliest houses ever.  This entry will be split into two parts because I took a million photos.  Keep an eye out for part two soon, in which Zach bolts from a house as soon as we enter it.

The first day of sales began pretty normally.  I visited a house that was full of treasures, lots of vintage military items and nice Christmas items.  I was the first one to the sale, although it was the second day.  I sat in my car for awhile and enjoyed the first snow of the season. 

Damn right I’m listening to Detroit’s Christmas station, WNIC.  Also, I should note, this was pre-Thanksgiving.  GET OUT OF THE WAY THANKSGIVING.

The problem with this sale was that everything was super overpriced.  It was so bad that people were audibly complaining. The guy running the sale finally shouted out, “OK! IGNORE THE PRICE TAGS.  JUST ASK ME AND I’LL TELL YOU THE PRICE.”  This created a new problem, which was a house full of people asking one dude prices for everything.  It was chaos.

This same guy was also straight up yelling at his employees, which was very uncomfortable.  They couldn’t do anything right.  One grandma-looking lady said to me, “All he does is yell at me.”  And I said, “I see that.”  It was a cry for help.  I told her to blink once if she needed me to secretly evacuate her from the property.

I didn’t buy much, although I did want this authentic Purple Heart from WWII.  Turns out though, these are actually fairly easy to come by, and sell for about $100 on ebay.  Also, I just realized how awful that sounds.  These aren’t “fairly easy to come by” for the people receiving them initially, just for terrible people who buy and resell them on ebay.

I did end up buying this book about booby traps.  I paid $5 and later sold it for $40 on ebay.  I know, I know, I JUST mentioned terrible people who resell.  I am one of them, just not when it comes to war medals.

I also bought some utensils from WWI.  I paid $10 for the set and sold them on ebay for $35.

So after this sale, I headed to one in my own neighborhood.  I had heard from other neighbors that the house was a total disaster, but I figured I had already seen worse.

From the outside, things looked pretty normal.

What is so sad about the photos I am about to post is that this house was super super nice underneath all the filth.  The layout was really cool and everything looked retro, but not tacky retro.  It would be a nice home for a vintage-loving family. 

I actually love a good hoarder sale.  Our best sale ever was technically a hoarder sale. The problem here though was that this house was LITERALLY full of garbage.  I do not mean that I personally classified the items inside as useless or meaningless.  What I mean is that nearly everything I saw was meant to be thrown away.  For example, there were tons of empty food containers.  TWICE I found an empty pizza box inside of a garbage bag.

It was so bizarre.  I cannot believe the people running this sale agreed to open up.  I didn’t see anyone buying anything.  It was basically gawkers watching a car crash.

That porn was maybe the one viable purchase in the house.  Still, it sat unclaimed. 

It was so bad that the deemed “garbage” had to be labeled.

There was one gem that came out of this sale, which was the following exchange I overheard:

Neighbor: Didn’t this house have a fire a few years back?

Guy running the sale: Yeah, a big one.  Everything burned up.

Neighbor: Oh really?

Guy running the sale: Yep. All the real good old stuff, it done burned right up.  Nice antiques and stuff.  Burned it all right up.

OH OK COOL.  WHY ARE WE HERE?!  That is what I was screaming in my head.

What I didn’t know at the time of this sale was that things can actually get MUCH MUCH worse.  The next day, Zach and I would visit a sale so horrendous that Zach actually walked out upon seeing the living room.  Stay tuned for part two!

-Erin

Well, it’s been three weeks since I last updated in general about the eBay World Purge that’s going on over here. 

Not a lot to report, though I am slowly but surely continuing to purge, moving my belongings out, along with a bunch of donations and garbage. There’s still a ton to sell, and I’m being REALLY optimistic because I’ve only got about 4 weeks left away from work. 

Here’s the state of the room this week: 

(bag on chair is garbage)

Lots of floor space now… 

Little Betsy even comes in and keeps me company while I work. Now that the dog bed I’ve had in here for her for a year is unearthed, she knows she’s welcome. 

Today’s project is to list some of the Real Photo Post Cards (RPPC) that I have that I think might we worth something. Who knows anything about these? 

Some seem to go for quite a bit, so we’ll see what happens. 

In the meantime, if anyone’s a big Warhol fan, I’m selling my three Best in Children’s Books that have Warhol-illustrated stories in them. You can find them on eBay now (willing to take any reasonable offer!) and here are some of the illustrations: 

I’ve got a lot more to update about, but that’s it for today! 

-Sarah

Hi y'all! 

Remember last summer when I bought an entire basement of slides while Erin was 7+ months pregnant? 

Well, since that time, those slides have resided in my very own basement, and let me tell you, Adam has been pleased about this. He was nice enough to help me move them all out of a corner of our basement this past Sunday, and I started the grueling process of sorting through them.

The slides have weighed heavily on me because of the quantity, and because I’ve known it’s a lot of money just sitting in our basement. But I also was aware of how much time it would take to go through them all. So I decided that on Sunday, it was time to start. It literally took me all day. 

That’s a picture of my view for the entire day. There were 54 slide carousels filled with slides, and then tons of boxes, as you can see. I was determined to take an inventory of everything so that I could list them with as much accuracy as possible, and also transfer all of the slides in trays into boxes, because shipping 54 slide trays is basically impossible. 

And now you can see why it’s impossible (that’s actually 51 trays–3 are not pictured). 

In the process of sorting through these slides, I found some crazy and cool stuff. For example, the dude who took these was insanely OCD about documenting the content of nearly every single slide. 

The sad thing was that they were all mixed up–the papers in the boxes weren’t always with the right trays, and so it was impossible for me to retain his notes. The good thing is that he also had notes on the slides themselves!

In the end, I counted every single slide and there were 8,429. This is what 8,429 slides looks like. 

If you want to watch this lot blow up (come on! be positive!) on eBay, you can follow it here. Or, if you’re a collector, you can bid on it! 

Also, in the process of sorting through all of this stuff, I separated a bunch of movies and sound recordings that I had also purchased at another estate sale, and Adam unearthed this gem. 

DUDE. 

-Sarah 

Well, I’m in the middle of my second full week of time off from work, and I’m happy to report that I am doing well with purging eBay World. Maybe not as fast as Adam might like, but things are moving. Here are some updated pictures. 

The other day, Adam came in and started opening the drawers of these two dressers. He looked at me and horror and said, “How are you going to do this?” Thanks, babe! 

So as you can see, I spent my first day of purge just organizing things by thing “type”… my main issue so far is that I have some nice clothes and maternity stuff to sell, and I don’t really want to list that stuff along with my stash of old porn that needs to be re-homed. So I have to try to sell things in phases. 

The best thing that happened so far is that I sold this Ralph Lauren sweater that I bought at a sale and never wore. I sold it because this crazy person was willing to pay $65.00 for it. 

Needless to say, we all had a few laughs over this lost in translation style communication. So effin’ cute and funny. Thanksgiving. 

-Sarah

Last weekend, Zach and I were heading out to my parents house for a July 4 BBQ.  There happened to be a super crazy sounding estate sale about 35 minutes North of their house, so we dumped the baby and headed out there.

The house was a giant castle-like abode on acres and acres of property.  The house itself–and several barns–were packed full.  “Digger sale” would be an understatement. It was more like put-on-your-swimsuit-and-dive-in-all-this-junk kind of sale.

Most of the stuff here was junk.  I wanted to leave and immediately go get a tetanus shot.  I barely touched anything and I was covered head to toe in dust.  Did I mention you could buy this house and the remaining contents for a mere $350,000?  Well, you can.

Did I also mention that The Ring was filmed here?  It was.  (I think.)

The man below decided to climb up this rickety ladder to look at more dusty garbage.  He almost died.  I am not kidding.  He almost fell off.  And if he would have fallen off, I am sure he would have died. 

He was wearing a bluetooth earpiece though, so he could have easily called 911.  Unless he was already dead.

Zach and I did find some treasures, but it took some serious work.  And it was hot.  We all know how I am in the heat.

The first thing I found were a bunch of old model train buildings.  I was gathering these all up in a box when a woman came up behind me and loudly said, “EXCUSE ME."  I looked at her and said, "Oh I’m almost done looking and I will move out of the way."  She then explained that I was rummaging through HER STUFF.  Uh, what? 

She pointed to a large box near me (which I was not going through) and said it was all hers.  It wasn’t on a hold table, or under the checkout area.  It was just a random box sitting there.  I said "ok” and then explained that I hadn’t touched the particular box she was referring to.  She was convinced I had secretly stolen from her and insisted I show her the contents of my box.  I refused and told her to “trust me."  Jeez Louise, calm yourself.  I understand that there are hardly any treasures at this sale, but we don’t need to fight over them.

Anyway, here is one of my old train buildings.  I got about 6 of these:

In true American Pickers style, Zach bought this old oil filter.  Apparently Mopar anything sells.  So we will see.

We also bought some old Tuco puzzles (the non interlocking kind), some old license plates, and a suede jacket from the Disneyland Hotel. 

The coolest thing I found was this old scrapbook from the 1940s:

I also found this old Joe Louis How to Box magazine:

Zach and I paid $17 total for our treasures, which was a steal.  We also had lots of fun walking around this crazy place. Good luck to whoever buys it and has to clean it out!  Maybe whoever does can tackle Sarah’s ebay room after.

-Erin

Hi all. 

I can’t believe I’m posting these pictures, but I promised Erin that I would post something today, and I’m frantically finishing a bunch of work before I’m off for summer break, so you all get to benefit. 

I am currently growing a baby, who will be out of my body and in the real world sometime in late October/early November, and he needs a place to sleep! So eBay World is turning into Baby World… except there’s a lot of work to do.

So here’s what has come of eBay world in the last two years or so. Meaning, here’s all the stuff I have to get rid of. 

In an effort to complete operation Move Junk Out and Move Baby In, I will be documenting the purge on a weekly basis. You see something you like? Tell me and I’ll list it on eBay first! 

I hate to admit this but there is also stuff in other areas of my house. Oh, the shame. 

I’m excited about and terrified of the challenge that awaits me! Wait, I’m not even talking about taking care of a baby. I’m talking about getting rid of this sh*t! 

Wish me luck! 

-Sarah

So it happened!  I went to a sale!  It was actually Halloween and I had a doctor’s appointment.  Since Zach was watching the baby, I figured I could sneak in a quick trip to a nearby sale.

The sale was advertised as a “Moving Hoarder Sale.”  I LOVE hoarder sales.  Some people don’t because they can be creepy and grody.  Unless they are ultra heartbreaking, I generally want my hoarder sale to have at least a little bit of sadness.  I want to walk in the house and be consumed by piles of stuff.  I want to imagine said piles of stuff to be silently weeping to themselves, longing to be loved and cherished.  And then I want to buy a bunch of this stuff and put it in the backseat of my car and say on the drive home, “Don’t worry stuff.  I will love you.”  Because that is the problem with hoarders, they don’t usually love their stuff enough.  They think they do, but they don’t.  It’s very philosophical.  

So anyway, I roll up to this sale and there is a huge dumpster outside, which is a good sign.  But then I walk in, and the sale is…well, pretty damn clean!  Such a bummer.  I think estate sale companies are using the word “hoarder” in their listings to lure people in.  The most hoarder-y part of the house was the basement and it pretty much just looked exactly like my basement, or any other basement really.

The rest of the sale was really normal.  Like things you see at every sale.

Creepy doll that looks like Sarah?  Check.

Country cottage style craft show purchases?  Check.

Super happy smiling bull knick knack?  Check.

Retro-ass game of skill and strategy that also has a ridiculous name?  Check.  

Actually, let me zoom in on this one for you:

That man looks like he is competing in the Hunger Games.  So intense.  Also, the box said that this game was like having an amusement park in your living room.  To which I say, UM NO.

There was a cool taxidermy ram here, but it was $175.  He looks like a very pleasant ram.

I did end up buying some vintage Pyrex items.  I got a set of Pyrex Shenandoah bowls and a set of 3 other orange small casserole type dishes.

The orange bowls aren’t pictured here, but I paid $12 for the whole lot.  I wasn’t sure if this is a good deal.  I know a lot of people collect vintage Pyrex, but I have never looked into its value.  Any Pyrex collectors out there want to give some tips???

Spoiler alert: Luckily, this isn’t the only sale I’ve been to since Everett’s birth.  Sarah and I managed to get out and sale on Friday.  Look for that update soon.  We had a blast and found great stuff!!

-Erin