Dig This Treasure!

There have been a couple times on this blog that we caught some flack for using humor in regards to items at estate sales, and for taking photos inside of sales. Some readers have found our blog intrusive or insensitive. Sarah wrote an amazing post over a year ago, explaining that we are in fact not heartless.

We get it. Estate sales can be super sad. We’ve been to many sales that made us wonder WTF happened in the house. Those links are just a few examples. We’ve always acknowledged how sad and uncomfortable these sales made us.

Never has the sad aspect of estate sales been more evident to me than today. I helped my parents run an estate/garage sale at my grandma’s house. My grandma had been living with my uncle in the home, when he passed away unexpectedly and tragically. My grandma, who has severe dementia, is now living with my parents.

Kudos to Timmy who has been over at the house for weeks cleaning it out. None of us realized how bad of shape the home was in. The volume of stuff in the house masked the bad condition of the structure itself.

What was astounding to me at the sale today were people’s attitudes. I cannot tell you how many people walked up to me and before saying “Hello” instead said “Who died?” I wanted to strangle all of them.

It made me realize that there is this weird dynamic happening at estate sales. On the one hand, it is a totally natural thing for people to die. And sometimes they leave behind a lot of “stuff.” And really, it’s just stuff. This detached perspective is what lets us find humor in all the weird stuff we see at sales.

But sometimes “stuff” is more than just stuff. It’s memories. And the family selling all of it is painfully aware of this. My mom had to pull numerous items out of the sale today because they were so sentimental to her. A couple of times, I caught myself trying to rationalize with her that the items were just stuff, and it was important to sell them to get money for fixing up the house. Really, we’re both right.

I’m not entirely sure where I’m going with all of this. I do want to share with you guys this short documentary I worked on a few years ago about this issue. Sarah encouraged me to share it a long time ago and I never did. It’s all about our relationship with inanimate objects, whether we see them as strictly utilitarian or as something more symbolic.

You will probably all like it because it features Timmy.

And while I’m at it, here is another short doc about my personal relationship with “stuff.” It’s about hunting down a girl who stole my favorite stuffed animal over 17 years ago.

Basically, I just wanted to vent here that today was tough for me and my family. And I think I am not always aware when Sarah and I are out at sales how hard things are for those families. It is tough to reconcile the natural circumstances of life with all of the emotions that come with those circumstances.

So again, know that when we write this blog, we get it. There is both humor and heartache in the things we leave behind in life. All of which, is okay.

-Erin

P.S. Just to make sure I don’t leave you all terribly sad, here is a photo of Timmy accidentally imploding a snow blower today:

Happy (almost) New Year everyone!  It has been a really fun and hilarious first year of this little ol’ blog.  Thank YOU for reading, and for the emails/facebooking/comments/etc. that tell us you enjoy our sass.  We hope that 2013 brings even bigger and better estate sales and many more treasures.

To cap off the year, here are the top ten BEST moments of our estate sale insanity:

10. That time Erin bought a bear wearing a REAL GOLD necklace:  Sometimes you find perfectly fine treasures that you are happy buying as they are–say, a Muffy Vanderbear doll.  And sometimes, as an added bonus, that perfectly fine bear happens to be wearing a 14kt gold necklace.  In our “Cash for Gold, Part Two” entry,  Erin found out just how valuable gold is at the moment, when she cashed in a chain for $44.  Who puts real gold chains around teddy bears?  And who then sells that teddy bear for $12 at an estate sale?  Whoever that person is, we hope they do it more often–wrap all our purchases in gold please!

9. That time DTT had a huge ass garage sale:  The DTT garage sale put quite a twist on our normal routine.  This time we were the sellers, trying to convince people to buy our garage sale wares.  This was also a chance for us to unload all of the estate sale finds we had trouble selling on ebay, or that we fell out of love with.  Let’s just say, we had a lot of stuff to sell:

Check out the entry “Cold Ones Left” to see how the garage sale went, and to hear about Sarah taking a serious spill on the sidewalk.

8. All those times we found ourselves in “interesting” houses:  Hoarders? Check.  Survivalists? Check. Straight-up Grey Gardens style situations?  Check. We’ve seen it all, and somehow lived to tell about it. Take a peek at the entries: “Grey Gardens”, “Survival of the Fittest”, and “Hoarders. No Like Real Ones” for all the nitty gritty.

7. That time Erin interviewed Ryan Matthew Cohen of the Science Channel’s Oddities:  Somehow Erin scored an interview with fan-fave Ryan Matthew, and the resulting post here on DTT (Ryan Matthew Kind of Hates Christmas, and Other Revelations) turned out to be one of our most reblogged/linked out/googled entries. In a later turn of events, Erin met Ryan in New York, where he nervously informed her that he confuses our blog with the phrase “Take that Bottle.”  (That’s a phrase?)

6. All the times we made mad cash on eBay: And we are proud to say there were many! Check out our “Money Maker” entries to see just how well we did reselling our treasure finds.  Our biggest jackpots can be found in the entries: “Original Goonies Movie Posters”, “Old Duck Decoy”, “Valley of the Dolls II”, and “Crazy Horse”.

5. That time a guy asked Erin for her home address: You meet all kinds of people while out treasure hunting.  Erin happened to meet a guy who wanted to know where she lived…EXACTLY where she lived. Read all about it in the entry “Where I Live”.

4. That time we got in a CRAZY HUGE FIGHT with Cari Cucksey from HGTV’s Cash & Cari:  We get asked about this all the time, so of course we had to include it in the countdown: our infamous quarrel with Cari, from Cash & Cari.  If you remember, we started out in quite the love affair with the show, and with RePurpose estate sales.  But then we mentioned ONE sale they had that was overpriced and crowded, and next thing you know, we’re public enemy number one.  Find out just how loud ladies can yell in our entry “The End of an Era”.  

3. That time we fell in love with auctions:  Perhaps one of the biggest developments this year was our love affair with auctions.  Maybe in 2013 we will change the name of this blog to YO! We Love Auctions or something like that.  It all started with Erin’s fave honeyhole in Plymouth, featured in the entries: “Stand Down”, “Standing Room Only”, and “Trumpeting”.  Sarah caught the auction bug in the entry “Open for Bidding”, only to have it explode into auction frenzy in the entries “Auction Crashers” and “Blacktop Surprise”.     

2. That time we hunted down the person whose stuff we were buying at an estate sale and became cross-country friends with him:  Despite our humor, estate sales are a really emotional thing, and we recognize that.  Most sales happen because of a death in the family or because of other sad events (financial trouble, divorce, hoarding, and so on).  At the time when we wrote our entries “House of Horrors Part One” and “Part Two” we had no idea that a charming California man had just lost his mother in Michigan, and it was her home we were shopping at.  Our blog entry focused on the amazingly bizarre and intriguing items we found in the home, items unlike anything we had ever seen.  And before long, Erin tracked down the aforementioned Cali man (entry “REAL LIFE”) and Sarah wrote a heartfelt entry all about him and his mother (entry “Be My Little Bumblebee”).  You couldn’t have scripted it any better.  In fact, we are all now friends, and for Sarah, even in real life! 

OK, drum roll please!!!  The BEST moment of the year, as you’ve probably guessed, is…

1. That time we went to the BEST SALE EVER:  “Best Sale Ever”, as it is known, was, well, the best sale ever!  We both still dream about this sale (literally…at night, in our dreams).  Featured in the entries: “Best Sale Ever: Round One” and “Round Two”, this estate sale will forever live on as the perfect storm of all things wonderful about treasure hunting.  The owner of this estate loved shopping, and the packed house showed it.  Everything though was high quality, clean, and most importantly, CUTE!  There was a great mix of antiques and newer items, and somehow we got the most incredible bargain bin prices on everything.  Erin bought a brand new Pendleton blanket with the tags on it for basically pennies, and Sarah took home half a Hallmark store worth of books, ornaments, and Christmas decor.  We visited this sale twice over two days and hauled our items out in a wagon each time.  

So cheers to estate sales, and “junk”, and antiques, and to all of the people and places we encountered this year.  To 2013, bring it on, we are ready for your treasures!

Happy New Year!

xoxoxox

-Erin & Sarah 

Sometimes you enter an estate sale and are forced to put on the blue baggie shoe covers that surgeons wear because the house is so immaculate.  Most of the time, however, you wade around in knee-deep dust bunnies. Or worse. 

Messy houses hide the best treasures.  This is a fact.  There was one house that had huge reptile cages with shedded snake skin all over that Sarah had to immediately walk out of because of the smell.  I ended up persevering and risking the chance of hurling, and ended up finding a mint condition 1968 Detroit Free Press celebrating the Tigers’ world series win ($40 sold on eBay).  

On last week’s hunt we came across a house that had the greatest collection of paper goods I had ever seen.  The basement was literally covered with old magazines and newspapers, piled up on bookshelves and littering the floor entirely. My first thought was how great it was that there was never a fire in this house.  My second thought was that there had to be at LEAST one valuable magazine in this pile.  And so we dug.

Sarah had the best finds here, picking up a rare Disney World Life Magazine and some Little Golden books (see previous post.)  I dug and dug, but came up empty. There were several collectible mags and newspapers, but because of the storage conditions, they were all water damaged, crumpled, and moldy.  Bummers all around.

Upstairs in the less musty area, I did manage to find a ton of quilting magazines (again, mentioned in the previous post.)  I bought them for about 10 cents each. They currently have 4 watchers on eBay.  DUN DUN DUN.

-Erin

Update from Sarah: I thought that Ebony with Sidney Poitier on the cover might be valuable but don’t worry, it’s not.