Dig This Treasure!

If you guys ever find a giant box of rocks at an estate sale for $10, BUY IT.  And then ask if they have more rocks and BUY THOSE TOO.

Then put them on ebay:

For more “money makers,” click here.  Happy hunting!

I briefly mentioned a purchase I made at this sale, but promised a full rundown.  So here it is…

If you remember, I had planned to return to this sale on its last day and hopefully score some deals on Herend porcelain.  When I saw that the Herend was all sold, I had to come up with a new plan.  I was prepared to spend around $200 on Herend, so I figured, what the hell, might as well take a chance on something else.  Except I didn’t want to take a $200 risk on something non-Herend…

I ended up taking a $90 risk on this piece of Moorcroft pottery:

The photos don’t even do this justice.  It is handpainted and crazy beautiful.  The shiny glaze makes it look extra fancy.

Before this sale I had never even heard of Moorcroft pottery.  I did some brief research on it after the first day when Sarah and I visited the sale.  From what I can gather, Moorcroft started in England around the turn of the century.  Early pieces are crazy valuable because they are made by the founder William Moorcroft.  Later pieces are made by William’s son Walter and are still collectible, just not as pricey.  From what I can tell, Moorcroft is still made today.

Here’s what we’re dealing with people:

That’s some expensive-ass pottery.  $90 certainly seemed like a good investment.

I decided to buy this particular piece because it was the pomegranate design and I read that that style was highly desirable.  I also bought this piece because as I was looking at it, this dude started hovering near me.  He was staring at the bowl like it was a giant glass of water and he was in the Sahara.  Finally he said to me, “Are you going to buy that?"  I said I wasn’t sure and he asked to look at the bowl.  He explained that he was a Moorcroft collector and this was an excellent piece except that it looked like it had been repaired.  Really?  There were absolutely NO signs of this.  Not one line or discoloration that suggested the piece had ever been chipped or cracked. 

I walked around for awhile with the bowl and saw the guy staring at me and following me.  Then another guy, who had seen our interaction, came up and said, "I hope you know that that guy wants you to put that down.  He’s trying to convince you not to buy it so that he can."  So that was the final straw.  Of course, when you know someone wants something you have, it makes you want it more.

I did actually start to fall more and more in love with this bowl and even considered keeping it.  It was like a repeat of Little Dummy, where I decided I might be too in love with something to sell it, even though I knew I was probably going to make a lot of money.

In the end, I did sell the bowl, and I did make money:

Turns out though that the bowl might have once had a lid, which was now missing.  Two separate people messaged me to say that.  If it had a lid, the piece would have sold for twice as much.  Whomp whomp.

Overall though, still a good investment and return.  So keep an eye out everyone!

-Erin

The week before Christmas, Sarah and I ventured to a couple nearby sales.  The listings for this day were pretty slim, so our hopes for good treasures were low.  One listing said it was a warehouse sale that “welcomed dealers."  I figured this meant that things would be priced super cheap.  We normally hate warehouse sales (remember this?), but we decided it couldn’t hurt to go look.

The warehouse was owned by an estate sale company that obviously liquidates homes after a sale is over.  At first it seemed as though they were only selling literal garbage:

Expired Twinkies.  Yikes.

Actually, now that I think about it, I shouldn’t make fun of selling Twinkies.  When the whole Hostess bankruptcy thing happened, I TOTALLY BOUGHT SOME TWINKIES ON EBAY.  I had never had a Twinkie in my life, and was scared I never would.  I even had the audacity to complain to the ebay seller (and threaten negative feedback) because it took them over a week to mail my Twinkies.

Anyway, things at this sale started looking better when I spotted an old Pabst Blue Ribbon beer sign.  I knew that beer signs in general are collectible, and was pretty sure that PBR collectors are hardcore.

The sign is a giant 3D bartender guy made out of plastic.  He is so cool.  Probably from the 60s or 70s.

I asked the lady how much she wanted for him and she instantly launched into talking about how he is probably SO valuable and how she should probably put him on ebay and blah blah.  This is always a red flag.  If she wants to put him on ebay then he shouldn’t be in her heap of stuff for sale.  I stood there silently and then she said $25.  We settled on $20.  I figured an even twenty dollars was a good risk to take on this thing.  If it didn’t sell, I could survive a $20 loss.

But it did sell!  And for a lot!  When I put this guy up on ebay, he had bids within the first half hour.  And then he had 40 watchers!  I knew he had to be special.  He ended up selling for just over $90!

I was thrilled!  And what is even more exciting is that the lady had more of these…so maybe I will go buy the rest!

For more "Money Makers” click here!

-Erin

You may remember that a month or so ago, Erin and I found a secret auction where they were selling lots and lots of dolls. My main purchase that I thought might make me some cash were these creepy doll heads for $10. 

I finally sold them last week and let me tell ya, it was awesome. People started bidding them up really early on, and right away I was amused by some of the buyers’ eBay names. My favorite, by far, was “ArtsyFartsyFairy,” and she ended up winning the auction. Part of my theory about why these sold for so much was that a week before that, I had gotten a new iPhone because zzPopps accidentally broke my old one during our garage sale. Check out my baller eBay pics! 

My other theory was that crazy doll ladies wanted these for parts–especially the sleep eyes inside. I’ve sold some really old sleep eyes for quite a bit of money in the past. Here’s what the ones looked like inside these doll heads: 

All of them had these eyes and they were all in great shape. Anyway, at the end of the auction, here’s what I made: 

Awwwww yeah! 

I emailed ArtsyFartsyFairy and asked her what made these heads so desirable, and here’s what she said: 

To learn more about Shirley’s Junque Jarz, check out her blog. But here’s a picture of one of them: 

Anyhow, here’s proof that people will buy your stuff on eBay and do all sorts of wonderful things with it! 

-Sarah

So again, the Plymouth auction treated us very kindly.  Remember all the way back in September when Zach bought a cast iron bank for $17?  It looked like this:

Well this guy had been living on our bookshelf since then, that is, until Zach did some research on it.  It turns out that this bank was made by the J & E Stevens company around 1872.  J & E Stevens are best known for making some of the earliest mechanical banks, which fetch incredible prices on ebay:

These mechanical banks are also some of the most faked out there, so be careful!  

J & E also made still banks though, and many looked like tiny safes.  Early versions opened with a skeleton key, and later the safes had combination locks.  

Zach bought our particular safe bank at the auction simply because he liked it.  This is an example of one of my 2013 antique buying strategies.  I’m going to buy things that I like, even if I plan to sell it.  If it doesn’t sell, I have something to keep that I like.  At the same time, chances are that if YOU like it, someone else out there might like it, and it will probably sell.  It’s a win-win.  

In this case, Zach bought something that not only he likes, but A LOT of people like.  And a lot of people collect.

Here’s what the bank sold for:

Can you believe it?  This was really exciting.  I’m not sure what he is going to do with the money, but I hope it involves buying like 20.88 more J & E Stevens banks at $17 each.  (Yes I did the math.)

And while you’re here, I’ll give you the duck decoy selling price I promised last week.  

I want to double my money on everything I sell, all day err day.

-Erin

Last week I mentioned that I started unloading the big Christmas guns, and it made me remember a story that I think I forgot to tell from a while back that recently ended very happily for me. 

Late in the summer, the same day I found my first ever vintage girl on the phone figurine, Adam and I went to a sale that was at the home of the couple who used to own the Little Professor in downtown Dearborn. I was excited because there were a lot of old posters and books at this sale, as well as some old Peanuts items, but we quickly discovered that the people running this sale were totally nuts. I gathered a bunch of books I wanted to purchase, none of which were priced, and the women running the sale proceeded to start looking them up on eBay, Etsy, and AbeBooks. WTF?! 

Right before leaving, I found a small box of a bunch of old wooden West German Christian Ulbricht Christmas ornaments in the basement. Here is one of them:

Pretty cute, huh?

Knowing how they were pricing items, I had pretty low expectations–I figured she was going to ask me to pay $100 for them. But no, instead, she tells me that the whole box is a dollar! I quickly said OK and when I got outside, simultaneously cheered and cursed her for being so stupid. 

These ended up being a great buy. Not only did I get to keep some adorable ornaments because there were multiples of many of them, but these suckers sold like hotcakes. I sold three of them about a month ago for $35, one a few days ago for $12, and then last night listed the rest. Literally minutes after listing the remaining ornaments, this happened:  

Some lady swooped in and bought all of them for about $50 total. That brings my profit to a whopping $96. 

I have a pretty good eye for these things because my mom and grandma love(d) wooden German and Swedish Christmas decorations. I have a really soft spot for them too–they’re so cute. I think the woman running this sale thought that these were those cheap ripoffs that are made in China that you can buy at the dollar store. The ones that are authentic will usually be marked with the maker name or country, so keep your eyes peeled! 

Merry Christmas to me! 

-Sarah

I have been meaning to update y'all on how my greeting card sales have been going. I mentioned that I hit a greeting card jackpot a month or so ago… The cards from that group were all in excellent condition–most of them were still inside their envelopes. So I think that might be why I ended up profiting so heavily!

The oldest cards I found were from the ‘30s and '40s and were super cool. They sold for $76. Another similar lot sold for $63 from another sale that I found right around the same time. This is a picture of my favorites from one of those groups… I can’t remember which one:

I figured out via extensive eBay research that used cards sell best when divided into lots of things that are similar. In the 1950s and '60s, it was super common to have cartoon animals on cards–even for adults. For example, a husband and wife would be represented as a cartoon bear husband and wife. So I separated the cards into groups of animals. This lot was just a mixed lot of different animals and sold for $36:

The most desirable lot of cards, for whatever reason, was this lot of bird and bunny cards:

There’s no denying that these are adorable… but they sold for $113!

I sold a lot of cards like the ones above that were all puppies and kittens for $41, and also decided to separate out the children’s Christmas cards from the lot, and those also sold for $41. I did the same with the valentines:

They sold for $26… And then I sold cards with just girls and boys on them… which sold for $27.

So if you’ve been doing the math on that, that’s a whopping $424! I spent about $160 at the sale where I found these cards (on everything I bought–not just the cards), so that’s definitely  a profit!

I still have a ton of other cards from this sale that I’m going to maybe sell individually because they’re mechanical. I’ll be sure to feature some of the coolest ones on here as I go through them.

-Sarah

Sarah alluded to the fact that I was a “lucky b*tch” when I purchased an antique cast iron horse at the soggy-underpants-on-the-concrete auction we attended recently.  Her assessment, while harsh, is true.  I am indeed a lucky b*tch.

The auction was high-end, and people were bidding like crazy on everything.  I figured I would go home empty handed.  I did start to raise my hand for a Tiffany Lamp that I thought was selling for $25, when really it was selling for $2500, but luckily I caught myself.  Finally, an item came up that I was willing to spend more on and win.  It was a cast iron horse still bank/door stop.  It was huge and heavy as hell.

This guy had everything going for him.  There are cast iron collectors, there are still bank collectors, there are door stop collectors, AND there are horse collectors I could sell this to.  

For some reason, I have been operating under the belief that I paid $65 for this guy, but I found a receipt when cleaning out my purse that said $85!  What happened at this auction was that the auctioneer would speak so quickly, and people were bidding so rapidly, that you would raise your hand for one price, but be counted for the next highest bid offered.  It was insanity.  For days after the auction, I sulked about the fact that I had seriously overpaid for this horse.  Here’s a text between Sarah and I where I complain about it, and Sarah kindly reassures me:

Well, as it turns out, I wasn’t so “dum” after all.  That horse sold for some mad cash!

$300?  I was so shocked.  And happy.

I messaged the woman who bought the horse to ask about her motivations, and here is what she said:

Hi Erin - The horse is beautiful, in wonderful condition and is an extremely rare shape. The detail in the mane, the tail and the musculature make this iron animal very special. I collect the smaller cast iron bank horses. But this clydesdale a great surprise when I saw it and I knew I’d own it. The price I ended up paying is comparable to a cast iron boston terrier doorstop I own. And finally, I am a horse person; I ride and have loved these animals all my life. “Clyde” will be loved and will guard a prominant door in my home. Thank you for selling him. Catherine

She named him Clyde!  I love that.  And I love when this whole estate sale/treasure hunting/ebay thing we have going helps people to unite with items they might never have found otherwise.  And when it makes us some serious cash, things are even better!

-Erin

I think I have officially made my best estate sale score ever.  You might remember my mini Tigers nodder that sold for $429.  That was awesome, but I had to make a pretty hefty upfront investment on that little guy.  Recently though, I bought an old handcarved duck decoy for a mere $10.  

I knew that old decoys were valuable, but I had NO CLUE how valuable.  Here’s how it all went down:

$400 for a wood duck?  Incredible.

Turns out that I had a good eye on this one, but also a bit of dumb luck.  The maker of this duck is a renowned Michigan carver, and jacked the price up considerably.  After the auction ended, I contacted the  buyer to ask him a bit more about the duck.  Here is his response:

Hi Erin, That decoy was by a recognized carver who made his decoys in the “Detroit” style of carving. That school (style) of carving was done by quite a few people in and around the Detroit, MI area. It is recognized by alot of wing and feather carving. Neil Smith was not a real well known decoy maker from the area, however the bird was in very nice original condition, with no bad dings, chips, original paint with no repairs, etc. In other words, the decoy was in excellent condition and in a style that is desirable to alot of Michigan decoy collectors. I was surprised that it took off to that amount myself, however, the price was fair for a bird of that condition. I am looking forward to getting it, and already have a spot on my shelf picked out where it will sit.

Very cool.  I particularly love that he had a spot picked out for the duck.  When I buy stuff, I always imagine first where I can display it.

So keep your eyes out for old duck decoys everyone!

-Erin

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I found some old photographs of a girl and her Boston Terrier while out at a sale with my mom. The pictures were in rough shape–they were in a really dirty box in the basement of the sale, and I wasn’t really sure anyone would want them even if they were clean, but they were very cool so I bought them. I posted a photo of all of them in a group, but here they are individually: 

Anyway, people started watching them immediately when I listed them on eBay, and up until the last few minutes, they were hovering around $14 or so. I bought them for $5 so this was fine with me. Anyway, right before they ended there were a few more bids, but I was not expecting the final outcome: $64!!! 

I will admit that I was shocked, but these are some pretty cool photographs. Especially the one at the refrigerator. If the girl in these photographs had a beagle instead of a boston terrier, they’d be on display in my home right at this moment. This is a great example of the pleasure of finding something really unique, enjoying it for a while, and then passing it along to the perfect person via eBay (I’m just assuming if she was willing to pay that kind of money). 

So I guess the moral of the story is: buy cool old photos if they are cheap. 

-Sarah