Far Away Land
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
Marshall
I miraculously had no plans/obligations/work this past Saturday so Zach and I decided to take a small road trip to Marshall, MI. I had never heard of it, but at some point Zach was told that it was filled with antique stores. Indeed, it was! The whole main street of the town was lined with them.
We were looking for treasures for our house, instead of items for reselling. It’s actually been a long time since I’ve bought anything for keeps, except for that doll I bought and Zach hated.
The first store we visited was called “Amazing Grace Antiques.” Everything in the store was displayed awesomely. Cool and unusual display cases, vintage dresses in old wardrobes, books on ornate shelves, etc. The items were all high quality and interesting.
I immediately fell in love with two items. One was a tiny “Tom Thumb” cash register toy, and the other was a giant kitchen scale.
I’ve been into a lot of metal items from the 1950s/60s lately, as well as old scales. I’ve created a nice home for these items on top of my kitchen cabinets.
Alas, I didn’t buy the toy register or the giant scale. The register was $20 and I saw that they sell on ebay for significantly cheaper, so I figured I could just pick one up there. The kitchen scale was too large to fit on top of our cabinets at home. I also didn’t want to try convincing Zach to carry this thing up the store’s stairs and to the car.
To be honest, I am glad we ended up not buying anything at this store. I was totally in love with the place, but then the following happened…
Zach found this old book about hunting in Africa that he wanted. It was pushed back on a shelf, among a million other books. It was in really bad shape (dirty, loose spine, detached pages). The inside of the book had a price of $20, which seemed pretty high. Zach sadly put the book back. I picked it back up and told him that I would ask if they could come down on the price.
When I went to the register to ask if they would take less for the book, the woman barely let me get the question out before cutting me off. "All prices are firm,“ was her answer. She didn’t even look at the book, or the price on it. It was really disappointing and the book got left behind.
Continuing on our journey, we saw some other interesting things. One store had a bunch of old scrapbooks, which was sad but also super fascinating.
A lot of them had cards and letters in them, and I considered buying one. I decided against it because I didn’t know what I would do with the scrapbook after looking through all of it at home. It didn’t seem right to just hide away someone else’s memories on a shelf in my house. I did this once with some 1940s love letters I bought at a sale. I read them all, and now they sit in a drawer, which seems really rude of me.
By the end of the afternoon, Zach and I were shockingly without any treasures. We just didn’t see anything that we HAD to have. The trip was certainly no waste though, as we ended it by eating at the historic Schuler’s Pub. I had the best egg salad of my life. Seriously, highly recommended should you ever find yourself in Marshall, MI.
-Erin
Update from Sarah: Did you guys spot that blue scale above Erin’s kitchen cabinets? Look familiar? Why would anyone want to put an old scale that some dirty old naked baby sat on 60 years ago in their kitchen? One of many mysteries that may never be solved.