Dig This Treasure!

Somehow after the epic garage sale this weekend, I was still in the mood for more junk.  So on Sunday, Zach and I headed to a huge outdoor flea market just a couple miles away.  First of all, let me say, that when I hear the word “flea market”, I inevitably have this song stuck in my head for the next 3 days:

Our flea market was less “mini mall” and more junkyard mecca.  Here’s a bunch of people making their pilgrimage.  

Here is a cool, weird mini tire display thing.  I liked it a lot but it was $100.

I found my first treasure pretty quickly.  It is an old wooden bowl in the shape of a heart.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to buy it, but I asked the price on it anyway.  The woman told me it cost “whatever price would make you buy it.”  I told her $3 and it was mine.  I plan on pulling this out around Valentine’s Day and putting some candy in it.

You can’t tell here, but that bowl is actually pretty huge, which means I will need lots of candy to fill it, which also means I get to eat lots of candy.

At one point, I got really excited because I found a Hugglet.  Since Sarah and I are trying to collect the whole set, this was a great discovery.  I asked the seller man how much the Hugglet was and he said FOUR DOLLARS.  FOUR DOLLARS?!  WHAT?

See that man in the crazy pants?  He’s the one who charges four dollars for a Hugglet.  I offered him one dollar and he looked at me like I was the crazy one.  I threw the Hugglet in his face and stormed away super disappointed.  Actually, that is a total lie.  I gently set the Hugglet back on the table and walked away to text Sarah about my sadness.

What I will spend $4 on (actually $5) is this kitchen scale:

They originally had it priced $10, but it was marked down to $5.  To be honest, I would have paid $10 because I love it so much.

I also picked up this cow creamer for $2, which I am currently selling on ebay:

And lastly, the best find of the day by far.  This giant soup tureen is shaped like a snarling pig head.  I thought that Zach was going to hate this, but he actually loves it.  We bartered down on the price, paid $20, and now have this on our kitchen counter.

-Erin

Update from Sarah: I was supposed to text Erin in the morning and go with them to this flea market, but I woke on Sunday morning to the sound of Erin texting me for the second time to wake me up. I was too tired to go. 

The only things I’ll say are these two things: I like that heart bowl and I cannot believe how horrifying that pig is. I would have nightmares every night if that was in my house. 

So we headed out on Friday, full of promise, eagerly awaiting a repeat of the success we had found the week before.  The first sale we hit was pretty packed, with both stuff and people.  It was the type of sale where people use one arm to sort through items, and their other arm to block you from getting anywhere near the stuff they are looking at.  With a house full of people all doing this, it gets annoying pretty fast.  I’ve gotten good at muscling around in these types of situations, but it is still real stressful.

My first find was a bunch of vintage plastic toys.  I had been researching these on ebay last week for an art project I’m working on and found that they can be surprisingly valuable.  There is a good mix of cowboys, indians, horses, spacemen, pirates, knights, and more.  The woman running the sale mentioned that many of the pieces are by Marx, which I guess is one of the more collectible brands.  

I also bought some vintage jello/baking molds since I had had previous success in selling them.

Here is some of our loot while we were standing in line to check out.  The line was the slowest ever, as the sellers were having to phone in every credit card transaction.  At some point, Sarah contemplated leaving the line to go back for a huge ceramic dog she had saw.  I encouraged her to at least take a photo of it so we can document all the questionable items she considers buying.  She ended up just buying it, which I am sure Adam is thrilled about.  Hopefully it will make an appearance soon in TTFYHO.

Check out that nice kitten postcard in Sarah’s box.

The rest of the day was filled with bummer sales.  A lot were overpriced or had nothing of interest.  I did find this little buddy, by Josef Original.  He is pretty much the cutest.

I first came across Josef Original figures at Christmas, when I found this guy:

So a rather uneventful Friday.  No huge scores but still lots of fun.  I even ate a cookie for lunch, which is always a fun thing to do.  And we ended up going to the casino, although there were no huge scores there either.  We’ll get ‘em next time.

-Erin 

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Erin is right, the sales weren’t that great. We were also both sort of “off” on Friday. Erin seemed cranky, and I was sick. However, shockingly, I still came home with a carload of items. The first sale was the most fruitful in terms of treasures. I’ll do a separate post about the ceramic dog another day. He’s an Irish Setter and I love him. 

I found some cool items at this sale, but they were pretty overpriced. Oh well. (Note: This sale was ALSO by the same people who did the House of Horrors sale and the antique cigar stand sale. They love overpricing things.) 

Anyway, I got my brother this vintage Michigan State pennant for his man cave. I think he reads this blog, so I’m ruining a surprise. It’s probably from the '50s…if I had to guess. 

I also found this amazing book, called The Crazy Ladies by Joyce Elbert. I’m not familiar with her work, but as you can see from the blurb by Cosmo at the top, it is the first really great dirty book. 

I think Cosmo is probably wrong about this claim, but it was still a great find because clearly someone had kept this book just for the sexy parts. I know this because when I opened it, this happened: 

It reminded me of the copy of Jackie Collins’ Chances that was in my grandma’s basement when I was a kid. I would go downstairs and pretend I had to use the bathroom down there, and just read the dirty parts. My family probably thought I had extreme bowel problems (I’m neither confirming or denying this.) The book looked just like that by the end of my tween years. 

I flipped through it this morning, and didn’t find anything particularly racy. However, the first page is great, and I don’t know how this happened, but it’s like a picture-perfect description of the way I throw parties: 

I found some other cool stuff at the sale, most notably these postcards, a Swedish Christmas ornament, and a Greenfield Village pennant, all vintage: 

Next, we went to a sale at the home of a woman who was clearly a compulsive shopper, and I scored two purses and three pairs of Naturalizer dress shoes in my size that looked like they’d never been worn. You might say that’s a grandma brand to wear, but I was thrilled because a) the shoes are all cute, b) I hate looking for dress shoes when I have to go to a wedding or something, and c) each pair was only $5. 

Related sidenote: I first started hanging out with Erin, we were at this wedding and I complimented her whole ensemble, which was lovely. She then told me that her shoes were NATURE-alizer brand like it was real cool. First, nice pronunciation skills. Second, that’s not something you want to walk around advertising when you’re 22 or 23 (which she was at the time.) 

At the last two sales of the day, I scored some decent items, including cool wrapping paper to add to my collection (I remember making things out of fabric that was the same pattern as the paper to the right when I was a kid), an antique shelf, some cool vintage cheese picks for all of the entertaining that I do, and a cat pin with a head that wobbles. 

All in all, not the best day, but not the worst either. Until I lost at the casino and had to drive home from Erin’s in the snow, coughing and sneezing my brains out. 

-Sarah