Dig This Treasure!

A few weeks ago, there was an estate sale in my neighborhood.  It wasn’t on estatesales.net but luckily a friend of mine spotted it and told me.  I am glad she did because the home was that of a former antiques dealer.  Everything in the house was high quality, and even better, there was tons of it. 

As you can see, it was a lot of paper stuff.  I had Everett with me so it was pretty much impossible to look through any of this.  I decided to come back the next day with Sarah.  Before I left though, I struck up a conversation with the women running the sale.  They seemed really nice and kept repeating that they were willing to make good deals.  Nearly everything in the house still had price tags on it from the woman’s antique booth.  The ladies running the sale were her daughters and said they would NOT be charging what the stickers said.  Ok great, I LOVE DEALS.

So Sarah and I come back the next day and it seemed like Sarah was in hogs’ heaven.  One back room of this house was completely filled with old postcards. 

The day before, one of the women running the sale said that a giant box of postcards would be about $60, which she then explained was about a penny a piece per card.  I told Sarah that if she bought a bunch of cards, she would certainly get a good deal.

I found two postcards for myself and let Sarah have the rest.  These Santas usually sell pretty well on ebay.

In the garage there was a ton more paper.  All of it was old brochures, programs, ticket stubs–all your basic ephemera.  I started digging.

I found a plastic sleeve full of old railroad stuff and grabbed it on a whim.  I haven’t sold any train stuff on ebay before, but it seems like something a lot of people are geeky about.

It was really hot outside so I peaced out and went to meet back up with Sarah.  I could tell she was losing steam.  The house had no air and the amount of stuff to look through was getting burdensome.

Not to mention that something else was becoming very clear–these women were totally lying about their “deals."  There would be NO DEALS.  Something had happened since the previous day that made these ladies less than thrilled about parting with their mom’s stuff.  Fair enough.  It’s tough to do.  That said, from our perspective, this was very annoying. 

Sarah’s loss of joy over this sale was pretty clear:

That’s her "Let’s GTFO of here face.”

Postcards were now “individually priced” and some were $12 each.  TWELVE DOLLARS.  EACH.  Sarah had a stack of postcards about 3 inches deep and they wanted to charge her $75.  $75, which they explained, was actually a VERY good deal.  No.

After going back and forth for awhile on prices, I was able to get a small pile of stuff for $17.  It included that train stuff and Santa postcards above, as well as the following:

Don’t old Halloween decorations sell?  These guys are in okay shape and pretty cool looking.

And this horrible card:

No seriously, WTF.  This card isn’t even that old!  JFC.

The best score I got (which should make me not complain so much about the prices at this sale) was an old railroad schedule from the 1890s.  It sold for $100 on ebay last week, which was a huge shock.  It was hovering around $20 and then shot up in the last minute.  So awesome.

Poor Sarah only got some overpriced postcards, although she didn’t end up paying $75.  I think she paid like $25.  Hopefully one of them is made of gold!

Oh and P.S. I went back to this sale for a third time with Zach.  I thought maybe on the last day these women would have a change of heart and really price to sell.  (They didn’t.)  I found this Indian doll that I had a sneaking suspicion was an Armand Marseille.  I had seen a really similar doll at another estate sale in mint condition that was AM and was priced $200.  This one was far from mint but I got it for a mere $5.  It sold on ebay for $36!

Cute huh? If it’s hair hadn’t fallen off, I would have kept it!  Anyway, keep an eye out for these because they are Armand Marseille but are not marked! 

Ok and here is totally-over-it Sarah again.  Just because.

-Erin

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

Sarah and I have been super lazy bloggers, but luckily our disciple Zach has been much more proactive.  Husband Zach collects and resells vintage watches, so lately he has been scoping out estate and garage sales in hopes of finding some. 

On Sunday I got a Facetime call from him, which looked like this:

He explained that he bought this doll because it was only $1 and he thought it might be valuable.  I told him I thought so too!  At least more than $1 valuable!  Zach also bought this crazy Knickerbocker doll because he knew we had blogged about that brand before:

This doll is amazingly weird.  It is a baby and a Santa.  A Santa Baby…like the song, except I don’t think the song literally meant a baby that is also Santa.  Anyway, we are going to stick it on ebay and see what happens.

So while on this call, Zach explains that this sale he was at had tons of old train stuff but he didn’t know what to buy.  He described this “service station” thing and I convinced him to go back and buy it.  It sounded like something we should take a chance on.

It turned out to be way cooler than I imagined while talking to Zach on the phone:

I could tell this was crazy old because it was wood and not tin.  It was in great shape.  After doing some research, we figured out it was made in 1949 and sold at Sears.  It is up on ebay now and already has a $50 bid.  It has 18 watchers too, so hopefully it will go a little higher.

So then flash forward to today and Zach gets home later than usual after work.  Turns out he had stopped at an estate sale.  I was just about to nap with Everett when Zach informed me that I REALLY needed to get up and go to the sale he was just at.  “It was like a hoarder and there was all this stuff and I know we could resell some of it and blah blah…”

Well, his assessment was right on.  This place was packed.  And the stuff was good.  The prices seemed fair.  I had apparently taught Grasshopper well.

They even had a doll of Sarah’s future child there:

Check out those teefers.

I ended up buying the following:

An Ohio Art tin buggy which seems like it should be an easy resell:

A cool old ice bucket by Hazel Atlas Glass company:

And this hilarious watch which was only $1.  People like Duran Duran don’t they?!

(Zach seemed very skeptical of this purchase.)

I will probably go back tomorrow with Sarah because there were other things I was interested in but wanted to wait and barter over.  Prices today were pretty firm.

When Zach was at the sale, he got this cool toy wagon for $15.  It was really dirty and he cleaned it all up.  It is all wood and super cute.

So good job Zach!  You have officially earned the ranking of DTT Scout.  We are so proud :)

-Erin