Dig This Treasure!

On Saturday night, Sarah and I decided to hit up my favorite local hotspot–the Plymouth auction.  Our friend Lisa was also in attendance, and we were all excited because the items this night looked really good.  Spoiler alert: we all got some GOOD stuff.

I bid on and won the first item up for auction.  It is this framed Harper’s Bazaar print featuring an old baseball team.  (Sorry for the glare on the glass in this photo.)

I got this for Timmy, the #1 baseball fanatic himself.  It was $10.

There was a lot of really nice furniture this night, but none of us needed any furniture.  It all of course went obscenely cheap.  I was particularly obsessed with this seemingly simple table, which opened up to reveal a baller writing desk.  It sold for something like $50.

Lisa and I loved this chair below, and Sarah thought we were crazy.  It just needed some new upholstery.  

And then there was this crazy thing, which I saw and instantly thought, “Who the HELL is going to buy that?!”  Sure enough, this knitting machine (?) sold for $800!  Everyone clapped and cheered when it sold because that is some serious bank to drop on that thing.

I can only assume this thing is used to make these pony sweaters:

Lisa ended up getting two of the best items at the auction.  First was this horn; “horn” here being used in two ways: an animal horn and a musical horn.  

I’m not entirely sure what she is going to do with this, but it was definitely the most badass purchase made that night.  Also, look at that frowny lady in the background!

Lisa also bought this AMAZING carved wooden screen.  It has all sorts of animals on it.  If I had a place for this in our house, I would have fought her over it.  Probably the best buy of the night.

Lisa and I also split a lot of Pewabic pottery, which I have just now realized I still need to pay her for.  My piece in the lot was this little bear tile:

My best score of the evening was a gorgeous stained glass lamp.  We have needed a new living room lamp for awhile now, but I had yet to find one I really loved.  Our old lamp was broken and made a weird sizzling noise which I am sure meant our death in a fire was imminent.  Luckily, I bid on and won this:

I love the pattern so much.  It’s floral but not super femme-y.

I’ll let Sarah fill you in on her purchases, but I will say that at one point she bought this old plastic puzzle.  It came with another item she wanted, so she had no choice but to buy it.  When she got it, we realized it was all chewed on and gross.  I can’t believe this was even an auction item.  She ended up leaving it behind because as far as we knew, it was a biohazard.  

-Erin

Update from Sarah: I was expecting a lot more awesome treasures at this auction, but I did come away with some cool stuff. As Erin mentioned, Lisa came away with some of the coolest items–especially that horn!

In the end, I did come away with some cool stuff. One of the first things I noticed at this auction was an old metal Peanuts tray. I knew as soon as I saw it that I would pay a decent amount of money for it, because both Adam and I love the Peanuts. I won it for a whopping $13, and it came with that ugly ass puzzle that Erin posted above, and some expired astronaut food.

Anyone know any hungry astronauts?

Very adorable.

I also purchased this semi-creepy but also cute old woodblock print. Lisa was the first to notice it and bid on it. I hadn’t seen it but once I got a closer looked, I wanted it.

One thing that I did not end up winning was a HUGE lot of Grateful Dead beanie babies. I didn’t even know that such a thing existed until I took a closer look at the pile of beanies on one of the tables. Apparently there are people in the world who want to own Grateful Dead beanie babies, so the reselling potential was there.

One hilarious thing about these bears was that the person putting them up on the auction block called them WALKING Dead dolls, instead of GRATEFUL Dead dolls.

I didn’t think anyone on earth would be interested in them, but apparently people did their research. I think they ended up selling for something like $60, which was too much for me to pay, but then again, maybe there were some really obscure bears up in there. 

Also, in case you were wondering you can buy a plush Jerry Garcia.

You’re welcome.

Sarah and I didn’t sale last Friday because there was supposed to be a snowpocalypse.  It snowed some, but the worst part was really how icy the roads seemed to be.  Anyway, I hit a sale on Saturday to make up for our loss.  The sale was right nearby and looked to have LOTS of cute things.

And, turns out, it did!

The problem was that everything was so expensive!  The tiered serving thing above was $30!  All of those cookie jars and vintage pitchers were $20+.

When I saw this old wicker baby scale for $50, I started to get annoyed.  That is a really neat item, but no one is going to pay $50 for it at an estate sale.  In fact, I didn’t see anyone at this sale buying much of anything, which is sad because there were a lot of nice things.

When I got in the basement there was this adorable, retro stove.

It’s too bad this thing was so heavy or else I probably would have considered buying it.  

I did find some old greeting cards for Sarah, and ending up making a deal on the whole lot for $20.  There were some really cute cards in here, all from the 40s, 50s, and 60s, so I feel like it was a good deal.

And amazingly, I found a vintage laundry cart.  I just cleaned up our basement laundry area and was telling Zach that I wanted some sort of vintage laundry holder/basket thing.  This little wheely guy was just the thing I needed!

Right now he is holding all of our clean socks:

I also found this tiered, wire fruit basket thing.  It reminds me of an old-timey supermarket or a 1950s kitchen item.  I’m also using this in our laundry area, although I haven’t figured out what to put in it yet.

I got both my laundry items for $10.  

-Erin

Back in August, Adam and I had found three old Kik-Steps at that sale with all of the Letterpress gear. These are pretty pricey brand new, so we were excited to buy each of them for between $6 and $8. They were in pretty grungy shape, but over Christmas break, Adam began fixing them up. He says that all he had to do was order $24 worth of supplies from The Library Store, and he was in business. Here’s one of the newly improved Kik-Steps in our kitchen (the red one in the background is one that he got for me a few years ago, new): 

Adam spent countless hours sitting in front of the TV, cleaning these suckers and watching bad action movies or documentaries about pinball. I appreciate his hard work, but I will admit that I did make fun of him quite a bit during the process. 

The coolest thing was that on two of them, he was able to salvage the old Kik-Step rubber logo on top, which is way cooler than the new one: 

  Thanks, Adam!

-Sarah

We’ve been having a lot of luck at auctions lately, but estate sales as of late, especially for me, have been disappointing.  Last Friday, I was hoping this would all change.  There were tons of sales, and some looked pretty decent.  We set out first to Huntington Woods because the house looked packed with old stuff.  

There was a lot of old stuff, just nothing very exciting.  This thing in the foreground above was a knitting machine, but it looked all broken.  It would be very neat to see it in action though.

Everything at this sale was just “stuff.”  Stuff we didn’t really have a use for, and stuff that we couldn’t resell.  I did see this though:

And a questionable coloring book page:

And this doll that looks like Sarah:

This doll reminds me of every Friday when Sarah says, “Can you tell I didn’t shower?” and then I say, “Yes, yes I can.”

Speaking of Sarah, she found this:

And can you believe she didn’t buy it for me?! RUDE.

I didn’t buy anything at this sale, or at the next sale actually.  This one was in Ferndale, at the same location as the Girl Scout sale a few weeks ago.

Looks like Sarah is holding some porcelain dogs in the photo above (shocking).  I don’t know if she bought them.  Everything else here looked like thrift store overflow.  And to top it off, our favorite jabber jaws (you know, “THAT GUY”)  was here shopping.  I overheard him telling a story about stealing from another sale.  In this story, he explained how his crime was totally justified.  Here was his logic:

“That guy” went to a sale and it was a totally packed “digger” sale.  He rummaged through a bunch of stuff, found something super valuable (I think he said it was something gold or silver), and took it to the register to ask for the price.  They told him a couple hundred dollars.  He then said to the sellers, “This is the last time I work so hard to rummage through stuff for you and find the good stuff you’ve missed.  How dare you try to rip me off with that price.  Next time, I won’t be bringing the item up to you after I find it.”  "That guy" then proceeds to tell his buddy how sure enough at the next sale run by these sellers he dug up a fine, fancy treasure and pocketed it.  

Not okay.  Not even like a little bit ok.

We left this sale and noticed a vintage store nearby.  We stopped in and I lounged on this spaceship chair:

Sarah tripped over a table in this place and knocked it over.  I looked the other way while repeating, “Don’t knock stuff over.”  We scooted out of there right after and headed to our next sale, which I don’t remember the location of.  The house was adorable though:

There were all of these dollhouse room diorama things:

This one reminded me of the style in our house:

Sarah made some good finds at this house, but again, I came up empty handed.  I couldn’t believe it!  I hadn’t bought anything all day!  We had one more house to visit, and when we got there, things didn’t look promising.

Hmm, I don’t need any bullets.  And we all know I hate shells.

I did find two treasures.  They weren’t magnificent, but they were treasures nonetheless.  First up was this set of vintage duck drinking glasses:

I put these up on ebay because I saw that others like them sold for about $30.

I also found this tablecloth, which if I remember correctly is Polish.

I only spent $8 this day, which is nice, but like I said, I am really itching for some better scores!

-Erin

Update from Sarah: Even I didn’t spend much on this trip, which is unheard of. At the first sale, I found the two best things in the place, which were this adorable sweater and a Napco planter: 

I could tell Erin was super jealous of this find. She made me promise to give it to her if I didn’t want it anymore. The Napco planter features Mary and Jeezo. It’s so cute! But I’m going to sell it. I guess Jesus was last week’s theme. 

When I parked the car at the second sale, I looked in my rear view mirror and saw my mom crossing the street with her friend Joyce. As mentioned before, my mom and her friend have become estate sale junkies ever since my mom first came with us to a few sales in the summer. She had a giant box of stuff in her hands, which is more proof that we are related. I had never met Joyce and wanted to, so Erin and I ran across the (main, busy) road and I began waving my hands wildly to get my mom’s attention. You could tell my mom just thought I was a wild maniac stranger until she opened the car door and got a closer look. In her defense, I did have on a giant puffy coat and huge sunglasses. We actually bumped into them again later in the day, which tells you something about the sale quality–there were only a few good ones.

Anyway, I bought some dog statues and a cool vintage drinking glass featuring “Miss Miracle Mile” from Traverse City. It’s not dated but my guess is 1950s. 

At the cute house, I bought two things but one of them I want to feature separately. Here’s the other: 

Nothing in the house was priced, so when I checked out the woman told me these were $3. That’s pretty outrageous but I paid it because they were brand new in a box and one of my dogs recently chewed apart all of my cork coasters. And these ones are super adorable. 

At the last sale, I found a few cool things. A vintage Diane von Furstenberg plaid flannel shirt, some old colored vinyl children’s records, and some cool wrapping paper. 

I also bought another cool antique wedding portrait with something written in another language (Polish, Swedish, Slovak?) on the back side.

I tried Google Translate with no luck. Anyone know what it says? 

I mentioned yesterday that I’d be saving a few of my favorites from the Canadian auction to be featured on a rainy day. It’s not rainy but it’s frigid, so that works. 

At one point during the auction, they did a “choice out” of a bunch of different Jesus-y items. This might be obvious but when they say they’re going to choice out a bunch of stuff, it means they’re taking things that are similar and letting people bid on their choice among those things. They do this on jewelry a lot of the time. People often end up taking a bunch of the items, or all of them. For example, those tapestries Erin won were things she was the high bidder on a “choice out” auction. She paid $15 for each of the ones she chose. I’m explaining this because I didn’t quite understand it the first time I was at an auction. Then again, as Erin often points out to you all, I’m pretty slow. 

Anyway, as far as religious themed stuff goes, I’m not normally super into it, but I spotted an amazing vintage Virgin Mary plaque among the others. It looked like something that you would find in Lafayette’s apartment on True Blood. Here’s Lafayette:

Here’s Lafayette’s apartment: 

 Here is my plaque: 

She would fit right in in that Virgin Mary shrine on the back wall. 

The style that this statue/plaque was made in was really familiar to me but for the life of me, I could not put a name to it. After some brief searching around, Erin and I got to the bottom of it. 

It seems like Erin’s consultation of this new search service, goodle, is what worked so well for us in solving the mystery.

Ok, all kidding aside, this is an “Immaculate Heart of Mary” statue. We tried googling things like “Mexican Virgin Mary” and “Our Lady of Guadalupe” and finally I said something like, “but what’s the virgin mary called with the HEART?!” I consulted Google and Erin consulted Goodle and we hit the jackpot. 

Anyway, needless to say, Adam does not like this statue. I think this is because our house is not decorated like Lafayette’s apartment (YET!) This wasn’t a surprise for me. After I won it (for a mere $5!), I sat back down in my seat and Erin and I kept commenting on how awesome it was. Then we both looked at each other and said, “it can be a thing that freaks your husband out." 

-Sarah

Last Wednesday, I somehow convinced Erin to go with me to an auction in Windsor, Ontario. If you’re unfamiliar with the area where we live, Windsor is just across the river from Detroit. This wasn’t the first time one of us had dug for treasures internationally, but it was the first time we had gone to an auction in Canada, so we weren’t sure what to expect. Turns out, Canadians don’t like spending a lot of money at auctions, which was awesome for us. 

I reminded Erin to write down some directions since you quickly lose cell service once you cross the border. She obeyed. 

I’m particularly thankful that she added this extremely important step: “Straight into tunnel.” I think we might have missed it if she hadn’t written it down. 

Turns out, Erin gets the heebie jeebies in tunnels. She kept breathing deeply and asking me if I thought there was too much carbon monoxide in the tunnel from cars idling. 

Does that look scary to you? I didn’t think so. 

Once we convinced the border agent that we weren’t drug smugglers, we were on our way. When we arrived at the auction, it immediately seemed different than other auctions. Then I realized this was because the auctioneer had a Canadian accent and kept saying DOLEars, instead of dollars. 

Here are some pics of the offerings: 

Cool table with a built-in ashtray on top that you can’t see. 

Erin was obsessed with that hideous chair. I have no idea why or how. 

Action shot of me investigating stuff on the stage. 

So I really don’t know what this place was, but there was a stage at the front of the room with this rickety old rail-less set of steps leading up to it. The auction started at one side of the room…

…and all of the stuff was on tables along the outer edges of the room. As it progressed, they finally got to the front where the stage was, and Erin was obsessed with watching the employees have to carry these trays of breakable items down that rickety old staircase. It was actually pretty insane. 

There’s an example. The woman is holding a tray of breakable figurines that she brought down from that stage behind her. Every time someone had to walk around with one of these trays, it was was like watching a person balance a crystal vase on their head. You were basically wincing the whole time, hoping they didn’t drop the tray.

Here are some pictures of some other items that were up for grabs: 

Boom boxes. 

A vibrator. Look how pumped he is to be displaying that thing!

Ok in all seriousness, we both came away with some cool stuff. One of the first things I noticed that I wanted was this vintage wall hanging of a boy eating corn on the cob. I thought it would look adorable in my kitchen. 

Of course, I left with this little dude in my possession. It has a little hook on it where we could hang keys, so it’s also useful! And Adam likes it! Double win. 

This auction lasted forever because there was so much stuff, and the auctioneer milked every last dollar out of people. He started getting annoyed that people wouldn’t bid high, but it’s sort of like, if you immediately let on that you’re willing to sell things low, why would we bid high?! 

Anyway, I also ended up with an old, pretty minty copy of Abbey Road. I thought it might be worth a lot but it’s not a first pressing. If you ever stumble across a copy of Abbey Road that is in good shape and the back cover looks like this, grab it.  

The two things of note on this are the “misaligned apple” and the lack of “Her Majesty” listed on the sleeve. Some also claim that first pressings are missing “Her Majesty” on the record sticker. Mine doesn’t have these things, but it’s a really nice copy of the record and I only paid $10 for it so I’m happy. 

I also purchased a box of records and one of the best covers was this: 

I’m a little ashamed of the quantity of stuff I came home with. A lot of it was stuff that came in lots and I only wanted one thing out of the bunch. Oh well, the rest can go in the garage sale. 

Overall, I had a blast at this auction. It was really good people watching and I got some cool stuff. A few of the items I’m going to save for future posts because I love them so much. 

Hopefully Erin will update you all about the fight she got in with the auctioneer over a pair of dirty moccasins. 

-Sarah

Update from Erin: That tunnel is so scary because it is under water…a whole giant lake of water.  One day that tunnel will collapse because you shouldn’t build tunnels underwater.  You shouldn’t even build tunnels through mountains.  In fact, everyone everywhere: STOP BUILDING TUNNELS.

When we walked into the auction I was excited that there was so much stuff.  I instantly fell in love with some old tapestries that were described as “Egyptian.”  I don’t know if this is true, but I ended up with them.  I paid $15 each, which is pricey, but I knew there wasn’t much else in the auction I would end up buying.

Look at that cute little frowny person!

The next tapestry had a fish design.  It’s pink, but I still like it.

I appreciate these because 2 years ago I took a weaving class and it was so hard.  I made a tapestry that was about 5 inches wide and 3 inches tall and it took about a month to finish.  Oy.

I was laughing so hard at the workers carrying huge trays of breakable items because it reminded me of Food Network Challenge.  If you aren’t familiar with the show, then this joke is lost on you.  Basically, on that show, people spend about 8 hours making huge elaborate cakes, and one is chosen as the best.  However, before the cakes can be judged, they have to be carried to the judging table.  The whole thing is unnecessary, but the precariousness of it all creates some mega drama.  Here’s a clip:

Total bummer.

So anyway, a while into the auction, Sarah and I were super thirsty.  The problem was that neither of us had Canadian money to buy drinks (we planned to pay for our purchases on our debit cards).  The snack bar didn’t take debit card, so I decided to go cash out all my purchases, and while doing so, have the cashier tack on the cost of 2 drinks to my total.  She did this, and then handed me the following:

I looked at her confused.  What the hell is 2 pop?  And why is it on this paper?  Of course, this was my token of sorts to go collect my beverages.  Very funny.  Also funny is that “2 Pop” was Sarah’s rap name in high school.  

I got my 2 pop and joined Sarah back at our seats.  Now, this part is important: Because I cashed out, I no longer had a bidder number.  That was ok because I didn’t plan to buy anything else, that is, until some great old moccasins went up on the auction block.  I had obviously overlooked them.  I didn’t take a photo, but the moccasins were similar to these I found online:

The auctioneer started at a price of $30 for these moccasins, but no one bid.  He then went down to $20, and still no one was bidding.  At that point, I chirped out a, “$10???” asking him if he would sell them for $10 since no one was bidding.  Now let me say, that ALL NIGHT LONG people were doing this sort of thing.  The auctioneer would be stuck at $10 with no bids, and someone would yell out, “$5?” and he would accept their offer.  He even went as low as $3 on many items.  

In my case though, he looked at me, ignored me, and then continued to repeat, “$20? $20? $20?”  Still no bids.  I scrambled to get Sarah’s bidder number from her, and then I raised it and said, “I’ll take them for $20.”  I said it like this because he was looking away from me, and I was trying to get his attention.  When he heard me, he set the moccasins back on the table and then snapped at me, “TOO LATE.”

I was so angry.  This was super rude and idiotic.  All night long this auctioneer was milking extra dollars out of people.  One person would be bidding at $5 for something and he would incessantly repeat “$6? $6? $6?”  This drew out the auction process too long, and the crowd was getting annoyed.  The auctioneer was apparently also annoyed, considering how he reacted to me.

I approached the auctioneer after the auction was over.  I first said to him that I was very sorry if I offended him by offering $10 for the moccasins, but that I did so because other people were making offers all night.  He claimed that he didn’t even hear my offer, which is strange because later in our conversation he referenced me making this exact offer.  Whatever.  I asked if I could buy the moccasins and he said no (of course) and I explained that it was sad how spiteful he was acting.  He told me that the moccasins are “worth WAY more than $20” and I reminded him that that was HIS price he tried to auction them for.  

It was clear our conversation was going nowhere, and I knew from the get-go that he was not going to sell me those moccasins now, or ever.  I let him know one more time that it was sad how an item that would be cherished by someone was now going to sit unsold, and that I’ve never seen someone make it so hard for me to give them money.

He said that he will auction these moccasins again in the future if I want them, but I don’t know if I will go back.  Actually, who am I kidding?  I will probably go back.  GIMME THEM MOCS.

So after our excursion last Friday, we decided to check out a Doug Dalton auction in Romulus.  You might remember this same auction from that time Sarah bought a million dolls and I got my heart broken by some paper mache Halloween decorations.  

As usual, the items at the auction looked high-end, and we were particularly excited about a mass of duck decoys they had to offer.  I wanted to get to the auction early specifically to research and examine all of the ducks, considering I won the lottery last time I bought a duck decoy.  

Sarah, however, had another goal in mind–washing her car.

That’s right, there are riches to be made, and Sarah wants to wash her car.  Mind you, her car is filled with estate sale treasures she bought weeks ago, so cleaning her car is not a priority, JUST WASHING.  So we did that.  She tried to convince me to drive her car through the wash for her (she was scared) but I refused.  I’ve watched enough People’s Court to know what happens when you drive your friend’s car into a car wash and accidentally destroy it. 

Anyway, this hilarious sign greeted us as we exited the car wash.  And also, look in that foggy mirror, there is TOTALLY a ghost child standing on the left side just below the white part.  Spooky.

So on to the auction we went, and luckily we did have some time to inspect the goods.  From my last duck victory, I learned that it is important for the duck to be hand carved, hand painted, and signed by the artist.  The older the better also seems true.  And the duck should be in good shape, unless it is super beat up and thus “primitive” looking, which some people also collect.

I ended up buying the two ducks below, as a pair, for $100.  

They are signed with the name Hoffman, and a tag on them indicated that they are from the “Walter Snow School.”  I have no idea what this means, but Walter Snow decoys seem to fetch high prices.  I figured any connection to him would help.

At first when I won, I panicked a bit.  I was caught in the moment and really should not have bid so high.  My last decoy was only a $10 investment, and therefore much less risky of a buy.  I started to worry that I seriously overpaid.  

[Spoiler alert: I didn’t overpay!  These ducks are doing swimmingly on ebay, and I will post an update with their final selling price.]

The rest of the auction looked just ok.  It was mostly guns and man-stuff.  Sarah visited a separate toy auction in the back of the room, so she will update you on that.  

Here is a sea monster we didn’t buy.

The gun on the left looks like a dueling pistol!  Zach has two replica dueling pistols, so I thought that getting him a real one would be cool.  But then everything started selling for really high prices and I knew it was hopeless.

I also got excited because there were old instruments, which I also sold recently and did well with.  That red Gibson guitar is apparently very collectible and Zach told me to try buying it.  It was in bad shape but still ended up selling for $475.  Obviously, I was not the buyer.

And if you think that is a high priced item, listen to this…we totally got to watch a saxophone at this auction sell for $4,000!  It was incredible.  People started cheering and clapping for the winner.  The saxophone, a Selmer Mark VI, must be like the holy grail of saxophones.  Look at what some recently sold for on ebay:

So crazy!  

The other crazy part was that this saxophone probably would have gone higher than $4,000 but the auctioneer did not see a woman in the back of the room trying to bid.  He closed the auction at $4,000 and the winner was some guy up front.  The woman came running up and started arguing with the auctioneer.  I felt bad for her though, she clearly had her hand up and was trying to bid.  At that point though, there is nothing you can do, and all auctioneers have signs up saying they are not responsible for mistakes.  Whomp whomp.

-Erin

Update from Sarah: My car was so dirty that I could barely see through the windows. I also have an unreasonable fear of drive-thru car washes because I had a bad experience in one once: I stepped on the brake and you would have thought I set off a nuclear bomb considering how the guys at the place were yelling at me. So I really wanted to get my car washed while Erin was with me, so she could talk me through any traumatic events or scolding that might occur. My car was so clean after this wash that at the end of the auction, we walked up to my car and I thought it wasn’t my car. I actually asked Erin, “Is this my car?” True story. 

This auction was so crazy packed with people. Obviously there isn’t a lot of entertainment in Romulus on Friday night. 

Ok so first, I don’t know what Erin is talking about with that gun. I’m pretty sure you cannot buy a gun unless you have a permit. While I am writing this, Erin is texting me, trying to tell me that that isn’t true for guns more than “100 years old.” I told her it sounded like she was making sh*t up. 

During the duck decoy auction, I bid on and won a “primitive” looking duck. I spent $50 on him which is a lot, but I figured that if he didn’t sell, he was cool enough to keep. Here he is. 

He’s sort of leaning back in that picture so you can see the thing underneath–it’s made of some metal and old nails. He already has a few bids, so I think at the very least, I’ll make my money back. 

The normal auction was boring me, so I went in the back room where they were auctioning off old tin toys and trains. I’m not sure why Erin didn’t come in there. I bought a few things, the most promising of which seems to be this old Western Pacific tin train, made in Japan. 

It’s not getting much attention on eBay so far, but I’m still hopeful. One just like it sold for $132, so I’m not sure what all the homies are waiting for. 

After the toy auction ended, we stuck around to see some of those instruments sell for a ton of money. One correction–that sax sold for $4400. I only know this because there was another guy bidding on it who actually plays them, and he was in line to pay right in front of me. He had stopped bidding at $4000 and was super pissed about not winning it, because the guy who did win it was going to resell it. I guess that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. 

We got a fairly late start on Friday due to the fact that I have a real job with real hours that need to be really worked in real life. There weren’t any exceptional looking sales (or even GOOD looking sales) once again, but we made it work.

The first sale we stopped at was very close to Erin’s house, and was clearly a “man sale.” But that’s ok! There were some cool things to see, along with a lot of chaos.

Cool things:

Chaos:

This guy obviously worked on cars, and possibly even planes. He had a lot of old literature on both of these things, but the space was so destroyed and crowded that it was hard to get a really good look without wondering if some structure was going to collapse on your dome. Erin decided to take a chance.

I saw a little crawl space that was filled with boxes and other nonsense. Of course, rather than sacrifice myself, I pulled Erin into the room and told her to get in there because she’s smaller than me. She obeyed and even had a mini flashlight. (Sidenote: I HATE when guys whip out their Maglite minis at sales. They’re always the SAME kind of guy–big, scruffy, and wearing dirty Hanes sweats. Do you think you’re on Storage Wars or what?)

Anyway, she pulled out a dainty keychain light (which is acceptable) and got down to business. She found a treasure of her own that I’ll let her tell you about, but she also unearthed this decent sized box of pictures and other paper.

She also found a few 8 mm and 16 mm films but the woman running the sale told me that she must have missed those–the family wanted to keep any and all movies (but apparently not still pictures?) I didn’t let her know she missed them because they were in the deep dark depths of the dirty crawlspace. But it left me wondering what was on those films–something scandalous, or just family memories?

I ended up getting the box of stuff for $10, which seems reasonable, though I haven’t looked through it yet. Erin spotted another big stack of photos in the garage, and the guy out there sold them to me for $5. All in all, an excellent deal.

One last thing that Erin considered buying:

The next sale on our list was out in Warren. We made the trek because it looked packed. Turns out, it wasn’t packed at all, and instead was primarily filled with cheap garbage. HOWEVER, I found one box of absolutely incredible items at this sale. I’ll maintain the suspense by first showing you some items that we did not buy:

Uhm. What? Wait… now that I think about it, why did I not buy this? Actually, I’ve got a new New Years Resolution: From now on, buy any and all ‘70s resin figurines with sad and/or nonsensical sayings on them. We see them so often that I think it’s a sign. We need to start collecting them.

I’m not positive but I think these guys are made of cotton balls.

We were LOL-in’ about that cover and byline for a good while.

Ok, so here is the gold that I found:

Ok, so I realize that for everyone else on Earth, this looks like kindling for your fireplace. However, this box of books made me squeal with glee. I’m a librarian at a university and I manage a children’s and YA collection. Some of the books in this box are things I’ve never even heard of. I think I might feature one of them every so often on here because the summaries on the back covers alone are amazing.

It turns out these are a combination of “problem novels” and “female junior novels,” all ranging from the late '50s through '70s. I know this thanks to my friend Amanda who is a children’s lit professor who wrote her dissertation on NEGLECTED female junior novels. There were a few books in this lot that were things she’d never even seen in paperback!

So if you couldn’t already tell, this was really exciting for me. It’s just another example of the serendipity that sometimes happens–connecting you with a perfect item. I could tell that Erin was pretty much like “WTF” about my excitement, but she hid it well, and I applaud her for her efforts there. 

The other thing I purchased at this sale was an antique 8x10 wedding portrait:

Isn’t it so cool? Also, there was a little note tucked inside that made me feel better about purchasing more old pictures of strangers.

Apparently even the previous owner had no idea who these people were.

-Sarah

Update from Erin: If Sarah sticks to her resolution of buying all 70s resin figurines, there are going to be a LOT more TTFYHO entries.  I feel like a better 2013 resolution for Sarah is to buy NOTHING from the 70s.  In fact, I was watching Market Warriors last night on PBS and the challenge this week was to buy stuff from the 70s and resell it at auction.  Everyone on the show lost money…like a lot of money.

Anyway, the first sale on Friday was pretty grody.  I came out of there covered in dust.  Like Sarah mentioned, my trek into the crawlspace was fruitful.  I found a bunch of boxes and inside one was an old Gruen automatic watch.  

What is so amazing about this watch is that it sat so long without ticking (decades for sure) and the metal hands left little tarnish marks on the watch face.  But because I had jostled the boxes in the crawlspace around, the watch started ticking again and was running great when I discovered it.  How automatic watches are able to do this is beyond me…even more incredible than putting a man on the moon.

I paid a mere $5 for the watch, and it is blowing up ebay now.  

Also, why didn’t I buy that dog portrait?!  UGH.  It was so great.  I will kick myself over this for a long time.  

The second sale was my worst nightmare.  There was nothing for me to even look at while Sarah practically read each book she found cover to cover.  I kept mincing around behind her like pacing animals do at the zoo when they are bored.  I’m sure she appreciated it.  

Our day didn’t end here though, stay tuned for a report on the auction we attended later that night.

-Erin