Dig This Treasure!

It was pretty dreary on Sunday, but Zach suggested we go to the Flat Rock Speedway, where they were having a flea market.  I’m glad we did because it turned out to be lots of fun!

I just looked at the large version of this photo on my computer and there is a giant Confederate flag dead center.  UGH.  I will assume it was a person selling only authentic Civil War memorabilia.  (It wasn’t.)

Man, what I wouldn’t give to drive one of those buses around the track.  They were all smashed up and looked like they had several different rounds of fire damage.  I’d still totally drive one though. And crash it.

Here are my boys.  Aren’t they cute?  I gave Everett a tootsie roll pop to keep him busy.  He sat in silence and ate it for about 2 hours.  Shoutout to tootsie roll pops.

Look! It’s another one of those ICP dolls!  On what planet was someone like, “we should totally paint the doll like this.”  It’s awful.  No one will buy that doll.

There were a ton of these jail mugshots in a ziplock bag.  I wanted all of them.  They were so amazing.  Most of the crimes were gambling and larceny related.  The guy selling these though wanted $4 EACH.  No way.  I wanted the whole bag for $10.  No deal.

I also liked this old “flicker” watch.  It was similar to a hologram.  The baseball player would swing his bat when you turned your wrist.  The guy selling it said it was from the 50s but it looks more 60s or 70s to me.  He wanted $95 for it.  That was out of my range but still very cool to try it on.

Speaking of holograms, how do you say “hologram?”  Zach says HOE-LOW-GRAM to which I promptly called him an idiot.  I say HA-LAH-GRAM.

Here is a hotdog I ate.  It was good as hell.

I only bought three things but they were all great.  This whole flea market had treasures I had not seen before, and everything was priced pretty reasonably.

I got these Gurley Halloween candles still in the box.  They are on eBay now, but I fantasized about keeping them.  They are seriously the cutest. I paid $10.

I also got this Halloween blow mold. It is also cute.  It was $5.

My largest purchase was this gigantic lot of old Sesame Street toys from the 80s and 90s.  Sarah will 100% murder me for not giving these to her.  I paid $15 and put them on eBay Buy It Now for $50.  They sold instantly, which is a blessing and a curse.  It is nice to make a profit, but the fact that they sold instantly makes me think I should have listed them for higher.

Zach bought an old railroad poster that was framed.  It was really neat until he realized it was just a photocopy of an old railroad poster.  The aging on the edges and the slight tears were not real when you looked close, just a copy!  He returned it after we raised a stink.

Zach also bought an amazing old watch here, but only after we went home first.  It was pricey, marked $395.  I could tell it was weighing on Zach’s mind and that he loved it so much.  When we got home, he texted with a watch friend in New York, who valued it around $1200.  A similar one on eBay recently sold for $980.  Zach raced back to buy the watch.

He ended up getting it for $300 which is a great deal.  This watch is a chronograph, which is way more collectible than your average vintage watch.  The brand is Vulcain and it is from the 60s. The dial style is called a “surfboard.”  I think he will probably wear it awhile and then eventually sell it.

That’s all from Flat Rock! 

-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

We’ve written about interesting interactions with people on eBay quite a few times, but one of Adam’s most recent experiences as a seller really takes the cake.

Back when Adam and I started our Christmas eBay Battle (he won, by the way), he listed an old TOKYObay watch that nobody seemed to want. 

Finally, a few weeks ago, someone purchased it. And a few days after shipping, Adam woke up to a case opened against him from a clearly insane person. 

He also discovered that this crazy person had left him negative feedback: 

Adam messaged the person and let him know that the listing did in fact state that the watch needed a battery, and that if he replaced the battery, the watch would work fine. The person responded, saying, 

All fine and good, right? Wrong. Because when someone opens a case against you and does not close it after it’s resolved, the amount that they paid for that item is “held” in PayPal, which means that you don’t have access to that money. In this case, it was only $35, but I’ve had people do this to me for items that cost well over $100.

Anyway, Adam kept asking the guy if he would close the case, and the guy just didn’t respond. The other problem was that even though the buyer seemed satisfied, he had already left negative feedback. Adam prides himself on his “over one thousand positive feedbacks” (NERD) and so this was really grating on him. (Fun eBay fact: The feedback percentage that shows up is calculated based on the last 12 months. So even though he had one bad apple, it was calculating as 98.2% positive feedback, which, if you do any buying or selling on eBay, you know is pretty freakin’ bad!)

I asked Adam if he had ever followed up with eBay to get the case closed and feedback removed and he hadn’t, so one day I logged into his account and decided to try to take care of it myself–I figured I would just tell them that we share the account.

Just in case any of you ever wondered about actually talking to a human at eBay–you can! Here’s how: 

So I did this and they immediately told me that I had to officially be added to the account to do anything related to it. I hung up and thought about how I could go around this. Since much of their customer support is outsourced, I decided to just call back and say my name was Adam Kempa. Would they really know that it can’t be a woman’s name? So devious, I know. 

Well, it turns out that NO they don’t know that Adam is a man’s name. Because when I called back and told them my name was Adam, the customer service rep didn’t even flinch. The best part about it was that the woman kept referring to me as Adam, which I was loving. She told me that the best solution was to have them contact the buyer to get them to close the case. I reiterated that I was also concerned about the negative feedback and this is where the story gets INSANELY GOOD. The woman could tell how upset I was about the negative feedback, and provided me with some words of wisdom.

I immediately called Erin and we both died laughing. 

We thought this was the best part of the story, until a few days later, Adam found the following message from eBay: 

Now that we know that I was conversing with a Disney Princess, it all makes sense. 

-Sarah 

Less than a week before lil’ Everett arrived, Erin and I went on our last sale-ing excursion for a while. It wasn’t incredibly fruitful, but we did both find a couple of treasures. 

We started off in nearby Redford and hit up a sale that was very old lady-ish, but full of stuff, so that made it fun. 

I believe the woman was involved in community theater because there were some clothes there that seemed more like costumes than regular outfits. The whole attic/upstairs was filled with clothes/costumes. 

I had grabbed a bunch of clothes but when I went to check out, I noticed that a number of them were stained or grosser up close than I had realized, so I ended up putting a lot of it back. Erin grabbed this coat right away and told me it looked like something I’d buy because I love “quilted things”… that girl is right! I do! But this coat was horrid. 

There was a moment where I convinced myself that this coat wasn’t gross. Thank god I came to my senses. 

I really wanted this fabric artwork (the heart, not the elephant) but it had some water stains on it… whomp whomp. 

I thought this booklet was so freakin’ hilarious looking. 

In the end, I came away with these hideous shoes and that gingham shirt. I had to throw the shirt away because it was more stained than I realized (the woman threw it in for free because there were some small stains on the shoulder)… I liked those shoes a lot but now that I look at them… I don’t know! 

Next up on our list was a sale in Farmington that again, had a few cool items. I love these old prints… we see them a lot and sometimes they’re really pricey, and other times just moderately pricey. Who can tell me what they are, exactly? 

There was one at the sale before as well: 

Ahhhh! What are they?! 

Ok, back to the sale–there was a mix of antiques and oddly sexy stuff at this sale. 

That about sums it up. I walked away with a Halloween decoration that I’ll tell you more about on Halloween, and this cool old book. 

I can’t find a record for it anywhere–not even in our special library databases. I did discover that “Brownie Brace” is a nickname for a woman named Elizabeth Hanchett Brace, who appears to have written some other books that are less obscure. The illustrations in this book are super cool and art deco-y. 

Is that even art deco? If I’m wrong, someone correct me. It’s one of my favorite illustration styles so I want to know if I’m wrong! 

We went to two more sales after this, both in Dearborn. This is the only thing I came away with: 

And I’ll let Erin tell you more about the sales. But before she does that, here’s another picture of that adorable baby. Spoiler alert: Still super cute. 

-Sarah

Update from Erin: I had no clue that this day of sale-ing would be our last for a few weeks.  I thought for sure we had at least one more week of sales before Everett came.  Alas, my water broke a week early and the rest is history.

Somehow I managed to keep it a secret from Sarah that I actually knew the lady whose house the first sale was held at.  She is friends with my 85 year old neighbor and recently moved into assisted living.  Sarah’s sleuthing skills were right on–the lady was in a theatre group.  Zach and I actually go to their plays every few months.

I was in the basement of this sale and saw this:

A pencil sharpener.  Nothing fancy about that.  Except there was a group of three teenage girls walking around and when they saw this pencil sharpener, one of them said, “Was this a school?  It must have been a school down here.”

This totally blew my mind.  Younger generations are apparently only familiar with pencil sharpeners in school settings, so these girls automatically assumed this must have been some sort of educational facility.  Except that it looked like a totally normal basement and was clearly NOT a school.  So insane.

Also totally fascinating was why Sarah didn’t buy this:

First of all, she is OBSESSED with llamas.  And secondly, she loves her some giant wall decor, like that fabric heart thing above.

I bought a Seiko automatic watch at this sale because they usually sell for good money on ebay.  This one is in really rough shape though, but for $4 I figured what the hell.  Zach is a mega watch collector and said that some guys like beat up watches because it gives them a “story.”

At the second sale, I immediately zeroed in on this baseball bank.  I knew Timmy would want it.  It was priced around $30 though, which I knew was crazy.  I decided the best plan would be to call Timmy on my phone where I knew the guy running the sale would hear me.  By hearing my side of the conversation, I hoped the guy would realize that I really wanted to buy this thing, but also that the price was of great concern.

Sure enough, the guy heard me describing the bank to my dad and then also heard my reaction to my dad obviously saying the price was too high.  I acted kind of disappointed and like I was going to put the bank back.  The guy running the sale said, “That’s worth $200 on ebay you know.”  I was super polite but also wanted to be like, “UM NO WAY JOSE.”  He ended up selling it to me for $20, so I was happily victorious.  

At one of the last sales we visited, I picked up this giant stuffed monkey.  He’s from Howdy Doody or something like that.  I forget his name.  He was $15 but I am hoping he will sell for more on ebay because he is gigantic.  Smaller ones seemed to sell for $30-$60.  

I made the mistake of seating this guy at my dining room table when I got home from sale-ing.  In the night I got up to drink some water and he scared the sh*t out of me in the dark.  I thought a really ugly toddler broke into my house and was pulling a Goldilocks or something.

Anyway, I can’t make any promises but I am hoping to take a break tomorrow or Friday from raising a tiny human and instead hit a few sales.  Sarah is doing a great job keeping up the blog, but I am hoping to still pull my weight.  Wish me luck!

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