Yard Sale Bloodbath

Meghan forwarded me an email for an estate sale that listed a pretty typical mix of stuff: tools, antiques, furniture, jewelry … and “267 rabbit pelts in good condition.” That’s right, 267. Someone counted. So naturally, we decided to check it out.

We got there around 10:30 — it had opened at 10 and we were relieved that there was no line outside since it was extremely cold out. On our way to the door we passed two women walking away with piles of stuff. “Where are your rabbit pelts?” Meghan cracked, then took a closer look. “Oh, you really did buy some!” Sure enough, she had a couple of fluffy bits sticking out from the bottom of her pile. She told us she was going to make a skirt.

The house was sort of cramped and it was hard to move around, but we made our way upstairs, where there were two small bedrooms and a bathroom. One of them mostly had clothes and blankets, but also had a few oddball things. I’m pretty sure we’ve never encountered electric socks before. Apparently, they can be used to “obtain maximum satisfaction.”

Meghan found a couple of items, including this crucifix — we made the obvious jokes about someone using it for a stash box.

Out the window, we could see people digging through piles of stuff and going into the detached garage. We figured we’d hit that after we’d gone through the house.

Moving on to the next room, what did we find but … PELTS!

Lots of pelts!

But not 267. This box only had 31.

I would guess I saw less than a hundred pelts altogether. Honestly, I felt a little ripped off. Though it was true that they were in good condition.

There wasn’t much else in that room. Meghan grabbed a couple of cool vintage patterns. I unearthed a stash of old internet CD-ROMs. I made a joke to Meghan about how she might want to get them, in case she needed 1000 free hours on AOL some day. These weren’t priced and I really wonder what they would have charged anyone crazy enough to want them.

Later, I noticed the address label listed a pet grooming company, with the same address of the sale. Does this explain anything about the pelts? Did 267 bunnies come in for grooming and never make it out alive? I doubt it, but it was a strange juxtaposition. Especially since I didn’t really see any evidence of pet grooming items at the rest of the sale. There were tons of books on crafting and jewelry-making, and some supplies, including a table full of attempts at “agate rock jewelry” … and this bag of googly-eyed polished rocks.

They also had these pirate bookends. Arrrrrrr!

The kitchen was a mess, with shelves of cookbooks. We were laughing about one that had a title I can’t remember now, but something kind of like “How To Stuff A Wild Tortilla” — it was trying really hard to make the idea of putting things in a tortilla seem exciting. There were boxes of Baggies that must have dated from the ’80s, and this plastic bottle of something called “Flame-Out.”

We also spotted two boxes of Hires flavoring for making DIY root beer.

I hadn’t found anything so while Meghan got in line to pay, I took another look upstairs. Uh, look what just happened!

We had toyed with hitting a couple of other sales (even though they did not have any pelts) but decided we’d probably better just head home after a quick look at the garage. It had a nameplate on the door.

It took about 30 seconds to determine that there was nothing in there we wanted to buy — nor outside, where ancient lawnmowers and mystery items had been gathering dust and dirt for some time.

As we left I couldn’t resist taking a picture of their poor little sign all covered with snow.

And thus ended our first day of hitting sales — well, a sale — in the new year!

It’s been a while since I have done a book review, but then I saw this at my local thrift store. Why, it looks like a great gag gift for Jenny!

It’s the Garage Sale Decorator’s Bible, by Shelley Kincaid. First, note her expression on the cover – is she afraid her cat is going to attack her? Or, as my thrifting partner suggested, worried that some of her “fabulous finds” are about to fall down and kill her?

The Amazon reviews aren’t as amazing as the ones for Microwave for One by Sonia Allison, but they really should be.

Most of the projects have a “crafty” feeling that even my grandma would be turned off by.

And the drawings are pretty low rent.

Here are some of her amazing “HOW TO’S”. There are many, many, MANY more …

“HOW TO” MAKE A WATERBED HUTCH
“HOW TO” REMOVE UPHOLSTERY FABRIC
“HOW TO” ATTACH VCR TO TV
“HOW TO” TUNE IN THE BUTTON STYLE VCR
“HOW TO” SHRINK WRAP
“HOW TO” STORE YOUR CHRISTMAS TREE

Some of the crap in here is useful, like if you wanted to learn how to re-wire a lamp, but most folks are going to either ask at the hardware store or watch a “how-to” video online. I guess it makes a little more sense since this came out before youtube.com. The book was written in 1997, but it feels more like around 1988. Except that it does explain the Internet.

There is also a basically useless price guide listing the “retail,” “garage sale,” and “Shelley’s Best” prices for 33 pages’ worth of items, from Acrylic Nail Set to Z Brick.

She does have one thing right — the title of Chapter 1: GARAGE SALE~ING WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE!

I know we always slow down on posts at this time of year, but it’s been getting ridiculous. Nearly two months without a post! Though it hasn’t been quite that long without a sale. I have hit two separate estate sales, hoping to find either good stuff or interestingly bad stuff, but they were both a bust: decent but unexciting items, nothing breathtakingly awful, no frightening or hilarious encounters with other shoppers to report. Though possibly if Vintage Picker Ryan Gosling had gotten there early to snag the #1 spot, they might’ve been better.

But really, I think hibernating from sales is a good plan around this time of year. So let’s just revisit a few holiday-riffic gems from older days! Starting with this gem from our most Christmassy post ever, guest star Leslie’s romp through the 1978 Swiss Colony Christmas catalog.

There was the time Meghan leaped into a gingerbread man yard sale sign to provide some comedy gold …

… and the early ’40s Boeing magazine with an interesting take on the Christmas spirit.

And naturally, we’ve seen (and occasionally purchased) mounds and mounds of Christmas crap at sales throughout the years.

So may the spirit of peace be with you this holiday season.

And here’s to some amazing yard sale scores (and stories) in 2012!

It’s been cold and drizzly. Not as cold as the East Coast, but enough to make you re-think going to yard sales. Unless you are a diehard or just really dumb, you are probably staying warm in your bed on a Saturday or maybe you are hitting some thrift stores. Not us –- we hit a whopping four rainy-day sales.

Karl and Jenny both came over and we pretty much just talked about what the sales might be like, trying to figure out which ones happened on Friday and whether Karl had hit them the day before. In the end we decided to hit our usual cafe for a baked good first. This led to a 10-minute conversation about them “phoning it in” these days, as far as the pastries go. Long story short -– we had very little faith in the sales even being half good.

Well, the first sale was intense. I don’t really know another way to put it. It was an estate sale in the garage and basement, filled with really old, really weird stuff.

By the time I went back to take photos people had really started to clean it out, but you can still sort of get the idea.

There was also a huge free pile out front.

I don’t feel like I really can do the sale justice, but I picked up five 1920s vintage dresses, 3 1930s purses (2 arts and crafts style and one crocodile) and a ton of odds and ends. Karl picked up a large Le Creuset paella pan for $10, some other dishes, some vintage t-shirts, and a large stuffed crow (fake, but looks real). Jenny grabbed this crazy anatomy fold-out booklet poster thing from like the 1940s. I wasn’t paying that much attention because honestly, I really just needed to deal with what I had grabbed, Jenny even had to help me carry it all out. One woman told me she had filled her entire car with stuff. In the end I had spent $130. Ouch! I never spend that much at one sale.

The next sale we hit was what was advertised as a “mini estate sale” – whatever the hell that is.

They had all right stuff, but it felt like grandma had been sent to a home, so why not just dump everything on the floor and don’t price anything. That just made it feel really messy and like a yard sale tornado had hit it.

The kitchen was a little less chaotic, since they had just left most things on the shelves.

For some reason they had about five of this item — a dog dish? It was very strange.

I kept thinking I would find something, but it just seemed like a huge dud. Then I spotted a nice black medium Le Creuset cast iron pot with a lid, a frying pan, and then another smaller non-marked frying pan. I picked them all up and went to pay for them. The high school aged daughter said $7 for all. WTF, REALLY? I had a $10 bill in her hand before she could change her mind. Karl was standing behind me trying to purchase a walkman from the ’80s and this is when things started to get strange. All of a sudden I have a woman pretty aggressively telling me that those are her pans. Um, what?

Her: Those are my pans.
Me: I just purchased them.
Her: But those are mine.
Me: But I just paid for them. I saw them on the floor, I picked them up and now I have purchased them.
Her: I told your husband that those are MY PANS.
Me: Um, that is not my husband.
Her: Those are my pans!!!

I never raised my voice even when the woman was getting really loud about “her pans” — I explained what happened and even said “this isn’t worth getting so upset over and there is no need to yell at me.” Then the mother of the girl who sold me the pans comes up and wants to know what is going on. The woman was still getting upset, “I guess you have to hold onto whatever you want at this sale and I guess you can’t just leave stuff on the floor that you plan to buy” – well, yeah. That is every single sale I have ever been to, if you want something hold onto it or it probably won’t be there. The mother then asked her daughter how much she had charged me for the pans and started yelling at her that she should have charged me at least $5 each. Still a steal as far as I’m concerned, so I gave her the rest of the $15 and high-tailed it out of there. Jenny was outside and missed the whole thing, but Karl explained that he had tried to grab them a few moments earlier, and was told that she was buying them. I never heard any of that, but I guess it explains why she felt that she “told my husband.” It was one of the most aggressive conversations I have had at a sale and I can’t remember the last time someone yelled at me at a sale. But as far as I’m concerned, $5 Le Creuset is worth getting into a squabble over.

Our next stop was a country club sale. I have been to a few sales here, but it’s a mixed bag and this woman didn’t know what the heck she was doing and she wanted to have a long conversation every time we asked her about a price. She had nice stuff, but nothing amazing.

Then we hit one last sale on the way home that I honestly don’t remember.

Nearly everything in the trunk was from that first estate sale …

Sometimes we see signs when we are just out walking. Maybe we missed the original sale because they only made a few signs, we knocked off early, or they never listed the sale on craigslist. Hard to think of someone having a sale and not listing on craigslist, but I guess some folks do.

This sign is wonderful, I walked by it near my work.

This is pure craftsmanship when it comes to moving sale signs. Hand painted, two ponies magazine cut-out, and the added-on part of cardboard at the bottom. You know they got bored after about four of these. I could have made like one of these and that would have been it.

The second one is the extreme opposite. I walked by this one last weekend in San Francisco. They didn’t even make signs, but just hijacked someone else’s sign from the month before.

I love them both.

Meghan was out of town last weekend and as a result, she wasn’t there for what turned out to be a very bizarre day of sales for me and Karl. Our first stop was listed as “Kind of a digger sale so not for the faint of heart…” Scary yet intriguing, right? They also mentioned “100′s of records” so naturally Karl was all over it. This sale was in a small neighborhood I never knew was there, tucked away behind near a huge park. It seemed that we were getting further and further away from civilization as we headed toward the address.

We weren’t actually sure if we were on the right road, but then we saw a tiny sign leading us to this.

Diggers were already digging, so we headed in. Oh. My. God.

Sorry that picture’s blurry, though perhaps that’s actually a good thing to ease you into how nuts this sale was? Karl started flipping through the records. I looked at a few boxes — they were reeeeeeally crusty.

I started poking around through some of the other piles, feeling thankful there was hand sanitizer waiting in the car.

Maybe there was something good somewhere, but I sure couldn’t find it. Most of the boxes I opened were filled with Playboys (even a box that had originally held Girl Scout Cookies — that just seems wrong), and the clothes spilling out didn’t look promising enough to risk sticking a hand deeper into the piles.

I found a plastic file box with an assortment of old photos, mostly from the ’80s or early ’90s — it seemed like there was potential for something amazing to be there, but after a while I just couldn’t deal. Karl bought a stack of records and we retreated back out of the woods and on to potentially better pickin’s.

While heading to our next stop we spotted an unlisted sale with this eye-catching sign display out front.

Unfortunately this was the best thing about their sale.

Next was something listed as a multi-family sale, but with lots of vintage/antiques — it seemed like they knew they had good stuff, but I didn’t get the dealer vibe. It turned out to be some “estate items” from a relative, plus some newer stuff. What was great about this sale is that it was in an enclosed garage, so they had gotten everything set up in advance and it was all laid out neatly. It was pleasant just looking around! The people were really friendly but also followed us around from room to room talking about their items, so it was hard to take pictures. I did have to take a shot of this crazy ’70s dress, which looked brighter and more sparkly in real life.

I paid fifty cents for a huge bag of old plastic swizzle sticks (mostly from defunct Seattle locations, with a smattering of Reno and Hawaii mixed in). They have now been added to my existing huge collection of vintage swizzle sticks. Let me state that there is really no reason for anyone to own this many swizzle sticks. I also bought a gold-tone necklace with chunky red, white and blue rock-like beads — very “old lady” style but for some reason I liked it, so I put it on and wore it around the sale. By the time we left I had already lost interest, but I felt like I was committed since I was wearing it. Karl bought a few things here, including some great dresses for a pal — they weren’t super cheap but the people ended up giving him a deal on all his items. As they were chatting they asked his name and he said “Karl, with a K” — the man said, “So it’s C-A-R-K?” He seemed to think that was a real knee-slapper.

That sale was definitely a little odd, but in a pleasant, non-freaky way, so we pressed ahead to the next stop. The address seemed to be almost in the middle of some railroad tracks, but it had been listed as “Huge estate sale with many rare hard-to-find treasures and beautiful antiques” — sounds normal, right? Right?

Yes, that is what we found. We were tempted to jam it in reverse and get out of there, but we figured we had to check it out. In we went …

Adding to how strange this was? NO ONE WAS THERE. We poked around and I kept thinking someone would pop out and say hi, but no. Most of the stuff was a little … distressed-looking, shall we say? But some things had their own kind of peculiar charm.

I started thinking maybe this sale wasn’t so weird … then Karl pointed out the HUGE PILE OF KNIVES.

And then? A banjo.

Are you thinking what I was thinking?

Karl still wanted to look around, but I decided to go wait in the car. After a minute or two a guy walked out from god knows where, stood in front of the car and waved at me. I waved back, then he went and talked to Karl. He ended up being super nice and charged Karl five bucks for a pretty big pile of stuff. So I guess it all worked out.

After that we drove over to another semi-estate sale — their ad said “Years of going to estate sales and garage sailing have come to this. We are letting go of some of the treasures we’ve found along the way, along with several items from grandparents’ estate.”

They had a nice spread of stuff and the prices weren’t too bad.

It seemed like they were moving out of the house — one room was empty except for these dolls.

We bought a few things, but it didn’t turn out to be any big whoop. But it was a good sale to end on — clean, bright, and no reason to fear for one’s life. And sometimes? That’s really good enough.

My parents were in town last weekend and my mom came to sales with me and Meghan as our special guest star. I’ve been to yard sales with my mom many a time, but I think this is the first time she’s tagged along for the full Yard Sale Bloodbath experience. It’s October, so I wasn’t sure what we’d find, but I put together a small list of sales with potential.

Our first sale was in a fancy neighborhood and I wasn’t sure what to expect. We were pleasantly surprised by their spread of books — it’s always nice to buy stuff from someone with taste. Each of us got a book or two here and I also got some dress-up costumes for my daughter and a kids guitar. They were still putting boxes out and we got to be the first to dig into a couple. I opened up one jewelry case and it was a vintage amber bracelet and earring set — Meghan muttered, “one of us has to get that!” I knew I would never wear it so I handed it to her. As she left she told me that Annoying Jewelry Guy had walked up right behind us at that moment. Ha! (My mom said, “That was Jewelry Guy? Where?” It was like a celebrity-spotting! Sadly he’d already moved on at that point so she didn’t get the face-to-face experience … maybe that’s actually a good thing.)

Everyone buying things at the first stop is always a nice way to start, and after chasing down some nonexistent sale we went to a moving sale which sounded promising, or at least interesting. The guy had mentioned art by local artists and other things that gave his ad the vibe of possibly being good. We walked in and saw a bunch of old rock buttons on a black bandana, ranging from early ’80s punk to more recent random crap. I asked how much and he rambled on about how he had bought them all at various places back in the day, then said $12 for all of them — that sounded good to me. Meghan started looking through his books and amassed a small pile, while I grabbed a pair of $3 Ray-Ban sunglasses (or so I thought, until later at home I discovered that they appear to actually be a pair of generic sunglasses in a Ray-Ban case. They’re still kinda cool though.)

Then I heard Meghan say “WOW. What IS that?” I turned around and saw this monstrosity!

I apologize in advance for the nightmares some of you are going to have. It’s creepy, right? Some woman was excitedly paying $5 for it, presumably for halloween party decor. The guy said it had been used in some kind of low-budget horror movie. As for the art, a few things were hanging on the wall and Meghan asked about the rest but he seemed like he didn’t want to show it to people unless they were really serious about buying stuff.

There were two sales on the same block not too far away — a rarity this time of year, but they both turned out to be awful. And then there was an odd-sounding estate sale. There wasn’t a ton of stuff there, but their stuff was unusual … how often do you see a saddle at an estate sale?

Upstairs they had some very fancy furniture.

This bedroom set had a sign on it saying it had come from the Washington Governor’s Mansion? Or something along those lines …

The other bedroom had this amazing wallpaper.

Meghan bought a few things including a vintage pair of Frye cowboy boots (!). I bought something truly odd, a large ceramic mug depicting the WPPSS power plant, for $1. Then we drooled over this desk on the way out. (If I had that desk, I would totally use it to display a Bob Seger LP, too.)

We went to a few bad sales — one of them had these cans that might have tempted me for no good reason, if they hadn’t been priced at $5 each.

Then we pulled up at this sale, which seemed to be all about the Halloween decorations.

Seriously, it went on and on. And on. And on. This is just a small sampling.

I did buy some glow-in-the-dark sidewalk chalk here, and as I left the seller said “Tell all your friends to come shop here!” I was at a loss how to respond. As we drove away, Meghan made a comment about this guy’s “anal bead hairdo” – it was a long ponytail with multiple rubber bands, creating a look that did bring up some unfortunate imagery. At first she’d thought it was part of a costume until she realized it was just his look. Then she laughed and said she couldn’t believe she just said “anal bead hairdo” in front of my mother. (Let me state for the record that it takes a lot more than that to offend my mom.)

I did a quick check on my phone to see if there was anything else nearby, and I found there was an estate sale listed right near where we’d started — how did I miss that? We circled back around to check it out. It was a gorgeous house right on the water, and the view was amazing.

It actually took a few minutes before I stopped gaping out the window and really started to look at their stuff. They had a good selection, but I wasn’t finding anything I really needed to own.

My mom and Meghan each grabbed a few things and then Meghan found a penguin ice bucket in nice shape for $3! It was another “one of us has to buy this” moment — I decided to go for it. My mom reminisced about the one she used to have, which I remember from growing up — we mostly used it as a biscuit-warmer.

I was pleasantly surprised at how decent the day turned out to be! We all bought stuff and had fun — can’t really beat that.

There really isn’t much to say about last Saturday’s sales. First off, some things we didn’t buy.

These were all from the same estate sale, which we hit a half-hour after it started (and were sad to see many cool items being carried away). We each ended up making a few purchases, so it wasn’t a total loss.

The rest of the sales — they were okay, but nothing special. The only thing that’s really worth mentioning is another stop we made, billed as an “estate sale” but it was clearly just a bad yard sale … Meghan started muttering about how maybe it would turn into an estate sale after we killed the people who were having it.

Here’s the trunk shot, where you can spot a few worthy items.

Perhaps foolishly, neither of us believes that the sale season is over yet. Expect a few more reports before we pack it in for the year!