Yard Sale Bloodbath

With Jenny out of town, I asked Leslie if she wanted to drive over to Ballard to hit some yard sales. I had printed out some sales and one of them was listed as having hundreds of patterns, antiques, vintage fabric, and on and on. So, I had put a star on that one to hit first. At first I thought we had the wrong address, then we drove by one of the saddest apartment sales and all I could think was “it can’t be” — we didn’t even get out of the car or even slow down!

We headed to a church rummage sale. This was also a bust.

As I was looking over some of the books I saw a woman with her bar code scanner. She was like a zombie, scanning a pile of CDs. I hate people like this. Leslie commented that booksellers have spent years learning about books and a few people scanning crap isn’t going to change that.

At the very next sale we saw more people with scanners. They didn’t even have any good books. I did sneak this photo of a scary clown figurine.

As I was paying I made a comment about the two guys scanning her books. She gave me a baffled look and said “Why are they scanning my books?” I explained that they were scanning her books to see if they are worth any money, so they can resell them. Let’s hope she charged them double!

In the car I asked Leslie, “Isn’t Scanners a movie where people’s heads explode?” I am making it my personal goal to rid the planet of “The Scanners.” At my next yard sale, all books and CDs will have the bar codes blackened out. Really, you will not get rich by being a fucking moron.

We then hit a few more unremarkable sales and then one of the most bizarre sales I have even been to. It took both of us about ten minutes to figure out that most everything in the sale was free.

There was an old Mexican woman standing by like 8 boxes of stuff she and another woman had taken from the sale — we saw them packing up their car an hour later and I still wasn’t sure how they would be getting it all home.

The first thing I found was a Quisp Quaker Oats Spaceman Doll. They had tons of stuff and I think we both had that dreaded feeling of “why didn’t we hit this sale at the start of the day!” We both grabbed tons of stuff that was either free or dirt cheap. I managed to get one box of Princess House glassware, some dishes, a boxed Intellivision II 80’s gaming system, some crazy vintage Christmas items, old books … I took two loads to the car and I think Leslie did the same. Grand total? Me - $5.00. Leslie - $1.00.

I think we were both a little shocked that we had spent an hour at the sale. So, we headed to an estate sale that had been going since 10:00. The second we walked into the house you could tell it had seen about 45 years of smoking. The house reeked — Leslie almost went back to the car, but she was a trooper and trudged on. We hit the “Christmas bedroom” — does every single estate sale have one of these? You know what I’m talking about, right? The room filled with card tables full of some old lady’s Christmas crap.

Then from the window, Leslie spied an old shed filled with lawn ornaments. Her arm shot out into a pointer finger. “LOOK!”

We headed outside and saw Fred and Barb (from the sale I went to last week), who had just purchased two large 1950s bullet planters. RATS! We both were glad that at least it was someone that we knew who had just bought them. I had a moment and purchased a concrete chicken.

We wrapped it up after this. Here is the trunk photo, and we had the back seat filled too. A great end-of-summer sale day!