Yard Sale Bloodbath

I was visiting my parents in Berkeley the weekend before last. As I’ve mentioned before, I got my love of yard sales from my folks, who have been loving the wacky second-hand stuff since before I was born. We hadn’t originally planned to hit any sales while I was there, but when Saturday morning turned out to be free, we decided to stop at a few. Every time I look at the East Bay garage sale listings on Craigslist I appreciate how good we have it in Seattle, and I would say that is both in quantity and quality — granted, there are occasionally some super blowout great sales in Berkeley, but they seem to be way too few and far between. Still, we rustled up a short list and headed off.

My mom was navigating and she said that she recognized the address of an estate sale from having seen the house recently on a real estate tour. She said it was almost certainly going to be bad and we should just skip it. While I figured she was probably right, I was a little sad since the ad had made it sound pretty good. Meanwhile, we stopped at boring sale after boring sale and hardly bought anything. As we were navigating back from the last stop we drove right past a sign for the sale she’d recognized, and since we were practically there already we decided what the hell.

The house looked cute from the outside, but inside it was just yucky. Everything was dingy and there was a super strange vibe. It felt like something bad had happened there … or at least nothing good had ever happened there. The rooms appeared to have been decorated in the ’70s (in a pseudo-hippie bad taste kind of style), and their stuff was all terrible. The last straw was the basement, which could have been a testimonial for why you should really get rid of things, rather than stack them up in the crawl space (mattresses) or keep them in open cardboard boxes (newspapers) or just dump them on the floor (Easter baskets) and then not touch them again for about 25 years.

I did take some pictures, but I hope you will not be too upset to hear that I ended up deleting them off my camera. I just had such a weirded-out vibe from the place, I really didn’t want to see anything from that sale again.

So, my mom was right, thanks to her inside real-estate scoop. She mentioned how getting to know the city streets so well from her job was useful when trying to navigate to yard sales, or find an obscure address for some other reason. I’ve certainly been able to use my yard-sale-gained knowledge of Seattle’s streets to get around quicker. Granted, a lot of our streets are numbered, which makes it easier, but there are still enough oddball nooks and crannies that it helps to have driven through a whole lot of different neighborhoods already.

And then I started thinking about other aspects of being a real estate agent that have something in common with being a yard sale regular. Like the stuff factor. It’s obvious that you go to yard sales to find stuff. But did you know that real estate agents occasionally end up with random unwanted stuff left behind when a house is sold? My mom has ended up with furniture, rugs, planters — all from houses that she helped people buy. And while I was in town, she actually had to run out to pick up her latest score, which she had described as “stained glass art with a naked lady on it.” I guess the previous owner had been a stained glass artist and left a few pieces behind, and the new owners decided they could live without that one. I was kind of scared of what it was going to look like, imagining some kind of tawdry raunch, but it turned out to be rather pretty.

I think that real estate agents are also very tuned into the concept of value being fluid. That is, an item’s value is really whatever someone is actually willing to pay at a given time and place, and not some well-defined number that can’t be argued with (no matter what some “collectible price guides” would like to think). Haggling (or “making a counter-offer”) is a completely normal thing to do in both activities — though I’m glad to say that having someone offer more than the asking price is practically unheard of at yard sales. This price fluidity can be really great or really frustrating when you are dealing with secondhand items. Just like people might have a hard time accepting that their house isn’t going to sell for what they think it should, there are yard sale sellers who think that if something sold on eBay for a certain amount, their similar item should get the same price at their yard sale. On the other hand, when you find something that’s priced fairly to you, it’s a beautiful thing (even if the person next to you wouldn’t have paid half that much for it).

And of course there’s the fact that both of these activities involve going into a whole lot of strangers’ houses. That’s interesting in and of itself. Sales have taken us into some of the coolest houses around … and the creepiest ones too. And I think along with getting a glimpse of the insides of houses, there’s also the opportunity to see a lot of interesting outsides of houses too. Although maybe this last part is a stretch, because you can also see a lot of interesting houses just by driving or walking around. Like this one, which we were excited to stumble across randomly.

Now, granted, this is Berkeley, where you are about as likely to see a Republican as you are a leprechaun. But even so, it was cool to see so much enthusiasm for a presidential candidate. It’s pretty well-painted, too (even if I do keep trying to figure out if the hand is coming right out of his ear!)

That’s a No on Prop 8 sign there, too. I swear, it has been over 10 years since I moved out of California, but I keep sort of wishing I was still registered there just so I could vote against that shit.

There are certainly a lot of things that real estate and yard sales don’t have in common. For one thing, the general prices you’re dealing with are off by a factor of, oh … 10,000? And being in the real estate business certainly doesn’t necessarily mean one is inclined to like yard sales. But I do think it can give you an interesting take on things … and maybe even keep you away from some of the worst sales, if you stick to your intuition!

My mom had called me on Wednesday night wanting to know if she could come crash sales. Sure, but I warned her that we might not have that many sales to even hit, since it’s been raining and really feeling like autumn. Come Friday night, Jenny had sent me a message saying that she had found a total of 7 sales. EEEK! SEVEN? What is the point of even getting dressed? I called me my mom to see if she wanted to bail (since she lives over an hour away), but she didn’t seem discouraged.

Saturday morning – it’s misting out. My mom was running late, so Jenny said why don’t we run over and hit an estate sale listed as “Mink Coats and Muffy Bears” … whatever the hell that is. We got there and the first thing we saw was a bucket of antlers (and skull).

The sale turned out to not feel like an estate sale at all, but a garage jumbled with a really odd assortment of stuff.

Everything was thrown together randomly, with crappy books displayed right under $90 (fake) Juicy Couture handbags.

It was the first time I have been to an “estate sale” with live fish swimming around.

There was just a ton of overpriced crap. It was cramped, and I almost tripped and fell over this guy’s leg. This led to the following conversation:

Dude: “Sorry. My feet are big.”
Me: “And they’re in the walkway!”
Dude: (shrugging) “This is where they put the records.”

Total record squirrel.

In the time that we have done the blog we have talked about a few of our regulars, but one that we see every couple of weeks is “furniture guy.” He goes to every single sale and asks if they have furniture. We couldn’t get away from him this weekend and I was completely mortified to see him purchase blue, fleece, adult footed pajamas. I have never even seen him buy anything but furniture and most of the time he is trying to buy stuff that isn’t even for sale.

My mom was getting a lot of stuff, but for Jenny and I it was seeming like a total bust. We hit one estate sale that was strangely smelly and we hit another sale that we had been to twice before. This is the life, right? At one sale we were a little freaked out by this very large shoe-shaped chair.

We also had our second antler sighting of the day. I considered buying some, but when I asked the price on one pair they said $250. WTF?

Jenny mentioned a sale that had started on Friday, but beggars can’t be choosers, so we headed over. When we pulled up we looked down a little alleyway and saw an old rotting ’70s couch – eeew. We sat in the car for a moment thinking about whether we would even go in when an old guy walked up to the car. I rolled down the window and he said “Did you want to know what we have in the sale?” Um, no.

We did get out of the car and it was looking bad. If Karl was there he would have been humming the tune from Deliverance. Jenny turned to me and said “In case we die … it’s been nice knowing you.”

Well, this sale turned out to be so good. I can’t even understand how this stuff sat there for an entire Friday. I purchased two pairs of 1960s Big E Levi’s -– I swear to god. For $2 each! I bought a few other gems, too. We did see a box of panties, which is never good, but overall this was a great sale.

Between that sale and the stuff my mom picked up, we did manage to fill up the trunk, but everything was in boxes so a photo would have been pointless. All in all, for a day where we had low expectations it turned out to be not bad at all.

As you may have guessed from the lack of posts this week, we basically took last weekend off. (Although I did manage to hit a couple of sales while out of town … more on that soon.) So while we don’t have one of our regular wacky sale recaps, I do have a couple of links to share instead.

I’m sure most readers are already aware of some of the other fine blogs that focus on yard sales, estate sales, thrift stores, flea markets, and/or junking in general. But let’s take a step even further out on the retail food chain: the world of free items. In particular, free items where the value is so questionable that it’s not at all clear that “free” is even a good deal.

The Vintage Microwave blog covers “a selection of curiosities from the Free Stuff section on Craigslist.” Like this couch … described in the ad simply as having been “left out in the weather for some time.”

The amount of bad free stuff they find listed is staggering. Melted and rusted-out mopeds, ice chests of “unknown condition”, overhead transparencies with Christian music lyrics … enema kits? I’m all for trying to find a good home for unwanted items, but the idea of anyone wanting this stuff defies all reason. The blog’s commentary is brutally dead-on, too.

And then there’s NeighborGoodies:

The apartment complex I live in is full of crazy people…and their apartments are full of crazy crap. Sometimes, said crap is purged…but instead of throwing it out or donating it to charity, the residents leave it in the laundry room, which doubles as an unofficial, unmonitored community trading post. This is a sampling of the items that pass through on a daily basis.

These items are dutifully photographed … and blogger Jeff goes to incredible lengths to speculate on the history of the stuff and the reason it’s being abandoned. One day six purses appear; Jeff concludes, “These six very different bags all seem to represent a woman in search for herself. We can follow her journey through life via these sacks of memories.” And then he takes us on that journey, whether we really wanted to go there or not. When a motley assortment of glass vases, bottles and bowls show up, he deduces that the owner clearly must have suffered from hyelophobia — the unnatural fear of glass. (Following this line of inquiry to its conclusion, this post somehow ends up with a dating-site photo of a shirtless man trying to look suave while wielding some weaponry.)

I have personally been sucked in by the lure of FREE STUFF so many times, only to often end up thinking “why the hell did I take this?” I try really hard to keep it in check, but there is just something exciting about the prospect of getting something for free. Even so, none of the stuff featured on these two blogs would make me want to do anything but run away from it. But it’s nice to see that all this unwanted crap has somehow led to the creation of something worthwhile, in the form of these two witty and focused blogs.

Bargain Hunter — the official board game of garage/yard/moving sales!

(Only because there is no board game called “Freaky Treasure Hunt,” which I think would be way more appropriate.)

Meghan was kind of sick last Saturday and this week it was my turn. I had a cold on Friday and thought I might flake, but after resting up all day I felt much better — and seeing that it was supposed to be sunny on Saturday I decided we should at least a hit a few sales. I was especially intrigued by one that was listed as “Vintage Diva.” We pondered the address trying to determine if it was someone we knew (or even just someone who’s sales we’ve been to before)? It turned out to not be a repeat sale for us, just a girl who was moving and getting rid of a lot of stuff — not all vintage, but a good helping. Her mom had brought in some kitschy stuff too, including a large collection of elephant-themed items. Sadly, we neglected to get a photo of those, but we each bought a few things here.

We then went on to a few other sales. None were that great, even the one whose ad said “Earlies pay double, in Euros, and must weed my garden.” I thought the sense of humor might mean they’d have fun stuff, but it was pretty bland. At least a couple of the sales we hit had fantastically scenic views.

The sale immediately above was one that I’d predicted would be bad, based purely on their craigslist ad being in all caps and saying that it was on “SATERDAY.” This may be shallow, but it was pretty accurate — it was mostly just boring newer crap. There was a vintage dollhouse that was pretty cool, but she wanted $50 for it (with some furniture) — which I’m sure was probably fair, but not cheap enough for either of us to lose our sanity and buy it. Of course, that is probably a good thing.

These two old (as in really old) photographs were the most interesting things there. The bearded guy and his lady freak me out a little. I bet it is one of those pictures where the eyes follow you around the room …

We then headed up to an estate sale that sounded promising. It had been open for a little while, but neither of us had really felt like camping out in line with the die-hard shoppers. Like the sale last week, this was a smoker’s sale. The stench in the place was pretty unreal, to the point where you really had to question whether you wanted to buy anything that couldn’t be washed. I guess these Christmas ornaments would have been safe, but they would have had to have been a lot cheaper than $5 each to make me even think about bringing more holiday stuff into my house. (I don’t go super crazy with holiday decorations or anything, but let’s just say I have more than enough ornaments for the largest possible tree I might ever need to decorate.)

There was a pretty random assortment of stuff here. I noticed some healthy eating books and thought it was odd (although not unheard of) for such an obvious hardcore smoker to bother worrying about proper nutrition. Later I saw a sign mentioning that the estate sale company had brought two smaller estates’ stuff into the home, so who knows what belonged to whom. The fireplace had been used to display a few of the more entertaining items.

Meghan ended up buying a few things here, including a great pair of vintage roller skates. And that pretty much sums up our whole day — we capped it off by driving around for about 10 minutes following a sign for a “yard sale” which turned out to have nothing but bicycles. Great!

Going to sales in October — possibly really not such a great idea …

There are a couple things that we have learned from doing this blog.

1. If you wait too many days to post, it becomes really challenging to post about sales from the previous weekend. (I mean, I am already checking the weather for next Saturday.) You forget the sales, they blend together.
2. This is never going to be one of those blogs where there’s a new post everyday. Not that I’m knocking that, but there is only so much that happens to a person each and every day, right?

With all that said, I have been sick. I started to get sick on Friday and I almost thought I wouldn’t even go to sales. I came home early and slept on Friday and felt pretty good on Saturday morning. Little did I know I would be knocked on my ass by Sunday and not really feel better for a few more days.

Karl and Jenny both came over and it was pretty drizzly out. I am unwilling to even admit that fall is here …

Each time we go to sales we learn new (and sometimes “interesting”) things about people at sales. For instance, we identified the top 3 things not to have at a yard sale:

1. hair highlighting kit
2. chili
3. maxi-pads

Let me stress that all of these were at the same sale. I swear, they had homemade chili at the sale. That’s fine, but (and that is a HUGE BUT) if they are selling maxi-pads?!?! NO.

So, I have been sick and I mean really sick, so there are sales that I just don’t remember. We saw this large ostrich — I can’t tell you anything about this sale.

We hit a “book lovers’ sale” — sounds good, right?

When I hear book lover I never think “I love books that you can only buy at grocery stores and Costco!” Sadly, that’s what they meant.

A few things I do remember are an estate sale that was in the smallest one-bedroom basement apartment that was so unpleasant to walk around in. They didn’t have bupkiss. After a few minutes I went outside, since being inside was such a bummer.

After that sale we hit another estate sale — an icky smoker’s sale. When I walked in I said, “Oh, someone smoked!” The guy behind me AND the guy in front of me had this long conversation about how I knew this (oooo) and also how many times they have tried to quit smoking. I never said a word and I am an ex-smoker.

This sale was major record nerdlinger territory. Karl was in his natural element.

I found this sale really boring and even Jenny just parked it on a couch in the rec room reading old Cosmopolitan magazines. Which turned out to be more entertaining than we expected. Check out these centerfolds!

I amused myself by trying on yet another pair of wacky headphones.

I did ask nicely if I could take a photo of these two organs next to each other. Some lady tried to charge me (didn’t that just happen to Jenny?!?!) I just said “good luck getting it.”

As we drive I do keep an eye out for signs (and sometimes see sales that Jenny misses). I saw a sign that I thought said WISPY THRIFT. I mean if you had a thrift store wouldn’t that be a good name? Um, no … the signs said “Where’s Tipsy?”

That’s really about all I can remember. Jenny and I really hardly purchased anything, but Karl picked up enough crap to make the trunk shot look halfway decent.

I have to admit that I have been feeling a little burned out on yard sales after barely missing a Saturday (aside from being out of town) all summer! Plus, trying to have our sale last week got me way more into purge mode than shop mode. I actually tried to make other plans for Saturday morning, but when they ended up falling through I figured I might as well make the rounds. Once fall starts the pickin’s get slimmer, but I was able to put together a list of about 25 sales.

I got to Meghan’s around 8:30 and we went to the bank … then drove around to sales that hadn’t quite started yet. Some days it really isn’t worth leaving the house before 9. As we were cruising around I fished in my purse for a pen so I could cross off the sales as we hit them, and write down any addresses that we saw on signs — standard routine. But I had no pen. I then searched all the spots in Meghan’s car where she usually has a pen or two kicking around. She informed me that over the last few weeks, I’d apparently taken all the pens from her car (presumably sticking ‘em in my purse without thinking about it) and now she was completely cleaned out. This sucked. Even before we had hit any sales, the lack of pen was making me antsy. I decided to keep an eye out for a pen at a sale — not really that typical of a sale item, but it could happen.

One of the first sales we found that was actually open sounded pretty bad from the ad — for one thing, they had mentioned “old rocks.” (Which prompted a rather philosophical discussion about whether there were really any new rocks.) There were indeed a few rocks for sale, sitting in a wire basket. They didn’t appear to be particularly special, but hell if I know what’s hot in the rock collector marketplace. Meghan found a cute vintage dress, but it turned out to have mold on it. Yuck! I noticed this peculiar looking book sitting on top of a crusty box of more normal books, and snapped a quick photo.

As an afterthought, I picked it up and started flipping through it. I thought it would be some kind of cheesy psychological manual with overtones that passed for racy back in the day but would be humorously quaint now. Let me tell you: I could not have been more wrong. This is without a doubt the dirtiest book I have ever seen at a yard sale. There were full penetration close-up shots in all kinds of graphic, hairy detail — “fully illustrated” is an understatement. Those of you who were upset that I passed on Super Boobs or the Mister Peter Ice Mold might be happy to learn that I then purchased it for the princely sum of twenty-five cents. However, once the initial shock wore off, I kinda wished I hadn’t. It’s nasty. Meghan suggested that I could leave it at someone else’s sale, or just start tearing out pages and leave them at all the crappy sales we were sure to hit that day as a form of retaliation for their lack of good stuff, but I just threw it into the back seat and tried to mentally scrape some of the images out of my brain. I am sure that somehow I will find an appropriate home for it at some point. Perhaps it could be a bridal shower gift, or I could bring it to a white elephant party at my workplace and then deny that I had anything to do with it. Nah, probably not such a good idea …

The next sale was in an alley. This is always a pain in the ass, and indeed, the sale sucked … but what is this? As we were heading to the car, I spotted a ball-point pen in the driveway! It appeared to have been run over, and was bent into almost a 90-degree angle, but it still worked. My crisis was happily averted.

We moved from one sale to the next pretty quickly, being ruthless about driving past anything that looked bad. There was one that had advertised vintage/antiques which turned out to be a couple who were about to move and were in the process of getting rid of nearly everything they owned. Oddly, none of this actually appeared to be vintage or antiques, but we each bought a few things anyway.

Another sale was huge, with stuff from multiple sellers. Right when I thought I was going to strike out, I saw something I decided I was interested in: a brand new Crock-Pot! Oh yeah … you know you’re jealous. I have sort of wanted one for a while, but never badly enough to deliberately go out and get one. The sellers said it had been a gift and they wanted five bucks for it, which I happily paid.

We then hit a sale was listed as a girly-girl who was moving in with her boyfriend and thus had to get rid of some of her girly furnishings and things. To keep things fair, she was making him pare down too. They were nice and had some decent stuff. I thought these glasses with peeing cartoon characters were pretty funny.

There were a ton of clothes and accessories but at first I didn’t find anything. Then Meghan uncovered two purses from Smoking Lily, a cool independent store in Vancouver/Victoria where we have both purchased things before. We each grabbed one of those. I also picked up a cute pair of stud earrings with luminous blue stones, then found a bunch of sunglasses. After trying a few one I found one pair that looked good on me — by Armani! Most of the clothes weren’t priced and I was a little nervous about how much things would be, but it ended up being reasonable: $4 for the purse, $1 for the earrings, and $10 for the sunglasses (which she said she had spent over $200 on). Meghan also got a really cool huge leather purse for something like $15, and we both left happy.

We headed into a different neighborhood which included a sale with an ad that bewildered me. It sounded pretty normal, but they included this (and only this) photo.

This is the actual photo from the ad, with my very sophisticated addition of blocking the eyes out. We couldn’t figure out what the hell they were thinking. Why the hell did they add this photo? When we got there, it was a really sparse, boring moving sale in front of a newer townhouse. The sellers were a couple and sure enough, that was the guy (but dressed much more casually and with no ornate doors in sight). We left no less baffled than before.

We hit a sale where two twenty-something dudes were cleaning house. They had a great DVD selection, but the guy wanted $5 each — too high. He then told his friend to watch the sale while he went inside for a sec. Meghan asked if we could get a deal if we bought a few DVDs, but the other guy was understandably hesitant, since they weren’t his. After about three minutes we were sick of waiting and decided to move on. I did spring for Lost in Translation and while I was fishing out my five bucks Meghan noticed this bench amidst the rest of their crap.

Yes, that is the “when I am an old woman I shall wear purple” poem. Meghan asked the guy why they had it, since it didn’t exactly go with the rest of their stuff. He said they’d bought it used and claimed they had tried to paint over it several times but it never took. We decided that this was almost certainly a lie.

We then headed to another sale and drove right past it … then backed up to find this sign in front.

We passed on the free Sandra Bernhard photo out front, but Meghan grabbed her collection of about 20 copies of Bitch Magazine and I bought a few cheesy t-shirts.

One of the last sales we hit had titled their ad “What’s Up Yard Sale,” which sounded promising, or at least not boring. We passed one of their signs and it read “Fun Times Yard Sale.” The fun theme continued with this assemblage out front, featuring sidewalk chalk and a star-shaped balloon tied to a beer bottle.

While I was taking this picture Meghan walked up the stairs to their yard and said “I’m here for the fun times yard sale!” The seller waved her hands in the air and went “Wooooo!” We liked their attitude, but I don’t think either of us ended up buying anything.

All in all, it turned out to be a decent day. Aside from that skeevy book, I didn’t get anything that could be considered vintage (those boots in the trunk shot were Meghan’s score), but I was really happy with all the stuff I bought. And for the first time in ages, we ended up crossing every sale off my list. (Good thing I found that bent-up pen!)