Yard Sale Bloodbath

No, really.

It’s from 1884. Perhaps there were different methods back then?

Eternal thanks to Karl for purchasing this at an estate sale last week.

Meghan had stuff going on last Saturday so I made a plan to hit sales with Karl. There was an estate sale close to home that we wanted to hit first, but it didn’t start until ten. We went and got numbers (12 & 13) and then checked to see if there were any sales nearby we could hit in the meantime. NOTHING. I lamely suggested we could drive around and look for signs, but in early March when it has been raining all week? You’re not going to see signs. We parked back at the sale about ten minutes early and waited with the crowd. At least they opened on time, but instead of taking our numbers they just let people in randomly. It drives me crazy when people set up a system for letting people in and then don’t even use it!

It also drives me crazy when you wait around and then the sale is a bust. I didn’t find anything, although I was slightly fascinated by this Horse Race Analyzer handicapping computer. The manual was pretty funny — reassuring people that even though they’d probably never used an actual computer like this before, they shouldn’t feel intimidated.

Karl found a few things, including some old Boeing company newsletters from the early ’40s. Our minds were pretty much blown by the cover on this one.

Amazing, right? We had all just been marveling at the Black & WTF photo blog, so this seemed to fit right in.

Since there was nothing else even remotely nearby we headed across town to a sale that had sounded good — listed as an estate sale in a double garage, with records, vintage housewares, and other tempting-sounding items.

Again, I struck out. The few things that were cool were priced ridiculously high. And a lot of them were just ridiculous, aside from the price.

After a while I left to wait in the driveway. Karl took forever, reminding me why we once dubbed him “Lloyd Dawdler.” He emerged with a few unremarkable items (or maybe I just didn’t care at that point).

I was about ready to write off the whole day, but then I found listings for a couple of other estate sales nearby. We entered one house and were greeted by the always-dreadful explosion of Christmas crap. The house was cool, but most of the stuff wasn’t that great. We went into the basement and flipped through a couple of boxes of records. I laughed when I found this.

Some of you may recall our previous encounter with this queen of cheesy aerobics. As I was taking a picture one of the sellers said I could just have the record if I wanted it. I declined, making this the second time I’ve passed up the chance to own one of her records for free.

I did snag one 45 from someone I’d never heard of, based purely on the fact that Wanda Jackson was credited as the songwriter. (Sadly, the song turned out to be pretty boring.) Then I moved on to the books, where I found a “marriage manual” called Sex Without Fear. Rather than tell you more, I’ll direct you to Studies in Crap, where it’s already been covered in excruciating detail. When I went to pay for the items the sellers joked about how everything in the house was worth big money, then charged me a whole buck for my two items.

Our last stop was a house on a peaceful little lake.

Judging from some of the books, sheet music, and odds and ends lying around, the house had been occupied by a musician and someone running a camera repair business — which seemed to bode well, but most of the stuff was boring or just odd.

After determining that there wasn’t much upstairs, we descended into the basement. Perhaps this was a bad idea.

I kept hoping something great would emerge from the dreck, but it didn’t happen.

Not the finest day ever, but we all know how many yard sale toads are out there waiting to be kissed …

Last week we were all emailing to figure out if we wanted to hit part two of the hoarder-ish patio sale. It started on Friday and all of us had time to check it out, but we weren’t sure we wanted to since the estate sale company’s email mentioned plush toys, more books, and that was about it. Especially with the books from last time around tending toward the yecch end of the spectrum.

But on Thursday night, the craigslist ad was posted, saying there were vintage clothes, tiki/Hawaiian items, and more. That was enough to motivate me, Meghan, and Karl to check it out. We met there a little before 10, along with a handful of other die-hards.

Well, there were plush toys all right.

And books.

There were also a huge amount of cat items.

I told Meghan that if those had been there the first time, in between all the owls and dogs, it really would have blown my mind. (It would have fit right in with our cat-tastic day in January, too.)

Most of the oddball housewares from last time were nowhere to be found. Sold? Thrown out? Who knows. There were plenty of new horrors in their place.

Can I pretend this says Clorox LadyMop? Because that would be awesome.

In the kitchen were a couple of racks of clothing — Meghan pulled out a couple things, passing on some great dresses that just had too much sun-fading. We all marveled at this kitty dress (or possibly a robe or long shirt — hard to tell what was going on).

I snagged a fantastic big-eyed Keane-esque cat figurine for a dollar, so at least this time I didn’t leave empty-handed.

We all went our separate ways, but I decided to hit another estate sale not too far away. It was in a fantastic ’50s house with a killer view, which is always a bonus. They also had some exotic items hanging around here and there, making me think the people had been travelers, or at least had interesting taste.

Right away I found two kids’ vintage Hawaiian shirts priced at four bucks each, so I snagged those. I debated whether to buy a big barkcloth curtain, but decided the pattern was too frumpy-’60s. Then I hit the Barbie room.

This is approximately 1% of the Barbie items they had. I don’t know why I didn’t take a picture of the whole thing. It was pretty crazy, with everything from packaged-up collectible dolls to ’80s fast food giveaway items. Then I found this 1961 record tote.

Meghan has collected these for years, but I wasn’t sure if she would want it — I thought it might be too pricey (at $17), she could already have it, or she might just be over the record tote thing at this point. I texted her a photo and asked if she wanted me to grab it. Then I made my way through the bathroom …

… the living room …

and the kitchen.

I didn’t find anything, but then I hit the basement. The first thing I saw were these beauties. Holy moly!

There were two more of them — pages from a 1970 Harold’s Club calendar. Tragically, the sellers were asking $20 each. I bade the ladies adieu (first sending Karl a photo) and scoped out the rest of the basement, picking up a few more items. Then I started looking through some old photos. I always dream that I’ll find something really crazy, but usually it’s just the standard wedding pictures, family portraits, and whatnot. At first that’s all I saw, but then I spotted some little yellow plastic cases for square photographs. The pictures inside were so amazing that they’re going to require a whole post of their own. For now, I’ll just tell you that they’re photos of some college boys in the early ’60s drinking and horsing around!

Karl texted back saying that he was going to come to the sale (I don’t think it was only to ogle the naked ladies), but I paid up and split before he got there, leaving the tune tote behind since I hadn’t heard from Meghan. It was only after I left that I talked to her and found out she really wanted it. Luckily we were able to contact Karl and he snagged it for her. Yay!

With only two sales this was still a pretty rockin’ Friday. I spent less than $20 but got more things I was actually stoked about than I have in quite a while. Frankly, I needed some good scores to keep me from getting burned out on what can sometimes feel like the yard sale grind. I was even inspired to go to more sales on Saturday. I’ll let you know how that turned out in my next post.

I am doomed when I make a comment like “sometimes the blog writes itself,” and in the case of this day, it really does. With that said … one of us still needs to actually write it. Sometimes that can take a while, especially when it’s still the dead of winter and three sales in a day is about as good as it gets.

The first sale had this cartoon taped to the front door.

Little did we know how true that was going be.

Right away I made a comment about how there were tons of owls.

The woman running the sale sort of rolled her eyes and said “yeah, keeping looking around” — THE ENTIRE HOUSE WAS FILLED WITH OWLS.

I guess there had been over 2,500 owls, some had been sold already as this was the second day of the sale.

What can you really say? I have collections of stuff. I collect records, bakelite bangles, purses, vintage clothing, old group photos, bottle cap men, books. But someone stop me if I only collect one thing and it’s OWLS.

The next sale was an estate sale that we turned up way too early for, so we hit a new bakery for treats and then joined a line up to enter an enclosed back porch. For the record: Hoarding is bad.

Seriously.

You don’t need to own 2 vintage donut makers. How often are you making donuts?

The house was huge, but they hadn’t been able to even get into the house yet, since she collected so much stuff. This was to be the first of many sales. The items so far had been just what they could pull out from the kitchen. Tang, anyone?

Or maybe lemonade is more your speed …

When I went to ask a question the woman working the sale took a phone call and started talking about how someone needed to come and get the garbage out, since she had 10 bags of it. I turned my head to the left and WOW — in the hallway was a ton of huge filled-up black lawn bags. I couldn’t work out how to take a photo without seeming like a complete ass.

Karl texted us the address of another sale, saying we should hit it for the wackiness factor. Of course we circled around for awhile looking for this sale that didn’t even exist (or he had the wrong address). I had remembered seeing a sign for a sale that started on Friday. We weren’t planning to hit that, but since it was only five blocks away we popped in … and discovered it was another collector.

Oh yes. DOGS.

I have a dog. I like dogs. But there is just no need for this sort of collection. It was just sad.

At this point we just went home. Enough!