Yard Sale Bloodbath

Phinney Ridge Garage Sale Day started out with a drizzly dull thud, since many of its 100 signed-up participants didn’t even have a sale –- we wouldn’t have either. It was cruddy for the first 4 hours of the sale. Then again, it was the day of the rapture, so maybe some folks had some other ideas planned for their last day of earth.

Since we had been to this neighborhood sale in the snow one year I felt like it was sort of hard to bitch, since it wasn’t sleeting. Honestly, the idea of coming here with less sales was sort of good, since the streets are usually so packed. This year I was able to get my car down with the tiny streets in record time.

Hey, sellers! Let me go back to a 2008 post and give you this gentle reminder of items that you just shouldn’t sell at your sale:

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.

One of our first sales had chili, and a whole bag of hair highlighting kits. When I asked the woman if I could take a photo of her chili she opened the lid for a photo-op.

I yelled across the street to Jenny “hey, they have chili AND hair highlighting kits” — it seemed like she didn’t know what I was talking about for a moment, then my golden rule dawned on her. The woman asked me why this was funny and I made up some stupid story that made no sense, but she didn’t seem to notice.

Then at the next sale, what was one of the first things we saw?

Yeah, Kotex pads. Honestly ladies, what is wrong with you?!?!

This was an everything is free sale, or in this case please donate to build wells in Uganda.

It was pretty good if you wanted books and both Jenny and I lost all reasoning and I grabbed more books that have no space on any shelf. We both felt good about our donation.

After making the rounds here for so many years we ‘ve become pretty familiar with some of the regular sales. One woman always has a sale in her garage with a lot of vintage items — I think she must have had a store at some point.

Her prices are good and I almost always find something at her sales. I picked up a few pieces of clothing this time around.

We drove on and at one point Jenny pointed at the side of the road at something she thought might be a sale.

Um, yeah … what the hell?

Sadly, Karl wasn’t with us, since soon after that we found three crates of records, most of them ’60s and ’70s country records.

We both picked up a few things and also made fun of some of the more silly covers.

I did get a nice George Jones LP.

A few stops later we found an amazing embroidered Zodiac Clock – what’s not to love?!

At another sale I found two pairs of vintage mens’ cowboy boots priced at $2 each! I snagged those, but passed on their large troll collection.

Jenny looked a little closer and found this oddity.

We made some more rounds, but most of the stuff was just bad.

At a certain point I started to feel like we had been driving in circles, which we had been, but even more it seemed like we kept driving down the same block three or four times. Then when we hit the other side of Phinney we saw a total of five sales.

After that we headed into Ballard, passing this sign on the way — we had to laugh. Who is Hugh?

We hit an estate sale where the house really grossed me out, even though it wasn’t the worst sale we have been to. It had a lingering smell. I think the big pile of crap out back gives you a pretty good idea.

Once we left I told Jenny I needed a Unicorn Chaser STAT. That of course wasn’t in the cards… we did hit a few non-magical sales, one of which really seemed more like someone trying to run a vintage store out of their living room.

After a couple more sales we both thought it was time to go home. All in all, I think we did all right.

Last weekend was the event we’d been waiting for: West Seattle Garage Sale Day! This is the fifth year running we have blogged about this neighborhood sale day, which by now is probably the biggest one in town. We got there an hour before the official start time this year and got some delicious baked goods, then headed out to see what was open already.

The first signs we saw were on the main drag.

I think this was the first place we hit last year, too. I didn’t remember it being that great, but we stopped to check it out.

None of us bought anything. They had some okay books, but some of them were priced at ten dollars! If it is selling in the store for $13, you cannot sell it for $10 at your sale — let’s get real.

We turned off the main drag and found a sale that was still setting up, and hadn’t put all their signs out yet.

They were letting people look around and I kept thinking I’d find something, but it didn’t happen.

We plodded along through a bunch of other sales. Things were really not looking so good for a while …

It didn’t help when we hit the sale where they were playing Grateful Dead music and trying to get rid of a bajillion Jerry Garcia ties.

Then Karl ran into some guy that he knew and he said there was a sale nearby with records, so we decided to check it out. Sadly, some other dude had already grabbed up many of the more intriguing items.

I started flipping through a box … ack! It’s our old pal, Joanie Greggains!

(Yes, that dog was checking out the records too.) She has definitely gone through a few different looks, but she never seems to be without her legwarmers.

I got bored with the records fairly quickly and started looking through other stuff. You know how on our About page we say that thing about “oh my god, I can’t believe that person was trying to sell their used granny panties”?

At this point I had bought like two books and that was it. We veered off into a different neighborhood, getting close to the amazing Korla Pandit sale we hit last time — we looked around for the house, but never found it (I’m guessing it had been demolished and already rebuilt). And naturally we found plenty of new insipid ways to amuse ourselves while we made the rounds. In the past, this has taken the form of talking like robots or using the names of Heart songs as bad puns. This year we covered a lot of bases, singing about Babee Tenda to the tune of the Baby Monkey Riding On A Pig song (which has a nasty habit of getting lodged in one’s head), and somehow starting to say “Yard Sard” with a demented Boston-ish accent, so it sounded like “yaaaaaaaaaaaahd saaaaaaaaaahd.” We also invoked one of our all-time favorite signs, “Nice Quality,” repeatedly saying it in a breathy voice. I think that might have started after we saw this.

After a few unremarkable stops we encountered this fantastic sign.

How could we skip that? When we got there, we found this out front.

They didn’t have a huge spread … but what they had was fantastic. Tons of art books ranging from fifty cents to five dollars, and a small but pretty rad selection of vintage and new artsy/designerish women’s clothing. Sadly, the shoes were too small for Meghan and I, but we all bought a bunch stuff here … enough that another bank run was going to be necessary. I paid up first and went out to the car, and when Karl and Meghan came back I learned that I had missed out on the actual dog from the sign coming out to make an appearance! Meghan and Karl seemed quite charmed.

High on our yard-sale-score crack, we pulled onto another street where a few sales were happening. When we saw this setup, Karl almost shrieked with delight: “Look, farm fresh eggs!!!”

But no. It was golf balls. Some guy, sitting out in his driveway, selling nothing but golf balls in egg cartons. Nothing else on that street was good either. And then it seemed like we hit another lull.

We did find some interesting and odd items … like this box marked “Ammunition For Cannon With Explosive Projectile” and its contents.

But perhaps the oddest find of the day was this pair of deer heads.

We have seen plenty of antlers before, but a pair of unmounted heads is just strange. Especially when they seem to be staring at you.

We decided it was time for lunch, after stopping at whatever we came across on the way. A few more duds, and then a sale with a bunch of boxed books and magazines. The first one I looked in was this.

I did not need to own this, but it made me curious about the rest. Sure enough, we all started digging things out. There were a lot of music books and weird literature, many of them advance reader copies. Karl also found some CDs. And then I ended up with my score of the day: a tall vintage standing lamp with three silver dome shades. When I asked the guy how much it was, he said “Oh, I really love that lamp.” That’s usually bad, right? I was wondering what kind of crazy price he was going to ask for, and then he said “how about ten bucks?” Sold! Meghan also picked up a vintage wool blanket with rainbow stripes. It turned out to be one of the best sales of the day.

After lunch we couldn’t help but make just a few more stops, even pulling into an alley (something we usually are wary of) to hit this sale. They had a lot of art …

Some of it was kitschy and kinda cool.

And then there was this.

They also had this amazing condom dispenser cover from some bathroom of yore! Sadly, it was $50.

As we left I noticed this beer can sitting by some candles … yep, it was cold and half-full.

By the time we finally rolled on home, the trunk was full, the back seat was popped open to fit the lamp through, and there were things piled up throughout the car.

Here’s what it looked like after Karl unloaded his items, just so you can see a bit more …

We all agreed that overall it didn’t seem quite as bountiful — or as bizarre — as years past. But thanks mostly to a few good sales, we certainly made a haul!

A couple of Fridays ago I met Karl to hit part two of an estate sale that I’d missed the first time around (it was the one where Meghan and Karl spent a half hour waiting in the rain, before I met up with them to hit that hoarder sale).

For already having been open one weekend, there was still a ton of stuff there. I decided to hit the basement first. These ladies and birds greeted me as I made my way downstairs.

The basement had a little of everything.

I admired these figurines, but I was sort of afraid that if I bought one, it might come to life and haunt me in my sleep.

I ducked around a corner into a small bathroom. Not sure whether the sellers put this bra here or if some shopper thought it deserved a place of honor.

Also hanging in the bathroom: a ton of wacky costumes.

Another room had a ton of books. Lots of art books, foreign language literature, travel guides, textbooks … and a few oddball publications, like the Basic Knee Reader by “Gypsy Rose Knee.”

I do not want to read anyone’s knees, and I definitely don’t want anyone reading my knees, but for a moment and considered buying this just on the basis of it being so darn odd. In the end, I passed.

There was another room in the basement with a ton of different stuff on the walls, mostly Native American art pieces or souvenirs from world travels. Every inch of wall was filled and a few pieces were spread around on furniture.

I went upstairs and found a room filled with art projects and other design-y stuff. These fashion gals were fantastic, but they weren’t cheap!

It turned out that one of the occupants had been a graphic designer. There were a number of projects around – logo designs, sketches, and mock layouts, some framed or mounted on mat board. I found two large boards near the bathroom, each with four cut-outs showing lettering samples, hand-drawn phrases in different typefaces and styles. The phrases on them cracked me up — “To Hell And Back,” “Where To Go In Portland,” “No Cigarette Hangover Tomorrow.” I didn’t see a price but figured I’d ask how much they were.

Also in the bathroom were a few vintage beach towels — I don’t know why I keep buying these, but I could not pass up the extra-huge one with a lobster on it!

The last stop before heading to the checkout area was a quick tour of the kitchen. These cookie jars frightened me.

There was a line to pay, so Karl and I killed some time flipping through an amazing 1950s program from the “Madame Arthur” drag show in Paris. It was super cool, but priced at $32 — we both considered it, but couldn’t quite pay that much. Which was good, since my wacky word boards were priced at $20 each! (I’d missed the pencil writing on the back.) By the time I found out, I was already too in love with them to leave them behind. Luckily the sellers cut me a little bit of a deal on the pair.

Karl bought a few things too, but this trunk shot is all mine …

Seems like forever since we did an update? Oddly enough, we haven’t all been together on a sale day for well over a month. The rain seems to have passed, the annual neighborhood sales are getting closer — West Seattle is just two weeks away! This past weekend’s sales were pretty boring. But we had fun, as we usually do — you make your own fun in this life, right?

Our first sale looked like full on kiddie sale, but since we only had three sales to hit in Ballard — I’m going. Karl dug in his toes and said “I am staying in the car,” but about two minutes later he was digging in a box of books saying “You made me come to this sale! You forced me!”

What first looked like baby stuff only wasn’t really that bad. You just had to look a little harder. Maybe the thrill of the hunt doesn’t always include digging in toddler Oshkosh B’Gosh overalls. Karl picked up a cool poster for that silly movie The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus. We then had a conversation about how you can tell when wives make their husbands get rid of stuff against their will.

Jenny said we should leave Ballard and head across town to hit some estate sales. The first one was in some old ’60s condo, with an elevator. I point that out mainly because I think in all the times I have gone to sales I have entered an elevator maybe four times. The sales are usually bad, but that is just a side note. And this sale was sort of bad. I did hear an amazing conversation about how Pyrex has changed their formulation, since so many people who make crystal meth had been using them to “cook” in. I purchased some patterns while Jenny and Karl went to look in some garage that I never even made it into. Karl bought records while Jenny went around taking pictures of scary crap.

Sometimes we give tips to sellers and buyers. In the case of this next sale, our tip for sellers is DON’T BE A DOUCHE. Just because you sell “collectibles” on ebay doesn’t make you an expert on everything old on the entire planet and if it did you wouldn’t be selling crap in your backyard. Right? Right!

Sample conversation:

“How much are these shoes?”

“Well, they’re vintage.”

“Um, no, they aren’t even old.”

“Well, yeah they are old, like at least the ’80s, or maybe the ’90s.”

“No, they’re not. And I never asked you how old they are.”

He also told Karl that he would really love Nina Simone — as if for some reason Karl had never heard her before. Okay, maybe he was trying to be cool, but it came off as total douche — Jenny called it the Mr. Vice Magazine Douchebag Sale.

Next we tried to hit an estate sale that had so many people lined up (an hour after opening) that we thought we would come back later. An hour later the line was just as long. If your estate sale has been open for over two hours and there is still a line of 20 people, you aren’t letting enough people in.

Instead we hit a sale filled with nice stuff spread out over a front patio.

Sadly, they wanted so much money for most of the vintage clothing that items I would normally have grabbed without question made me pause. $15 for skirts, regardless of condition? Hmm … I did get a few things, but most of what I had picked up was left behind.

We stopped at a few other sales best described as “janky.” One of them had this automatic doughnut maker that they thought someone might pay ten dollars for … Um, no.

On our way back home we stopped at one last estate sale.

Inside, everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) was high-end and overpriced. 50s Mexican jewelry? $400. Chairs? $200. They had really wonderful items, but they needed to have some of that stuff taken by a professional that could have auctioned most of it off. They did have this great sign on the bathroom door.

After I asked Jenny to take a photo of it, I heard one of the of guys running the sale raising his voice about folks taking photos. Maybe he thought that Jenny was taking photos of their artwork or something. Who knows? In any case, everyone else working the sale ignored him.

In the end, we each bought a few things, and it was nice to get back in the yard sale saddle again.