Yard Sale Bloodbath

We had a limited amount of time for sales on Saturday, but thought we’d get out for a quick run. Conveniently, our first stop was just down the street. I wasn’t sure if it would be that great, but the mention of multiple sellers getting rid of designer and vintage items sounded promising.

Meghan had remembered hitting a sale here before, but this time there were multiple sellers. They had some great stuff and a huge selection!

They were just starting to bring out some racks of clothes — Meghan nearly screamed when she saw not one, not two, but three vintage Mexican circle skirts come out. She grabbed ‘em all up quick and dug through the rest. I scored a very cool winter coat (not that exciting when summer has finally rolled around, but I’ll be happy in a few months) and a windbreaker with crazy patches on it. We contemplated buying these matching green jackets and wearing them around somewhere, but ultimately passed.

The more I looked around the more I was picking up — Israeli boots, a Fiestaware butter dish, an apron made with Hawaiian fabric … I finally had to ask for a box. I had fully fallen into “sure, throw it in the pile” mode. Right after snapping this picture, I thought “hey, that lion is pretty cool” — into the box it went.

Meghan started getting rung up — it was a pretty slow process. While she was waiting, guess who showed up and started digging through the jewelry? Annoying Jewelry Guy! Apparently he started making weird and mildly pervy comments to her after spotting a pair of boots she was holding — “Oh, are those your go-go boots? Are you going to wear those with your go-go skirt?” I missed this whole thing, and I’m glad because I’m so skeeved out even thinking about it — not least because I have hardly ever heard him say anything other than “Got any jewelry?” I got in line to pay and one of the sellers came up saying “whose car is that?” Someone had blocked their driveway — one guess who the bad park-er was. When she asked him to move his car he was so odd about it and at first refused, then skulked away. When I finally had a chance to pay, Meghan started talking to some people she knew who revealed that they don’t call him Jewelry Guy, they call him “Ten-Dollar Guy” because they always see him make a huge pile of stuff at a sale and then say “How about ten dollars?” no matter how much the stuff was originally marked. He also attempted to buy the rings off of one of the seller’s hands. Have I mentioned we don’t like this guy very much? But not even his odd and obnoxious behavior could really dampen our sale high, and we both walked off in desperate need of more cash, but very pleased with our purchases.

Next was a “block sale” with only one sale (I couldn’t really bitch after pretty much doing the same thing at our last sale), and then an address that seemed vaguely familiar — egads! The sale at the creepy doll house is ON! Now, I don’t feel like my photo from last time truly conveyed the oddness of the doll display. Let’s have a close-up, shall we?

Scurrying away from those dolls before they could come alive and suck up our souls, we went around to the back … passing this fountain on the way.

I wasn’t sure what would be waiting for us back there. Dolls? Ax murderers? No … just a lot of junk.

Most of it looked like it had been stored away for a long, long time. Like this whole box of phones.

And hey, remember Toughskins jeans? Well, they had some.

Do you really have to ask? We didn’t buy a thing here.

The next few sales were mostly duds. I was glad I didn’t need anything from this sale …

And I’m pretty sure that nobody needs any of these VHS tapes.

We hit a sale that hadn’t quite opened yet, and as we were walking up to check it out, two women came walking away shaking their heads and muttering as a warning “hamster balls.” Yeah, that looked like about all they had — we didn’t wait around for to find out more.

We made a quick snack break, then hit a sale where Meghan purchased this item (surely inspired by the Ballard Driving Academy skit from Almost Live).

Later I purchased a cool vintage thermos and a 1976 pamphlet called “How To Make Your Own Moonshine.”

One of our last stops was mostly kid items, but we spotted this sign. I knew that mentioning Antique Roadshow was probably a bad sign.

Sure enough, it was CRAP. Worse, the seller forced us to listen to a verbal tour of all the craps, telling us how collectible her vases were (they looked like the kind that florists give you when you buy a bouquet, and that every thrift store is filled with) and trying to convince Meghan that some boring ashtray would be a great “decorative piece”, even when you don’t smoke. To be fair, I have seen ashtrays that could be considered decorative pieces. This was not one of them. We left muttering “more like Goodwill, here we come.”

And that was that for the day — we couldn’t resist spreading one of those purty skirts out in the trunk for you …

Of course we had to hit up sales, since it was National Garage Sale Day. When was this holiday created? I have no idea, but if we have National Talk Like A Pirate Day — why not.

Jenny and I made plans to meet at 8:30, hit a sale that started at that time, then do the usual get our bearings, get money and get a baked good. Our first sale was a group sale that we have been to the last three years. They make these pretty amazing signs that are different each year. We didn’t manage to take a picture this time but they were in the same basic style as this and this.

The problem with a group sale is when some folks are ready, some haven’t even unloaded their car. We were both grabbing stuff as they were still bringing more items out of the house, and even came back an hour and a half later and picked up a few more items. I was stoked to get a pair of Frye boots in my size for $7 and Jenny purchased a really cute winter coat for her daughter. The second time there I heard a guy say, “I am surprised no one purchased the Wii” — but I heard “I am surprised no one purchased the weed.” I mentioned this to one of the sellers, who laughed.

After that we went to a sale that seemed to only have three things: DVDs, Sci-Fi books and kitchen items. I know we have talked at length about scanners, but there is another type that gets on my nerves: a person that buys every single DVD or CD at a sale. The first time this happened, I had 2 DVDs in my hand and then heard that I couldn’t buy them, because they had already sold. What? If you don’t have it in your hands and it doesn’t have a sold tag on it. Hmmm…. This has now happened to me three times with the same woman (and also with another guy in West Seattle). It seems to be very similar to scanners, but Jenny feels like it’s less bad since they take everything, even the crappy stuff. I am mostly irritated if I want to buy a couple of DVDs or CDs for personal home use. This time, I had a DVD box set in my hands and heard “sorry, I just purchased that … ” Oh, hell no. I just said “Possession is 9/10ths of the law” and refused to hand the DVD over. In fact I just gave the seller the money and got into the car. After I bitched about this for about five minutes even I was sick of my own voice and I dropped it.

We stumbled upon this sign — hard to miss since they used a whole door.

The sale wasn’t that great, but at least it wasn’t ridiculously overpriced like the next one where they wanted $25 for crappy clothes.

We hit up another sale that had a woman very carefully picking up each plate and then looking them up in a price guide book she had with her. It looked extra strange since she had bad eyesight, so she was putting the plates super close to her face and then the price guide super close to her face.

On the way to the next sale we had something happen that I can seriously tell you has never happened before: I accidentally drove into a cemetery. I know what you are thinking — “HOW???” This cemetery is very small and older, so there are no huge signs out front. It also has a small street that runs along one side, so when I whipped into the cemetery I thought I was on that street. Both of starting cracking up at how absurd this was. I do some pretty crazy driving on occasion, but this took the cake.

After getting back onto a normal street we hit a very strange estate sale. It seemed like it was really a garage sale that they called an estate sale. The old guy that must have lived there had kept all his nails in old beer cans. Both of us picked up a few that we could call “pen cups for the office” — this led to trying to find places to dump out all the extra nails.

We decided to hit the Maple Leaf neighborhood sale — which by now we have officially taken off our list as being a “neighborhood sale.”

11 sales is a couple blocks, not a neighborhood. The only exception would be if you lived in a town of 200 people!

One of our first stops wasn’t on that list, but had been advertised as a divorce sale. We have been to a few of these and I don’t recommend this. The vibe can be really bad. The first thing out of the woman’s mouth is “Who needs a wedding dress?” Let me just stop a second and say that this was the saddest wedding dress I have ever seen. It was made of that really horrible lace that 1980s prom dresses all seemed to use. Sort of like this monstrosity, but long and in a gross cream color. YUCK!

She did have a pair of shoes in perfect condition from the late ’80s that I remember seeing at the only shoe store in Omaha, Nebraska that was trying to bring interesting footwear to the mid-west when I was growing up. When I asked if she would go down on the price she said, “They are $5.” I just looked at her and said, “Yes, would you go down?” She mumbled something about it being early — sorry to break it to you lady, 11:30 isn’t early when it comes to yard sales. When we got into the car Jenny said “maybe she is getting divorced, because she had really bad taste.” OUCH!

At another sale I spotted this in their free pile and freaked out a little since I had one when I was growing up. Sadly this one was missing most of its pieces.

We hit a few more sales, nothing really amazing, and then our last stop in the area was at the Eagles — the guy there started grilling Jenny about how much she knew about the Eagles, and probably would have tried to get us to join up if we’d stuck around longer.

We hit a few more sales on the way back home, but managed to stay away from the Free Goddess Festival.

Over the course of the day we did see our share of strange and sometimes scary items …

And we ended up with a pretty good pile of junk in the trunk.

Last night I dreamed that it was Saturday and I overslept by several hours, completely missing out on yard sales (and annoying Meghan). Seems extra-funny considering that apparently, the second Saturday in August — i.e., tomorrow — is “National Garage Sale Day”!

We were recently interviewed for an article which talks about this holiday, as well as other finer points of the yard sale experience. Here’s a snippet of the printed version (with our swanky bingo pic) — the full text can be found online here.

Enjoy the article … and hope National Garage Sale Day treats you right.

Last weekend was gorgeous and I had a list of more sales than we’d possibly be able to hit, all in or near our neighborhood. As we set off to hit the ATM around 8:30, Meghan saw a sign and made a sudden turn. “Oh, that one doesn’t start until 10,” I said after checking my list. But they seemed pretty close to set up, so we stopped and checked it out. Having first crack is always nice and especially when it results in a good score … I picked up a pair of worn-once-or-twice Fluevog shoes in my size for $10! Less excitingly, I also purchased a sealed package of rechargeable batteries. Meghan got a white Le Creuset dish and some other things that I’ve forgotten — I think Karl scored here too.

Feeling a little high on that first stop, we got some cash and then drove to our next sale, which turned out to be a big spread in back of an apartment building.

As we looked around it seemed like something good had to be in there … somewhere.

But after seeing a few too many old price tags (from the items’ former residence at an antique mall) and realizing they wanted similar prices on most of the stuff, the possibility of a great score seemed to fade.

Karl bought a few items and I did laugh at this magazine cover, but ultimately left it behind.

Also at this sale: a very dreadlocked dog. I couldn’t resist taking a quick pic.

Our next few stops were bad, including accidentally ending up at a sale we’d hit a few weeks ago in the rain when it was all tarped up — we decided to pass on a second round. Then as I was navigating us to the next stop on our list, we couldn’t believe it — it was this house we’ve long been obsessed with, with a permanent, mildly creepy doll display in its windows!

We got so excited at the idea of getting a closer look at this place … until we realized the signs out front said “Garage Sale Cancelled.” We can only dream that they’ll try again some other day.

We made a few boring stops, then found a sale with a bounty of interesting goods: records, CDs, books, magazines … and some vintage items. But not the type of vintage items I’m ever going to be looking for.

We have seen plenty of ancient food before, but ancient baby food?! They also had some very old SPAM.

After this we ventured into a different area, where we spotted some signs … we followed them for a few blocks, and then came to this.

Not sure if you can tell from the pic, but those arrows are pointing at each other. Where is the sale?? We laughed, then spotted it as we turned the corner — a janky-looking display in an industrial garage. (We didn’t bother to stop.)

As we moved along we were finding nothing but duds. With a few weird items to keep it interesting. Like, what the hell is this?

I dared to pick it up and discovered it was a scarf.

Another item we laughed at (for its dated packaging) was this.

Perhaps the strangest thing we encountered was this bottle of Merlot … from Conoco. Is that regular or unleaded?

We were starting to feel like we needed another good sale and then we found two sales in front of a newer townhouse building — these generally tend to be bad.

But as we dug into the items, we found some great stuff. I grabbed some vintage wallpaper — after our recent wallpaper freakout I was hesitant, but this stuff was old and in good shape. I limited myself to the one roll I liked best until I discovered they were 25 cents a roll — then I grabbed all the others that were halfway decent. Meanwhile, Meghan was looking through the shoes and clothes and amassing quite the pile after discovering the woman was about her size and had some great stuff for cheap — Camper boots for $5, anyone? I grabbed a few t-shirts, although I passed on this one.

We probably should have ended on that note, but of course we had to make one more stop. It was a multi-seller sale with a lot of stuff. The first thing we saw when we got out was this art display.

Um … that purple and blue one in the background … is that … uh …

Oh, dear.

We should have just turned around and gotten back in the car. The only thing we purchased here were some homemade cookies and they were terrible.

And that was it … most of our stops were pretty bad, but the good ones let us fill up the trunk and then some.