Yard Sale Bloodbath

Sometimes we see signs when we are just out walking. Maybe we missed the original sale because they only made a few signs, we knocked off early, or they never listed the sale on craigslist. Hard to think of someone having a sale and not listing on craigslist, but I guess some folks do.

This sign is wonderful, I walked by it near my work.

This is pure craftsmanship when it comes to moving sale signs. Hand painted, two ponies magazine cut-out, and the added-on part of cardboard at the bottom. You know they got bored after about four of these. I could have made like one of these and that would have been it.

The second one is the extreme opposite. I walked by this one last weekend in San Francisco. They didn’t even make signs, but just hijacked someone else’s sign from the month before.

I love them both.

Meghan was out of town last weekend and as a result, she wasn’t there for what turned out to be a very bizarre day of sales for me and Karl. Our first stop was listed as “Kind of a digger sale so not for the faint of heart…” Scary yet intriguing, right? They also mentioned “100′s of records” so naturally Karl was all over it. This sale was in a small neighborhood I never knew was there, tucked away behind near a huge park. It seemed that we were getting further and further away from civilization as we headed toward the address.

We weren’t actually sure if we were on the right road, but then we saw a tiny sign leading us to this.

Diggers were already digging, so we headed in. Oh. My. God.

Sorry that picture’s blurry, though perhaps that’s actually a good thing to ease you into how nuts this sale was? Karl started flipping through the records. I looked at a few boxes — they were reeeeeeally crusty.

I started poking around through some of the other piles, feeling thankful there was hand sanitizer waiting in the car.

Maybe there was something good somewhere, but I sure couldn’t find it. Most of the boxes I opened were filled with Playboys (even a box that had originally held Girl Scout Cookies — that just seems wrong), and the clothes spilling out didn’t look promising enough to risk sticking a hand deeper into the piles.

I found a plastic file box with an assortment of old photos, mostly from the ’80s or early ’90s — it seemed like there was potential for something amazing to be there, but after a while I just couldn’t deal. Karl bought a stack of records and we retreated back out of the woods and on to potentially better pickin’s.

While heading to our next stop we spotted an unlisted sale with this eye-catching sign display out front.

Unfortunately this was the best thing about their sale.

Next was something listed as a multi-family sale, but with lots of vintage/antiques — it seemed like they knew they had good stuff, but I didn’t get the dealer vibe. It turned out to be some “estate items” from a relative, plus some newer stuff. What was great about this sale is that it was in an enclosed garage, so they had gotten everything set up in advance and it was all laid out neatly. It was pleasant just looking around! The people were really friendly but also followed us around from room to room talking about their items, so it was hard to take pictures. I did have to take a shot of this crazy ’70s dress, which looked brighter and more sparkly in real life.

I paid fifty cents for a huge bag of old plastic swizzle sticks (mostly from defunct Seattle locations, with a smattering of Reno and Hawaii mixed in). They have now been added to my existing huge collection of vintage swizzle sticks. Let me state that there is really no reason for anyone to own this many swizzle sticks. I also bought a gold-tone necklace with chunky red, white and blue rock-like beads — very “old lady” style but for some reason I liked it, so I put it on and wore it around the sale. By the time we left I had already lost interest, but I felt like I was committed since I was wearing it. Karl bought a few things here, including some great dresses for a pal — they weren’t super cheap but the people ended up giving him a deal on all his items. As they were chatting they asked his name and he said “Karl, with a K” — the man said, “So it’s C-A-R-K?” He seemed to think that was a real knee-slapper.

That sale was definitely a little odd, but in a pleasant, non-freaky way, so we pressed ahead to the next stop. The address seemed to be almost in the middle of some railroad tracks, but it had been listed as “Huge estate sale with many rare hard-to-find treasures and beautiful antiques” — sounds normal, right? Right?

Yes, that is what we found. We were tempted to jam it in reverse and get out of there, but we figured we had to check it out. In we went …

Adding to how strange this was? NO ONE WAS THERE. We poked around and I kept thinking someone would pop out and say hi, but no. Most of the stuff was a little … distressed-looking, shall we say? But some things had their own kind of peculiar charm.

I started thinking maybe this sale wasn’t so weird … then Karl pointed out the HUGE PILE OF KNIVES.

And then? A banjo.

Are you thinking what I was thinking?

Karl still wanted to look around, but I decided to go wait in the car. After a minute or two a guy walked out from god knows where, stood in front of the car and waved at me. I waved back, then he went and talked to Karl. He ended up being super nice and charged Karl five bucks for a pretty big pile of stuff. So I guess it all worked out.

After that we drove over to another semi-estate sale — their ad said “Years of going to estate sales and garage sailing have come to this. We are letting go of some of the treasures we’ve found along the way, along with several items from grandparents’ estate.”

They had a nice spread of stuff and the prices weren’t too bad.

It seemed like they were moving out of the house — one room was empty except for these dolls.

We bought a few things, but it didn’t turn out to be any big whoop. But it was a good sale to end on — clean, bright, and no reason to fear for one’s life. And sometimes? That’s really good enough.

My parents were in town last weekend and my mom came to sales with me and Meghan as our special guest star. I’ve been to yard sales with my mom many a time, but I think this is the first time she’s tagged along for the full Yard Sale Bloodbath experience. It’s October, so I wasn’t sure what we’d find, but I put together a small list of sales with potential.

Our first sale was in a fancy neighborhood and I wasn’t sure what to expect. We were pleasantly surprised by their spread of books — it’s always nice to buy stuff from someone with taste. Each of us got a book or two here and I also got some dress-up costumes for my daughter and a kids guitar. They were still putting boxes out and we got to be the first to dig into a couple. I opened up one jewelry case and it was a vintage amber bracelet and earring set — Meghan muttered, “one of us has to get that!” I knew I would never wear it so I handed it to her. As she left she told me that Annoying Jewelry Guy had walked up right behind us at that moment. Ha! (My mom said, “That was Jewelry Guy? Where?” It was like a celebrity-spotting! Sadly he’d already moved on at that point so she didn’t get the face-to-face experience … maybe that’s actually a good thing.)

Everyone buying things at the first stop is always a nice way to start, and after chasing down some nonexistent sale we went to a moving sale which sounded promising, or at least interesting. The guy had mentioned art by local artists and other things that gave his ad the vibe of possibly being good. We walked in and saw a bunch of old rock buttons on a black bandana, ranging from early ’80s punk to more recent random crap. I asked how much and he rambled on about how he had bought them all at various places back in the day, then said $12 for all of them — that sounded good to me. Meghan started looking through his books and amassed a small pile, while I grabbed a pair of $3 Ray-Ban sunglasses (or so I thought, until later at home I discovered that they appear to actually be a pair of generic sunglasses in a Ray-Ban case. They’re still kinda cool though.)

Then I heard Meghan say “WOW. What IS that?” I turned around and saw this monstrosity!

I apologize in advance for the nightmares some of you are going to have. It’s creepy, right? Some woman was excitedly paying $5 for it, presumably for halloween party decor. The guy said it had been used in some kind of low-budget horror movie. As for the art, a few things were hanging on the wall and Meghan asked about the rest but he seemed like he didn’t want to show it to people unless they were really serious about buying stuff.

There were two sales on the same block not too far away — a rarity this time of year, but they both turned out to be awful. And then there was an odd-sounding estate sale. There wasn’t a ton of stuff there, but their stuff was unusual … how often do you see a saddle at an estate sale?

Upstairs they had some very fancy furniture.

This bedroom set had a sign on it saying it had come from the Washington Governor’s Mansion? Or something along those lines …

The other bedroom had this amazing wallpaper.

Meghan bought a few things including a vintage pair of Frye cowboy boots (!). I bought something truly odd, a large ceramic mug depicting the WPPSS power plant, for $1. Then we drooled over this desk on the way out. (If I had that desk, I would totally use it to display a Bob Seger LP, too.)

We went to a few bad sales — one of them had these cans that might have tempted me for no good reason, if they hadn’t been priced at $5 each.

Then we pulled up at this sale, which seemed to be all about the Halloween decorations.

Seriously, it went on and on. And on. And on. This is just a small sampling.

I did buy some glow-in-the-dark sidewalk chalk here, and as I left the seller said “Tell all your friends to come shop here!” I was at a loss how to respond. As we drove away, Meghan made a comment about this guy’s “anal bead hairdo” – it was a long ponytail with multiple rubber bands, creating a look that did bring up some unfortunate imagery. At first she’d thought it was part of a costume until she realized it was just his look. Then she laughed and said she couldn’t believe she just said “anal bead hairdo” in front of my mother. (Let me state for the record that it takes a lot more than that to offend my mom.)

I did a quick check on my phone to see if there was anything else nearby, and I found there was an estate sale listed right near where we’d started — how did I miss that? We circled back around to check it out. It was a gorgeous house right on the water, and the view was amazing.

It actually took a few minutes before I stopped gaping out the window and really started to look at their stuff. They had a good selection, but I wasn’t finding anything I really needed to own.

My mom and Meghan each grabbed a few things and then Meghan found a penguin ice bucket in nice shape for $3! It was another “one of us has to buy this” moment — I decided to go for it. My mom reminisced about the one she used to have, which I remember from growing up — we mostly used it as a biscuit-warmer.

I was pleasantly surprised at how decent the day turned out to be! We all bought stuff and had fun — can’t really beat that.

There really isn’t much to say about last Saturday’s sales. First off, some things we didn’t buy.

These were all from the same estate sale, which we hit a half-hour after it started (and were sad to see many cool items being carried away). We each ended up making a few purchases, so it wasn’t a total loss.

The rest of the sales — they were okay, but nothing special. The only thing that’s really worth mentioning is another stop we made, billed as an “estate sale” but it was clearly just a bad yard sale … Meghan started muttering about how maybe it would turn into an estate sale after we killed the people who were having it.

Here’s the trunk shot, where you can spot a few worthy items.

Perhaps foolishly, neither of us believes that the sale season is over yet. Expect a few more reports before we pack it in for the year!