Yard Sale Bloodbath

Last weekend started off with an unusual event: Meghan’s husband Dan came to sales with us! Readers of this blog probably know of him mainly from Meghan’s frequent comments about how she will end up divorced if she brings various things into the house (usually of the dishware variety). He usually works on Saturdays, but had the day off and decided to join us. After a quick stop for cash, we headed to a couple of nearby sales.

This sale had a lot of stuff. Meghan bought some jewelry and I thought I was going to leave empty-handed until I spotted their CDs — I picked up a pretty odd combo, Brian Wilson’s Smile and The Jingle Cats. I also laughed a lot about this framed print, which was now being sold for $2.

Somewhat in keeping with that theme, our next sale had been advertised as “High Quality Garage Sale.” They definitely had a quality view.

Both Dan and I took a quick spin through the stuff and headed back to the car grumbling about how they possibly had an unrealistic idea about what “high quality” actually means. Meanwhile, Meghan was finding stuff left and right. She bought two designer bracelets and some throw pillows and I think a few more items? All I know is that she used up just about all of her cash (and was pretty happy about it).

Now that we had hit the nearby sales it was time to venture a little further, off to a sale whose ad said something about having been renting a friend’s garage but now had to leave, for reasons about which we could only speculate. It mentioned vintage items and sounded pretty wacky. When we pulled up, Dan was excited since he had seen this large freestanding garage and always wondered what was in there. Well, today was our chance to find out.

We all loved the garage sale flag, but it wasn’t for sale (though she said you can get them “on the internet.” Who knew?)

This sale looked wacky, right off the bat.

And inside was just nuts. The first thing I spotted: a stack of saddles!

And then this crazy frog-on-frog vase. They look worried.

I may have had a similar look on my face as I tiptoed through the garage, trying not to knock anything over or bump into people making their way through the narrow pathways.

I will admit that I would have been tempted to buy this sign for a Truckload Sale of tame parakeets except that the edge was torn up and sort of crusty …

We were also somewhat taken with this ice skater painting.

But this faceless stuffed animal freaked me right out.

Dan pointed out these bags of hot dogs.

I had to tell him that this is the second time we have seen bags of tiny plastic hotdogs at a yard sale — I’m pretty sure (but not entirely positive!) they were not the same exact bags. (I’m not sure if it would be less or more weird if they were.)

And speaking of bags — check out this stash of vintage plastic baggies!

I know someone out there is upset that we did not buy these. (Um, sorry?) We also didn’t buy any of these unused paper slips for “Easter Gift Surprises” packaging — this is only a fraction of what was there.

Then we found a box full of dental tools.

At this point we were all wondering what the hell was going on at this sale. It didn’t feel fully hoarder-ish or exactly vintage-reseller-ish, but maybe somewhere in between? Someone who stockpiled things that might be (and sometimes were) valuable but never got around to selling them until now? I honestly have no idea.

Meghan purchased some of the dental tools for a friend along with a couple of other items. Dan was stoked to find a nice vintage barometer. He was giving us weather reports from the backseat for the rest of the day.

Our next stop was right where a friend of ours lived — I wasn’t positive if it was her address or just nearby. Turned out it was her house. Her boyfriend was just moving in and getting rid of a ton of his stuff.

There were a ton of cookbooks and I started to look through them, when the guy we refer to as “book guy” said that was his stack. Unlike “Furniture Guy” and “Annoying Jewelry Guy”, we like Book Guy, so this was fine, even though it was sad to miss out. (Later, he mentioned that if there was something we really wanted he would probably hand it over. See? He’s nice.)

Meghan found a few books from what was left, and picked up a Fiestaware pitcher. Dan made some remarks about how she had four or five at home already. Then he found a sword … and decided he needed to purchase this to use in a friend’s upcoming photo shoot. Meghan was less than thrilled and they proceeded to make irritated remarks at each other about these purchases for the rest of the sale. At this point I noticed a few copies of a magazine called Meatpaper — “the journal of meat culture” and decided those needed to be purchased. Those were not the only meat-related item at this ale.

I made a joke to Dan about how home sausage-making could be his new hobby, then instantly thought about how bad Meghan would want to kick my ass if this actually happened. Thankfully he didn’t take the bait.

We were coming up on quitting time, but decided to make a couple more stops. The first one was a total drive-by, but then we followed some signs to an indoor sale with this sign out front.

It turned out Meghan knew the people having the sale. It also turned out that someone was heavily into New Kids On The Block in their formative years.

I did not buy any of that stuff, but I did pick up a ’60s pamphlet called “Easy to Make Maidens and Cocktails” with sort of creepy illustrations, an old issue of Dirty Found (the all-smutty version of Found Magazine), and some vintage kid-sized cat-eye glasses — I was pretty happy with my purchases.