Yard Sale Bloodbath

A few weeks ago I went back to Omaha for a reunion. Unlike my last visit, I was pretty limited on time for getting in some solid thrifting. I made sure I had a chance to hit up one of my favorite old haunts. I wrote about the greatness that is New Life Thrift a while back, and it’s still amazing.

Before I even walked in the door, I noticed this sign in the window.

I thought it was really strange that they would need to have a no guns sign in the window. Why? Well, turns out Omaha has a change in the concealed weapons permit law. What little I was able to gather is that if you don’t want someone to come into your place of business with a concealed weapon, you have to post something on your front door.

The first song I hear when I walk in is the Standells “Sometimes Good Guys Don’t Wear White” — is this the best thrift store in the world or what?

As always the place has tons of clothing, most of it priced in the $2 to $3 range (with mark-it wax pens and two staples) and often marked down to prices like 60 cents.

I was pretty restrained this time since I didn’t have much room to bring anything home, but I did pick up a few choice items.

I have been back in Seattle for over a month, and as winter has set in we aren’t thinking of yard sales as much as we usually do. I have had the last bit of my Omaha blog hanging over my head and slowly my mind is getting more fuzzy about what I purchased and what stores I hit.

Omaha has TONS of thrift stores, and I found my love of junking from going to thrift stores there while in high school. Sadly, many of my favorite stores have either closed or been taken over by a chain thrift store. My biggest disappointment was the closing of the best and largest Salvation Army that I have ever been to.

One of my faves is still going strong: The New Life Thrift Store, on the outskirts of Omaha in Bellevue, NE.

The prices are dirt cheap and its overall quality is super high. Plus, the staff is genuinely nice. They have some of the best prices in Omaha. AND they have a bizarre room of T.V sets.

I took a photo of our cart (sort of like our trunk photos) and you can tell that it’s filled. My friend Kelly bought maternity dresses and ice skates. I spent $14.85 and bought 18 men’s shirts (at prices ranging from 50 cents to 99 cents) and one woman’s dress for $1.95.

One addition since the last time I was in Omaha is “the bins.”

They are much smaller than the Portland bins, and less sketchy. When I say less sketchy, I mean that you aren’t going to cut your hand open trying to dig a pair of pants out of a bin.

One thing you should know if you want to thrift in Nebraska or Iowa is that you can’t go on Sunday since they are closed. This is the bible belt. I forgot this fact and tried to go hit some places in Council Bluffs, Iowa. All of them were closed.

Now, antique malls can be really good. Most of them are in the Old Market in downtown Omaha. One exception is the Brass Armadillo which boasts an insane amount of vendors (375 in 30,000 square feet) and really it’s HUGE. I had great luck here 5 years ago, but this time, eh. Nothing. I did take this amazing photo of this chalkware Nebraska cow that I secretly wanted to buy, but it was just too large.

The flipside of that experience is Second Chance Antiques. A place that I have followed to 3 locations and over 20 years. It’s a little messy and oddly organized, but the prices are fair and the quality is high.

Across the street from Second Chance is Fairmont Antiques, filled with tons of vendors with various levels of quality and price. I did find a dealer after my own heart with her space almost 100% filled with purses.

While I was in the Midwest I was able to hit up some sales with an old friend and his sale partner in Omaha, Nebraska. Marc and Ron hit sales and auctions every weekend with a cast of characters that rival the pickers in Seattle.

A couple of things that set these two apart from me and Jenny is that they are both professional pickers and they start going to sales at 6:30 AM. The first time we went out was the day after I got there. The 6:30 wake-up call was a little harsh since it’s two hours later in Omaha and the thought of my body clock going to sales at 4:30 AM is even out of the realm of my obsessive compulsion for sales.

A few differences between sales in Omaha and Seattle: They have sales on Thursday & Friday. They have more auctions then we have. It’s not that uncommon for the entire contents of a house to be pulled outside and auctioned off.

Another oddball thing I noticed at the sales was the lack of women. There really aren’t very many females who hit the sales early. In most cases I was the only one there.

So, the overall plan for sales in Omaha is this: Look over all the sales in the paper (they don’t use craigslist) and work out the top three or four sales to go to. Narrow it down to the one sale to hit first, and be there two hours early to get numbers and/or be the first in line.

This works out well, except if the sale is really bad and you wasted an hour waiting in the car or on someone’s porch for a bad sale. They pass the time by talking about scores that other pickers found before them, or by teasing each other. The best line was Marc telling Ron that he needed Imodium for his mouth.

While waiting outside at one sale, they pulled this car onto the lawn and put up flags.

At another sale they had boxes and boxes of items sealed into box tops with tape around them. If you wanted one item you had to buy the whole box. It was sort of like the bags of jewelry you used to find at thrift stores. Marc said that Heartland Estate Sales was the only company that did this.

One of my favorite sales was an estate sale of a former Tangier Shriner and his wife.

It was a decent sized house and I purchased a really cool Tangier embroidered shirt and hat (instant Halloween costume for next year) and a group photo of some Shriners from the ’60s. They had a lot of other interesting items, too.

Some of the sales we hit just didn’t seem worth the time, but how great are the sales in any town in early November?

While I was in Iowa we took an afternoon and drove to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Since I had never been there before we only went to thrift stores that we just happened by.

Since it was Halloween, some of the workers at the Goodwill had dressed up. One gentleman let me take this photo of him in his traditional Pow Wow outfit, with his Goodwill vest over it. He was a good sport.

Since I had never gone thrifting on Halloween before, I had no idea how many people go to thrift stores very late in the day to get costumes. It’s almost 5:00 p.m. and now you are looking for a costume?

The thrift stores in Sioux Falls are pretty good. I picked up a three-piece 50’s sweater dress, a skirt, and a few other items. The thought of having to mail items back home kept me pretty sane in my purchases, but Sioux Falls Thrift shops are worth a look if you find yourself here.

I have been putting off blogging about my Midwest vacation, it’s just too much to think about. Too many photos, too many scraps of paper with sales or thrift store notes scribbled on them. This was way bigger than Texas as far as the sheer volume of places that I went to.

I was going to try and blog in chronological order, but that started to overwhelm me. The solution (if you can call it that) is to just slowly tackle a state at a time.

So I’ll start with the Lakes area of Iowa - covering Spirit Lake, Okoboji, Spencer, Milford and Esterville. As far as I can tell there aren’t really any thrift stores in this area, with the exception of a crappy Goodwill in Spencer that was mostly filled with cast-offs from Walmart and Old Navy.

There are 27 different antique shops in this area and I was able to hit about half of those, some very overpriced. The Okoboji Antique Mall has higher prices than Ebay! This is Iowa, right? They did have this awesome Tidy Teddy parks sign that I thought was pretty great.

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One antique mall in downtown Spirit Lake (Red Door Antiques) had a fly swatter for sale - WTF?

They did have Bakelite-handled flatware for dirt cheap, so I guess that was an okay trade-off.

There seemed to be no real middle ground. Most places were either super high end …

… or super low end.

I purchased some vintage Fiestaware for 3 bucks a plate at a place called the 6th Street Emporium in Estherville that was far more large-scale thrift store than antique shop. They did have the largest selection of bridesmaids dresses and shoes that I have ever seen in one place.

Here is an insanely long list of antique stores in Iowa in case you are headed out that way for some reason.

While I was in Texas I was able to hit some pretty good thrift stores in Austin, some vintage stores, and various antique malls and flea markets.

Overall I found Austin to be overpriced and somewhat picked over … with a few exceptions.

Room Service Vintage has two locations and both seem to carry about the same sort of items: ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s clothing, dishware and furniture, at reasonable prices.

Cream Vintage has very fairly priced vintage clothing, with a slant towards ’70s hipster t-shirts and Levis turned into miniskirts. Bright and cheery, and they also do rock shows.

La Luz Home and Fashion carries midcentury modern furniture, vintage clothing and glassware. Clean larger space, fair prices.

Austin has tons of thrift stores and I managed to hit about 15 of them. I only purchased one item, but I think if I lived in Austin and could hit them on a more regular basis they would yield some good items.

While in Dallas I hit a GREAT hipster antique mall, with what looked like about 15 vendors, called Dolly Python. If I would have been flush in cash and ready to mail items home, I would have picked up a huge pile of junk. This is a great place if you want to find a vintage pair of cowboy boots or some ’60s clothing. Well worth a stop if you are in Dallas.

One place that I found super shocking was Beckie’s Antiques and Tobacco in Dallas.

WTF? Yeah, I need a Heywood Wakefield dresser and a carton of Camel 100’s. She was closed when I drove by, so I can’t give you a full recap.

Around the halfway mark out of Dallas we stopped at a “barn sale.”

This turned out to be another perma-sale under a very large carport/covered porch. They had some all right stuff, but no prices. Not one person came out of the house to help us and I don’t think anyone was even home.

Earlier in the week someone had mentioned that we should hit the Austin Flea Market. My boyfriend and I both wanted to get leather belts with our names stamped in them and we heard that this would be the place. When we drove up there was a line of cars to get into the parking lot.

This place was insane. It was all crazy Mexican items (in a good way). They sold new everything. Tires, corn on the cob, cowboy boots - you name it. Nothing was old, so that was sad, but it was cool to walk around and people watch. I loved this booth filled with lace for dressmaking.

We both left with belts, so it was a good end to the vacation.

While in Texas we spent three days in Dallas. On Friday and Saturday I made plans to try and hit some yard sales, or at the very least some thrift stores. Both days we had drank a little too much the night before and just couldn’t get going in the morning. In fact on Saturday we didn’t leave the house until noon. So, is Dallas a bust? I have no friggin’ idea.

On the three hour drive back to Austin we talked about trying to stop in Waco, but we thought it might be too bible-thumper. Then we saw the sign: Antique Mall and Free Dog Collectibles Museum.

The antique mall itself was all right, but when you are faced with bringing items home in your suitcase that is already bulging … I didn’t buy a single item.

The dog museum was pretty cool with over 7000 items — many of them I would have loved to own.

I arrived in Austin on a Friday night and made plans to go out and hit some sales the next day with a local Texan (a short-lived Seattle expat). Lisa had warned me not to expect too much, saying that the thrift stores can be good with repeat visits, but that most yard sales are pretty bad. I was thinking “How bad can they be?” Let me just say: BAD. I know that Jenny and I are lucky and we live in a part of town that yields some major finds, but I had no idea how different Texas would be.

We started out hitting some regular sales, nothing to report. We had to drive all over Austin to get to the few sales that we did hit — it’s spread out around these parts.

We went to a very strange perma-sale.

I am not actually sure if it really was a sale that he had all the time, but it had that feel. Nothing good to buy, but he had a ton of stuff.

Lisa and I hit a sale that has a table of fuzzy kitten items. I was too shy to try and take a photo, but the woman showed us a Renaissance Faire item that looked like a kitten on a stick that I guess you put into your top with the kitten sticking out of your boobs and then you make it move its head with the stick running down near your waist. We high-tailed it out of there fast.

We stopped at one more sale, where they had a suit of armor and a table full of nutcrackers.

Lisa purchased some records and a really cool lamp for $3. I for once didn’t buy a single item!

I spent just over a week in Berkeley, California, visiting family. My parents are long-time yard sale shoppers (yes, it’s in my blood) so they were up for hitting a couple of sales as we made our way to do other things on the first Saturday I was there.

The first sale was a block sale right where a friend of mine used to live, but there was nothing good. The second was an estate sale on a street that I don’t think I’d ever been on before (sort of a rare thing considering I spent the first 26 years of my life there). The front room was very organized and full of relatively nice things. As you made your way through the house it sort of devolved into more and more chaos, culminating in the back patio where it looked like the house had just sort of vomited up its more sketchy contents.

At one point heard my mom call to my sister, “Hey, come in here!” Thinking there was something good (or at least photo-worthy), I followed. It turned out to be a framed picture of my sister’s old first-grade teacher on the dresser. It must have been her parents’ house. Nobody found anything, and on the way out the door I decided to look through the jewelry piled on the checkout table — I ended up finding a really nice pair of pink rhinestone earrings for $2.00.

We decided to hit more sales the following Saturday. I looked on craigslist and found a few in our neighborhood. As we were getting ready to leave the next door neighbors came over and asked my mom if she could move her car from in front of their house since they were having a yard sale! This seemed exciting, but unfortunately it was their “we-decided-not-to-have-a-third-kid” sale, so it had nothing but baby stuff.

I was really intrigued by this one elaborate ad titled “Crazed Collector’s Clean-Out!” There were photos showing a house full of packed bookcases and all kinds of random junk stuffed in various nooks and crannies. As we were driving to it both of my parents said, “I hope this isn’t that one sale that is always there.” Sure enough, they recognized the house as one that has a sale going on nearly every weekend.

There must have been rooms in the back where the people lived, because the whole front of the house was set up with sale stuff.

It was kind of like being in a mini-Urban Ore, since there was just so much stuff. The sale was on the sidewalk, in the front yard, inside the house, down both sides of the house, and continued in the back yard.

I looked around for a while, and saw a few interesting things, but there was nothing that really grabbed me. Plus, these perma-sales sort of annoy me on principle, so I wasn’t exactly predisposed to shop there. But most of the stuff just wasn’t all that great. And I didn’t need any plants, lumber, or sculptural metal.

We went to a few more sales where I found various things that I might have bought at home, but weren’t worth dragging back on the airplane, like framed paint-by-numbers and one lone Russell Wright bowl. If I had really loved them I would have picked them up, but my suitcases were already pretty crammed and I didn’t think I’d really be haunted by leaving any of it behind. The most amazing thing I had to pass up was a terrific green ’50s formica/chrome table, complete with three chairs. They were only asking $35! It was actually kind of good that I wasn’t at home, since I don’t have any place for it in my house anyway. But if it had been in Seattle, I would have been really tempted. Even my mom was trying to figure out if there was somewhere she could put it, but eventually we just walked away, figuring that someone in Berkeley was going to be really stoked by their table & chair score later that day.

The only sale where I bought something was one advertised as “Eclectic Vintage Freakout!” This was a fun sale, with the winning combination of interesting stuff, cheap prices, and nice people. I purchased the book “Gentleman of Leisure: A Year In The Life of a Pimp” for 25 cents, as a gift for my husband. (I just poked around online and discovered this book was recently reissued in a hardcover version. Who knew?) It was at this sale that I also saw one of the most fascinating items ever. I didn’t buy it, but I did take a picture, which I’ll share in the next post.

My mom did end up with a few items, and even though I hardly bought anything, I had a great time making the yard sale rounds in my old stomping grounds.

Since I was in San Francisco for the weekend, I had thought I would be able to get to a few stoop sales or at the very least the huge Alameda Swap Meet on Sunday. Due to some late night drinking and lack of organization we couldn’t get up and moving to do either of these things.

SF does have a huge amount of what I like to call “crazy-homeless-person-on-crack selling-dumpster-dive-items on-the-most-filthy-corner-of-the Mission” sales – I saw many of these, but didn’t take the time to peruse their wares.

So instead of going to the Alameda Swap we went to Urban Ore in Berkeley. Urban Ore is similar to Seattle Re-store and has many of the same items: doors, windows, sinks, toilets … the list goes on and on.

Where these two places differ is that Urban Ore is 4 or 5 times the size, and they pretty much have everything else too (clothing, art, furniture, books) along with tile, bricks, tools and many, many other items. Like old pharmacy signs.

The first thing that I saw (and would have purchased in a second) was a 1930’s or maybe 1940’s mint green metal cigarette machine. As a ex-smoker (and let me stress I was an avid smoker. I loved, loved, loved them and if I knew the world was ending tomorrow I would be at the corner store buying a pack), owning a cigarette machine would be like the next best thing to smoking. It was $350 and if I could have thought of a way to get it back to Seattle without breaking the bank (and my back) I would have bought it right then and there.

They have everything that you can imagine. Some of it is really cool and some of it feels like “the bins” in Portland. Some of it is just too crusty.

Did you need a tube for your TV? They have like 2,000 of them on a shelf.

What about a 78 RPM record?

What about an old tape dispenser?

My favorite thing that I saw was a church’s pulpit stored outside between the tile and old bathtubs.

For once I managed to not purchase anything (my suitcase was already past the breaking point), but I loved seeing the recycle movement taken to a whole new level.

I missed out on all of those lame sales Meghan suffered through last Saturday because I was in Vancouver, BC for the weekend. Hitting the area’s thrift stores used to be a required part of any visit there (or almost anywhere else). I still have tons of Canadian thrifted goodies in my house. But I find more and more that I just can’t be bothered with thrift stores, at home or anywhere else. Sometimes I’m kind of sad that the thrill is gone, but I’m pretty much okay with it.

We drove by this thrift store and I was fascinated (and somewhat disturbed) by this painting that was on display in front of the store. Not fascinated enough to stop and get a closer look, but definitely fascinated enough to snap this picture from the car window to share with you all.