When they opened the door there was a little confusion about what was where — there were two separate entrances and different areas for clothing, books & records, antiques, housewares, etc. Meghan and I went through the main building and decided to hit the clothing out back first. We were practically the first ones in.

There was a ton of stuff, all neatly arranged in sections. And things were cheap! Meghan started to clean out the vintage clothing while I dug through the purses. I kept finding stuff that was almost cool, but not quite. I had picked up a tiny little Coach purse priced at a buck (!), but then I noticed it had a big rip near the zipper that I knew I wasn’t motivated enough to get fixed. I finally gave up on the clothes and headed inside. There were three different rooms and they were really starting to fill up.

Meghan eventually made it inside and proceeded to find the world’s largest superball in the housewares section — it was the size of a grapefruit. She said it was taking all of her will power not to bounce it in there near all the glasses and dishes. Next we hit the books area, which still had a lot left (even though we’d heard it’d been a madhouse when it opened.) Eventually Meghan and Karl each had so much stuff that they had to make a run to the car before coming back to finish up. We made another pass through the clothing area and each grabbed a couple more items.

All in all, we were there for about an hour and completely filled the trunk.

And there was overflow in the back. I think that tiger picture would go really well with Karl’s tiger rug from a few weeks back!

See that little paper bag on the floor? That’s all I got – a few books, an older Vera scarf with dice on it, and a tablecloth/picnic blanket. Even though I wasn’t buying much I had to agree it was a swell sale. I think Meghan and Karl each spent less than $30 for their hauls and you can see how much crap they bought (even if you can’t really see what it is — that’s the downside of everything being crammed into bags).

Since there was almost no room in the car and we were close by, we decided to leave our stuff in back of Karl’s house while we cruised around to more sales.

Karl had made a list of a few sales that sounded worthwhile. This one ended up being really strange — lots of bellydancing outfits and not much else. (That thing with the colored squares was labeled “ART” — in case you weren’t sure.)

Next we went to a moving sale and drove by a sale that had a big crazy add mentioning lots of vintage and kitsch — kinda too good to be true, and when we got there it looked lame and there was nowhere to park. After a half-hearted attempt to find a spot we decided it didn’t look worth the trouble. I had to be back home on the early side, so Meghan decided we could hit some sales on the way back, then she and Karl would continue on. We soon spotted some prominent signs which led us to this.

Yeah, there better be more! And there was, around back.

It had a weird perma-sale vibe — not being our usual stomping grounds, we weren’t sure what the deal was. Some of the stuff was good, but some was just scary.

Both Meghan and I thought this puppy was real until we got close up.

Most of the stuff was priced high. Karl asked how much the records were and when the seller said “twenty-five,” I really thought she might mean dollars. Thankfully that wasn’t the case. I think he bought one or two.

We hit a few more sales, including one where I bought three squirt guns. Hey, it was a hot day, they called to me. (I’ve already more than gotten my fifty cents’ worth!) Then on to an estate/moving sale … which always seems questionable. Which is it?? Thankfully this one seemed much more on the estate side.

There wasn’t that much stuff … but they did have this “headchair.”

Kind of awesome, no? I am sort of regretting not purchasing it, but I think I’ll live.

It was almost time for me to get home, and we kept seeing tons of signs! It was hard not to pull over. Finally we drove right in front of a big sale , so we made a quick stop. We shouldn’t have bothered.

Meghan and Karl went on hit some more sales — including one that she recognized as the sock guy’s sale, then was crushed to learn that he was no longer in the sock business. Finally, they went back to the rummage sale for the end-of-the-day special, “fill a bag for $3.” They each got a bag and later on, Meghan found $9 in the pocket of a dress that she’d stuffed into hers. Nice!

I’d seen a listing for an estate sale which sounded promising, so we headed there first. They were still getting set up and I wondered if I’d misread the ad and it hadn’t actually opened yet. Meghan asked, “When are you starting the sale?” The seller said, “The moment you guys got here, it started.”

It’s always exciting to be the first shoppers at a sale. There were some cute and cheap dishes outside and it kept feeling like it really had the potential to be great … but never quite got there. The sale continued inside the house and we took note of this sign by the sink.

By the time we left, more people were starting to show up and scour through the goods.

We made a snack stop and hit a few more unremarkable sales. Then it was getting close enough to 10:00 to head to the main event! The vast array of strange junk spread out on the lawn definitely piqued our interest.

Good god, there was a lot of stuff. Mostly small stuff, though they did have this lovely table and chairs.

Oh, that picture? It was priced at “$10,000 O.B.O.”

Thankfully, most of the stuff was cheap — it looked like they were using what we like to call “make it go away” prices. And some of that stuff … you could tell they really wanted it to go away.

Meghan recognized one of the guys and we introduced ourselves. It turned out they’re fans of the blog. They jokingly worried that we might talk smack about their sale. No way! Their stuff was so much fun to dig through. You truly never knew what you were going to find next.

There was really a little bit of everything. It reminded me of the kind of stuff we usually have at our sale … stuff that is wacky and entertaining, but do you really need to own it forever?

Though I’m not saying we’ve ever had items like these in one of our sales … then again, I can’t promise we haven’t. (To be honest, I can’t even remember all the oddball stuff that we have put through the yard sale catch and release program.)

But I can assure you that neither of us have ever owned a caged fake crow.

The sale went on and on, stretching all the way down the driveway.

In the back we found this sort of “office supply section” ….

… as well as a small rack of Hawaiian shirts and other clothing.

Meghan bought a few shirts and an old FFA jacket, and Karl picked up a box of old buttons (the pin kind, not the sewing kind) and some other odds and ends. I bought a vintage Seattle-themed pencil case and an old deck of playing cards put out by The Stranger (that will in fact probably end up in my next sale). None of bought a ton of stuff … but that sale got a solid thumbs up!

After we finished up there, we backtracked to a few other sales nearby. At one, all of their stuff was bad, but at least some was interesting-bad. (But definitely not worth-ten-dollars-bad).

Along these lines (i.e., “good luck getting someone to buy that”) we soon encountered this extremely large and trippy hand-painted clock.

Then we went to a sale where the seller was wearing a Duran Duran shirt (that she’d presumably owned since the ’80s). Meghan asked if she wanted to sell it, sort of on a whim (to see if she could actually purchase the shirt off someone’s back). The woman said “Sure, for twenty bucks.” Yeah, not gonna happen. Karl and I did each buy a few records here. (No, not Duran Duran records.)

We decided to head to a new area. There was a sale that sounded good and ended up taking way too long to get to, between a couple of street closures and us getting decoyed by signs for non-existent sales.

It turned out to be a small estate sale … with big prices.

Next was a fundraiser sidewalk sale in a spot where we remembered going to to a sale maybe six or seven years ago (before this blog was even a glimmer in our eye).

Karl bought some CDs — while we were looking at them some woman sort of muscled her way in and started digging in the box right in front of us. Super obnoxious, especially when it wasn’t even anything that great.

Then we hit an estate sale, where our minds boggled at all the taped-off kitchen drawers.

They didn’t have a lot of stuff, but some of what they had was just plain odd. What in the world is up with this mug?

Outside on the porch we noticed this sign. Judging from the few random items there, I don’t think they really had to worry …

It was getting to be time to quit, so we decided to make our last stop on a block with ads for two separate sales. When we turned onto the street Meghan said, “This better not be that antique lady” — sure enough, one of them was this house where they have sales all the time and everything is priced like you’re at an antique mall. We drove past that one and went to the yard sale up the street. They were friendly, but had nothing we wanted to buy, or even take out of their free box.

And that was it for the day! I think I spent less than two dollars, but Meghan and Karl did their part to bring you yet another bountiful trunk shot …

Not pictured: tons of books left sitting out uncovered while it rained (sad!), and a pair of boots Meghan picked up — when the seller proclaimed “Those have been worn at Burning Man!” she dropped ‘em like two hot potatoes.

We did find some good stuff here and there … or should I say, Meghan and Karl did. As for me, let me quote the recently closed-for-business Yard Sale Addict and say: “I bought nothing.”

Tune in next week, when we’ll hope to have a better report!

So, this morning I hatched a plan — find sales on a direct route to the warehouse (on the other side of town). Then I noticed there was a sale on the grounds of Northwest Hospital. We’ve been to tons of sales in all kinds of strange places, but at a hospital? That never happens.

Could be a massive bust, right? They had great signs and free parking, and the sale spread over the parking lot.

It was pretty big, but that doesn’t necessarily mean much in the overall scheme of things.

I started to dig around and found a huge amount of purses. I ended up grabbing three — one is a super high end purple suede Moschino (that is not my style at all, but I secretly like it), plus a crazy brown roller bag that says “My kind of town. Seattle” from the late ’70s or early ’80s.

I snapped up a nice ’70s motorcycle jacket with no price. I passed on the Jesus and unicorn prints.

When I went to look for someone to help me with prices, I discovered that the workers were dressed in snappy green t-shirts with yard sale sayings.

They were happy to let me snap photos of them. It was kooky enough that I’m surprised Jenny and I have never done anything like that. Maybe we are lazy.

All told I spent a whopping $10.

After getting my debit card back, I hit a few more sales. One said it was an “everything goes” sale, but it was mostly a ton of fishing stuff from some old fisherman.

As a side note: we have talked a ton about Ballard (our regular stomping grounds), but haven’t mentioned that this is the area where many of the guys from the show Deadliest Catch live, along with many, many other fishermen … so this isn’t all that strange.

Next I hit one of the more depressing estate sales ever, about 15 blocks from my house. They had a huge box of like fifteen pairs of shoes for free, but you had to take all of them. Almost everything was free, but in such large amounts that you wouldn’t want it.

I went into one of the bedrooms and all of the clothing was free, but the smell was enough to deter me. Then I went into an empty room, with what looked like old dusty mold on the wall, from where they had taken some photos down. After that I just got the hell out of there.

My last sale of the day was listed as “the fun sale.” It wasn’t all that fun, but I did end up buying three teen magazines from the early 90′s for a buck and found this ad for a fake cell phone/AM-FM radio. Look — it’s “Cellu-RAD!”

For a Friday, I ended up making a pretty decent haul.

We weren’t sure if Karl was going to make it or not, but when I showed up at Meghan’s house at 8:15 he was already there — possibly a first! Our first stop was a sale that had started at 8:00, right around the corner. It was a bust, but the next block down was having a block sale starting at 9:00. We made a quick drive by since we were right there. Only two sales were getting set up and neither of them seemed like they would be worth coming back to.

We headed to another early-starting sale. They wanted $30 for this space painting.

We left without purchasing anything, then noticed their sign. What were they starting to write – “HUGH” sale?

We hit a few more duds, made a coffee stop, and then it was just about 9:00. There was a sale which had mentioned vintage items and sounded fun, so we decided to pass over some closer, iffier sales and head straight there.

It turned out there were three sales all at the same corner. At one of them we spotted a cute little brindle-y dog wearing a tiny pack. Somehow, this led to me singing “Brindle in a Backpack” to the tune of the Smiths’ “Girlfriend in a Coma.” (“I know, I know, he’s really cute!” — uh, don’t ask.)

We were amazed and a little freaked out by the moving, singing Caddyshack gopher.

One of the sales did have plenty of vintage clothing – but all ’80s. It looked like someone had raided Alexis Carrington’s closet.

Karl and Meghan each made some scores here, but I don’t think I bought anything — if I did, I’ve already forgotten.

There was another sale nearby and when we pulled up, Meghan said “Oh, here’s my sale again!” She started chatting with the seller, and Karl mentioned having looked at the records. I was really confused trying to think why I had no memory of being there before and finally Meghan mentioned they’d hit it when I was out of town. As we drove away, we spotted their signs. I would’ve asked the seller if she was from Northern California (homeland to people who say “hella”) if I’d seen them earlier.

Next we hit this big corner sale.

It was mostly kid stuff, but Karl pulled out a few records. When we got to the car he pointed out that one of them had his own price tag, from when he sold it at a record swap for $10. He had just repurchased it for a buck.

At another sale I was looking through the books and found one called “Cat Repair Manual” — my mind kept trying wanting to make it say CAR, but it was CAT. The seller said, “Yeah, nothing in that book is stuff you really want to do at home. I take my cat to the vet.” Which seems like a good call to me. Later I was telling Meghan about this, since she’d missed it, and Karl said “Oh, you mean Cat Surgery for Beginners?” The confused and horrified look on her face was kind of amazing.

Next on the list was an address on Aurora Avenue. This seemed a little suspicious, since it’s a busy highway known primarily for its sketchy motels and late-night activity.

The sale was in a regular old house — we thought it was funny to see the second “redo” sign of the day. It’s like the surprise sunshine was messing with everyone’s writing skills.

There wasn’t a ton of stuff inside, but there was a ton of ancient makeup!

Meghan picked up a bottle of foundation which had completely separated into clear liquid and tan cakelike gunk. The sellers said that some relative had lived there and she used to be in the cosmetics business, but now she was getting out and moving away. Now she was getting out? Judging from those products she got out about twenty-five years ago.

We got back into the car, drove off and … where’s the list? It was gone! I’d left it on the dashboard and to my great dismay, it seemed to have blown out the window. “Okay, now we’re FREESTYLING!” Meghan joked, poking a bit of fun at American Pickers. I did remember a listing at one address, then we saw signs for another. Somehow the two locations sort of merged in Meghan’s mind, and she drove to a spot right in between the two of them. When she realized she had to choose which way to go, she turned and drove around a roundabout …. then proceeded to drive around it three or four times, just for the fuck of it. I’m still laughing just thinking about it. We decided that going around in circles worked just as well as a unicorn chaser to clear out any leftover bad sale vibes.

We eventually got to the intersection where the signs had pointed us. No sale! We couldn’t figure it out — there had been signs everywhere, up until the actual intersection, which had nothing. We were sure it had to be there somewhere, and backtracked until we saw … this?

Thankfully, the real sale was across the street. It was big, and looked full of crusty treasures.

It was a pretty odd mix. It seemed like it had been pulled out of a garage or basement where it had all been sitting for god knows how long.

At one point Meghan dug through a box of clothes and something reeked so bad of mothballs that I could smell it from thirty feet away — and this was outside! There was also a large, strange selection of books, but they were all on the musty side.

To save Colleen the trouble of asking, let me go ahead and say that I didn’t buy the sex manual. Or anything. But Meghan and Karl each picked up a bunch of stuff. Meghan’s total for everything was $2.10 and the lady refused to take her dime. Karl racked up a bigger total, I think something like five whole dollars.

Next was a sale that seemed okay, until I heard Karl ask how much something was and the seller said “It’s $30. Because I could get that much if I sold it on eBay …” Karl calmly replied, “Then I think you should do that,” and walked away. I found a pair of cute kids’ boots, and asked how much. “$10,” the seller said. Not completely unreasonable, since they were in decent shape, but between her previous eBay comment and the tweaked-out look in her eyes I decided to just walk away. As we left Karl pointed out that she had been eating ice cream out of a pint container. Keep in mind, it’s like 10 a.m.

Meghan suggested that since we no longer had a list, we should head off to Madrona, where we knew there would be a bunch of sales. Despite my misgivings, I couldn’t really argue with her logic. On the way there we saw a bunch of well-placed, clearly-marked signs. Great arrows and directions — everything you could want in a sign. We found the place easily … and were greeted with this.

Grim, right? The sale continued inside, but it was all boring and overpriced. When we went into the kitchen, Meghan looked around. “I kind of want to wash my hands,” she whispered, still feeling the ick from the funky crusty sale. “Do it!” I said. After a moment of hesitation, she tiptoed over to the sink and did the speediest hand wash ever. The seller came into the room right when she had finished, obviously having heard the sink come on and wondering what was up. She saw Meghan drying her hands with a paper towel, but didn’t say anything.

On to Madrona, and look who we found: Kenny!

He was $100. I don’t think they really wanted to let him go.

The sellers had a ton of great vintage stuff, most of it priced much more reasonably – not dirt cheap, but fair. At one point Karl randomly told the woman about seeing a book called “Cat Surgery for Beginners,” then started up some pointless banter about her prices. After a while, she sidled up to Meghan and asked, “What is wrong with him?” Meghan explained that he was just trying to be difficult. The seller made a comment about how he must be hard to be married to, and Meghan quickly assured her that neither of us were married to him. He did end up purchasing an awesome tiger rug from her for $5, so I think it all worked out.

All in all, the neighborhood sales were actually decent. They didn’t seem as super-baby as I’d expected, based on Meghan’s recap from last time. Like this sale had a bunch of music t-shirts … with bands you don’t see too often at yard sales, like 45 Grave and the Dead Boys.

They also had a goth section. (And it was all sitting out in the sun! Oh, the irony.)

We hit a little rummage sale with these wacky paintings.

And then we meandered on through the neighborhood, eventually getting into a ritzier area. We spotted signs for two sales at the end of this street.

After driving along some winding streets for a few minutes, we found it.

We climbed up all those stairs and found a few things set out on the deck

But there was more inside … and more stairs. When we made it up to the main living room we saw people just kicking back on the couches, taking a rest! There were yet more stairs leading up to a bedroom and bathroom upstairs. But there wasn’t much there. I got the feeling that most of their really good stuff hadn’t made it into the sale.

We were astonished to find this sign up in the bathroom — something you really don’t usually see. How civilized!

And we were even more amazed by this needlepoint sign we spotted on the way out.

We decided that was a fine sale to end the day on. Here’s the trunk shot — we wanted to show you the tiger rug, but ended up covering up a lot of the other stuff in the process. Dang!

Friday Karl and I spoke about trying to hit some early morning sales, but since it was raining we both flaked, making a plan to just do our regular Saturday morning thing instead.

Both Jenny and I have been trying to stay excited about sales, but going out in the rain each week is starting to be a massive drag. But this Saturday was perfect weather and we had not one, but two annual sales to hit: first the Whittier Heights sale, and then a huge multi-block sale on Queen Anne.

We hit about ten of the Whittier Heights sales right off the bat, the highlight being a friend of a friend’s sale — she had been a buyer for Anthropologie for years and is now a personal shopper. We all purchased stuff from her sale. I was happy to pick up a couple of framed prints, books, and some knick-knacks.

We hit a couple more sales nearby, then pulled up at a sale that had a huge abacus leaning up against a table.

The sale itself was just eh, but then I saw this sign for Sourdough Starter. Odd, right?

We started driving towards Queen Anne, but after about a mile my boyfriend called saying that he was locked out of the house and could I drive home to let him in.
This led to a conversation about everything happening for a reason and how maybe it was meant to be. So, after letting my guy into the house and doing a drop-off we hit a few sales thinking that we might magically hit the jackpot, since we hadn’t even expected to be back in the area.

This turned out to not be the case. We hit a large sale that looked like it could be good, but was crappy …

… a sale where the most interesting item was her vacuum sign …

And a sale that almost defied all logic. Right off the bat we see this insane pattern.

And then some men’s thongs!

Karl picked up a pair of early ’80s Frye boots, but when he went to pay for them she started talking about how they would be $300 if they were in better condition and I just started to tune the whole thing out. Really, if you are that nuts I am not going to give you any attention. Jenny and I went to sit in the car waiting for this conversation to end. Then I heard Karl tell her that he needed to go, since we were on our way to an AA meeting. Karl got into the car and proceeded to rant to us about how insane the entire boot conversation really was, finally cracking us up when he said, “Lady — I know this is your house, but you need to go home.”

We took this as our cue to head over to Queen Anne. I like this sale, but it seems like a lot of people are just bringing out the same stuff year after year. What is the point? When I have a sale it’s to get rid of stuff, not re-pack everything and bring it out next year.

There are always new sales, but right off the bat I saw items that I had looked at a year ago. Maybe after a while you learn which sales to avoid.

The walk was so nice, it really started to feel like a nice summer day.

Karl started to rush off two and three sales ahead of us. This is a pet-peeve of mine. Aren’t we doing sales together? I yelled at him saying as much and he started waiting for us.

We hit one sale filled with clothing. I have never seen this much clothing from the same person at a sale. When I asked about how she had this much, she just said “she liked to shop” — well, yes. That was obvious.

Later, I saw this huge perfume bottle on a table — I asked the woman if I could take a photo and she said sure. Then when I got my camera out, she said “OH, YOU ARE TAKING A PHOTO???” Well, yes … you just said I could. She started to ramble something about how it was fine, but she just seemed to think it was really strange.

At one of the sales I picked up this bottle that looked empty, but then the outside had some foul smelling men’s cologne that made my hand reek. I stumbled around two sales just freaking about it. One guy at a sale heard me complaining and gave me a Clorox wipe. That made it a little better. Then I ran water over it a few times. In the end I had to wash my hand six times to get rid of the smell.

We honestly didn’t buy much at these sales, but we purchased delicious home-made cookies and wandered around taking pictures of some of the odder items …

Here’s the trunk shot from our earlier drop-off — nothing much to show you after that.

Friday night I drove home from work in a huge rainstorm. Heck, if I was having a sale I would think twice. But in the morning it seemed like it would be okay. With Jenny out of town and Karl feeling like he might want to bail, I set out on my own at 8:30.

First issue? Well, lack of sales! The normal traffic issues of getting boxed in on some streets — this year, no problem. I was having a hard time even finding any sales, even at the houses or condos that do a sale every year. When I asked a seller about this, she said that it wasn’t advertised as much and they felt that it was more disorganized this year.

One of my first sales had the usual fodder that folks dig out of their house (Gap clothing, crap from the kitchen, old shoes) … and homemade Worm Tea stored in Coke Zero containers.

I parked and walked around on one street that seemed to have a few sales and followed the “HERE” sign to a small garage sale of a woman who had been a painter. I picked up a wooden ’60s milk crate for $5, and a few small vintage items.

I hit a few more sales, some looked like they could be great, but big doesn’t always mean good stuff.

Ehg, should I just go home?!?

After about two hours I remembered this one sale that an old woman usually has. I thought I would see if she had anything interesting. As soon as I walked up I saw a bag of about 100 patterns for 20 cents each. I took a quick peek and purchased the whole bag, along with a few more items.

I popped by Silvi’s place (she owned a vintage store for many years) and usually she has soooooo much stuff you can’t even look at it all. I think she was kind of half-assing it this time, but she did have this great selection of broken parts.

In the end I did fill up the trunk, but nothing really amazing or interesting happened for most of the morning and by 11:30 I was bored enough to head home …

There was an outdoor church rummage sale right up the street, so we stopped and checked it out. I couldn’t believe the “S’mores Maker” appliance – isn’t the whole point of a s’more that all you need is a flame and a stick?

They had a lot of stuff and were pretty organized. For example, someone had carefully laid out a wrench section.

Meghan gasped when she found these boxes of patterns, since we’re pretty sure they’re same boxes we saw at a different church sale a couple weeks back (which are in our video)! Not sure if there’s some church-to-church rummage-sale-leftover donation system going on or what, but it seemed kind of strange.

Next we hit a fundraiser sale at someone’s house. We each picked up some books, and the guest stars bought a few odds and ends. I was intrigued by these robot earrings (but not in a “wanting to own them” kind of way).

Then we headed up to the Blue Ridge neighborhood sale, which claimed to have over 30 houses participating.

A lot of the sales were pretty generic, but a few stood out. This one had a bunch of vintage furniture …

… and this one had a bunch of fun funky junk.

At one sale they mentioned that the sales had started at 7:00. The ad I saw had said 9:00. Hmmm, maybe this is why we weren’t finding a lot of magical treasures …

I noticed this Seattle romance novel and had to take a photo. This whole box seemed a little like “library of a bored housewife.”

We had all bought a few items, but it just seemed okay. Things got exciting when we headed into a different section of the neighborhood and I got to listen to Meghan AND her aunt AND her mom all snarking at the bad driver ahead of us at once.

Finally we got to another sale. This woman had a TON of clothes for sale.

I’m not sure how much clothes you have to own to be able to sell this much of it at your sale. And it was nice stuff — lots of Anthropologie labels and other high-end brands. Most of it was pretty tiny, but I pulled out a few things that seemed like they’d fit … then decided they just weren’t my style. Meghan grabbed a couple of items, then completely fell into the zone and filled up a gigantic bag of stuff. I think it was that thing where once you decide to buy one or two things, it suddenly gets really easy to just keep throwing more stuff in. But not in a bad way — she got some really nice stuff and if anything said she wished she had bought more, since the lady gave her a really good deal.

At this point the trunk was fairly full and Meghan was out of cash. Since we were close to home we decided to do a drop, hit the bank, and make a snack run before continuing on.

We headed to a block sale that was mostly boring, even if one house did have a bear costume out front.

They were getting creative with their labelling …

… and not just on the bear suit.

We drove away without having found much, then had to stop the car in the middle of the street to take a picture of the wackiest item on the block.

We decided to head out to a new area. This is where things got a little strange.

In front of this turquoise house were boxes and boxes, mostly containing packaged sheets from the ’60s to the ’80s. They were all either twin or full sized, and there only seemed to be top sheets. The woman explained they had been her mother’s and she didn’t like fitted sheets. Okay then.

I was about to give up when she mentioned there was more stuff inside. How into turquoise do you have to be to use it for the outside and inside of your house?

There were dishes, christmas crap, and a huge mound of more sheets (and scarves, fabric, and god knows what else).

There was a guy looking through a pile of maybe 50 records. Meghan started to grab a cool stripey ’60s LP holder, and the guy told her that was his. He was with the ladies running the sale, but had apparently claimed it for himself. Then he told us he was putting the records in alphabetical order — why, I do not know. Then I saw another LP case (with polka-dots!) and asked if that was his also. “No, but I don’t think she’ll sell the case without the records,” he said. This seemed strange, since they had seemed eager to get rid of stuff. I took the records out of the case and he grumbled about having to alphabetize those now too.

Meghan pulled out a few gems from the fabric mound, and I took my lone item, the LP case, outside. The woman asked, “Did he say he’d sell just the case?” I told her he said to ask her. “I don’t think I want to sell it without the records,” she said, explaining that then they would have nothing to hold them in. Like any old box wouldn’t do? I asked how much they wanted for the records, thinking if they were cheap enough maybe I’d buy some just to get the case. She wanted $2 each for the crappiest records known to mankind. I walked away empty-handed and annoyed.

Next up was the “Wallingford Yard Sale Tour.” They had put tons of sandwich boards up, but it turned out to have only six sales. It was a fundraiser for a school and the sales we hit were heavy on the kid items. And the just bad items.

Then we were happy to run across a sale that wasn’t part of the tour. It had a burning man kind of vibe. Partly due to the stuff, and partly due to the booming dance music blasting from the porch.

Things were cheap, and their boxes were funny.

And we saw the second bear suit of the day.

Meghan’s mom bought this huge purple glass ball, then when we got to the car she noticed a scrape on it and said she wished she hadn’t bought it. “We’re right here,” Meghan said. “Do you want me to go get your five dollars back?” Her mom nodded, and her aunt chimed in “You should tell them she’s senile!” I think this is the first time I’ve seen someone go back to a sale to do a return. But it worked, even without using the senility line.

It was time to head home, but we saw signs for one more sale. We were greeted by this elegant young man.

He was not for sale, but they had some good stuff. Interesting books — nothing I needed to own, but a cool mix of oddball stuff. Meghan bought a handful of books and some weird electronic items, including a robotic rabbit that can tell you the weather and wave its ears around — I totally made fun of her for buying this, then it turned out they actually sell for a lot of money. Who knew?

We started to drive away, then had to stop at the corner to take pictures of some of their excellent signs.

Having all of those up in one spot is probably overkill, but I guess an excess of signs is never really bad.

And here is part two of the trunk (with a big bag already removed).

Not the greatest scores ever, but all four of us bought stuff and had fun!

First, a couple of notes about signs. Meghan already talked about our favorites, with the unicorns and glitter and all. This one wasn’t as artfully crafted, but you can’t deny it gets the job done.

Someone else took the opposite approach: crappy signs, but plastered everywhere so you can’t possibly miss ‘em.

On to the stuff we spotted … I was browsing through the books at one sale, and encountered this item.

I realize this falls into the “gag gift” category and probably never actually got used, but you know what? I think “items that somebody might’ve stuck their wang through” is right up there on the list of things you never want to encounter at a yard sale. Nasty!

Later, we pulled up to a sale which seemed familiar. Meghan asked the guy, “Didn’t you have a bunch of Playboys here last year?” He said yes, and then claimed they all sold within the first twenty minutes … but we’re pretty sure it was much later than that when we photographed them last year. This year we didn’t see any dirty magazines, but he did have a bunch of strange paintings.

Actually, there were a lot of sales we remembered from last year. Mostly ones we remembered because they were bad. At least we were able to avoid a few known duds this time around.

Then there was this sale, with a huge amount of stuff spread all over the lawn.

Meghan found a kick-ass ’60s dress here, and I grabbed a couple of books. We passed on this piece of dragon art.

After I paid, the sellers said “Here’s another book!” They had a stack of books they were giving away free with purchase — a bunch of copies of the same book, which was some kind of Dungeons & Dragons themed novel. I said no thanks, and then they offered me a free wooden smiley face back massager. I declined that offer as well and got the heck out of there.

Soon after that we drove up an alley to get to a sale. This is something we usually try to avoid, since people will pull in from both directions and trap you there, but we decided to chance it. The first thing I saw was this mannequin.

Karl bought her shirt.

There were tons of vintage clothes priced cheap — it seemed like the seller had been a vintage dealer and was either getting out of the business, or just unloading some odds and ends. Meghan got an insane prom dress and I picked up two items for my kid (a vintage cotton dress and a crazy dress-up jacket).

We hit a ton of sales, but didn’t even come close to covering the entire area. But we encountered plenty of cool, strange, awful, or just plain baffling items …

masks

And finally, an item that I normally wouldn’t have bothered to take a picture of …

… except that Karl held it up and said, “Hey, you know what this is for?” When I didn’t respond, he whispered: “Remember that penis book?” I screamed, then laughed, and then the sellers really wondered what the hell our problem was.

It didn’t feel like we hit as many sales as last time, but we still managed to fill up the trunk …

… and half the back seat.

And there’s still one more sale we haven’t even mentioned yet! Stay tuned for part three — this one deserves a post of its own.

Our first stop was pretty bad. Karl looked through a box of records and pulled out three or four halfway decent ones, but nothing special. Then we heard a guy walk up and ask “Got any records?” It was this super record squirrel dude that we’ve all seen around a million times. Karl smiled and I made a crack about how he had just gotten some amazing records. The guy asked to see them and Karl swept them under his arm. As we walked out I noticed a pair of glass squirrel sculptures in the window of the house, which seemed fitting. Karl said that if he’d really found anything great, then of course he would have gloated about it.

The next sale’s ad had boasted “Best yard sale ever!” It also said “If you are looking for any kind of electrical cord, we have it,” which in my mind automatically negated the previous claim. They did have nice big arrow signs pointing the way. One of them was hanging in a tree near this clock … which Karl immediately noticed was set to 4:20.

When we pulled up it looked really grim.

Meghan immediately declared it to be the opposite of the best yard sale ever while I perused the few items on display. For unfathomable reasons, they had stuck this lonely watch into a display case.

We left without purchasing anything (but not before Karl randomly asked the guy if there was a snake in that case.)

Next up was an estate sale starting at 10:00. We were a few minutes early and there was a sizable line outside.

Someone told us there was a list, so I signed us up even though we weren’t sure if they were really going to be using it. We had time to kill, so Karl and I entertained ourselves by repeatedly calling each other’s phone, since we had both recently changed our ringtone to the Keyboard Cat theme song. Finally they started calling names out. Karl made a comment about how we should just claim to be someone else on the list. Then they called “Janet? Janet H.?” There was a half-second of silence and then in an obviously fake falsetto voice Karl called out, “Yes?” Almost everyone in line burst into giggles.

The same record squirrel from the first sale was ahead of us and was the last of the first twenty people to be let in. He asked if his wife could come in too since she was number 21, and Karl yelled out, “No!” Meghan chimed in, “No wives!” The woman at the door looked stressed, like she really wasn’t sure what to do. Finally she let the wife go in (which we were all perfectly fine with, of course).

At this point we were cracking ourselves up right and left with various stupid comments and jokes. Most of the people in line were laughing too. But then Meghan made some joke about how she was going to leave, and some guy muttered “good.” Of course this just egged us on more. I unleashed the Keyboard Cat song again and we were all spouting off random B.S. This one woman with a bad perm and spackled-on makeup kept turning around and giving us snooty looks, but her friend was laughing.

Finally we got to go inside. There was a lot of stuff, but the prices were kind of a mixed bag. I picked up a huge bag of unused ’50s embossed wallpaper and it was $1. But then a mediocre ’70s hanging lamp was $95! And a couple of older toys were clearly marked as not up for any price reductions. Maybe they didn’t really want to let them go.

The basement was where most of the weird crap was. Like these ancient wine coolers. How long has it been since they’ve even made California Coolers and Citronet?

We also found a box of the largest light bulbs I have ever seen. (In case you can’t tell, the box was about two feet high.)

I laughed at this “Happiness Tooth Brush.” I can only imagine what a “healthy gum massage” it would give you! I might have been tempted to purchase it, but it looked disturbingly crusty and worn. I hope not from actual use, because that’s just nasty.

And I really wondered what this now-empty box had once been used for, and who that “Funk You” had been directed at.

Off to one side was a room full of tools and car stuff. Meghan said, “Oh, it’s the man room.” I said, “Yeah, where’s the porn?” Then we immediately noticed this provocatively-named pipe clamp.

I purchased the wallpaper and a Vernonware mug for a grand total of $1.50. Karl and Meghan each bought stuff here as well. We drove away laughing about our line antics and that one irritated woman. (We must have repeated the word “spackle” about twenty times.)

Then we headed to a sale that started at 11:00 and sounded great! Unfortunately, it wasn’t. They were still bringing stuff out, so we loitered around, throwing things at each other (really) and hoping that each new box might contain something more than outdated computer books. Nope!

There was an estate sale nearby that sounded okay. We got sidetracked by some signs for a nonexistent sale, and when we finally got there it turned out to be a rummage sale in a commercial building of some sort – not an estate sale at all. Meghan pointed out these really filthy pillows that were inexplicably priced at $10 each. We were horrified at the amount of dirt on them, until we realized that they were actually made of stone and meant for your garden.

They did have boxes of records and Karl ended up with a huge stack. I think Meghan bought one.

It was just about quitting time, but we saw this sign and made it our last stop.

The sale was in a garage with tons of stuff on shelves. Nothing was priced, but the seller seemed eager to make stuff go away and promised everything was cheap. Meghan got a handful of books here and Karl got an old newspaper-delivery tote bag. And that was it for the day.