Yard Sale Bloodbath

Friday morning = RAIN. I am not sure how almost every single Friday morning for the entire summer has turned rainy, but it’s sort of been making me crazy.

Two sales listed had been listed as estate sales. That’s great once you are in the house, but standing in the rain listening to people belly-ache is sort of a bummer.

So, I drove to one sale and the line was so long that I thought I would hit the other one about 30 blocks away. Major bust.

When I drove back to the other sale I was #65 in line. This isn’t my day.

This sale was listed as some crazy artists sale and the folks coming out kept saying stuff like “it’s crazy in there” or “so much stuff.” When I did make it to the porch, the sign said just about everything you would want to know. Or at least #5 did – EEEK!

The house was packed and it was good stuff, but what really struck me was the guy’s love affair with Elvis and Karate. Elvis trained in the ’70s in Memphis, TN. You have to assume that this and Bruce Lee had a huge impact on many people, but an adult man with Elvis posters … it’s not great, right?

There were tons of books about ninjas and tons of martial arts magazines.

He had a karate sign.

A black and while Bruce Lee painting (that I can only assume he painted).

And a poster of Mount St. Helens. Classy.

I hit one other sale on the way home — nothing too crazy. I loved these new old stock fences.

But the best was this sign letting you know how long someone lived in the house. Um, thanks!

Between being out of town, and a number of Saturday social events, last weekend was my first time hitting sales in over a month! I was excited, especially with nice weather in the forecast and our friend Erica guest-starring. And there were tons of sales listed. I was choosy about which ones made it onto our list, only including ones that looked promising and were reasonably nearby (even if that meant passing up possible gems like the one that claimed “my boyfriend wants to cook you hotdogs at our garage sale” and the ever-scary “Going to Burning Man?”).

Deciding on our first stop was easy: there was a sale two blocks away from Meghan’s house. We got there a few minutes early, but they were pretty much set up.

They had all kinds of stuff … some good, some bad, and even a few things from the dreaded “no one wants to see that at a yard sale” category.

Meghan pounced on a Kitchen-Aid mixer ($15!) while I dug through the books. Meanwhile, they kept bringing out more stuff, so we were there for a while. Karl hemmed and hawed over this amazing light-up Rainier beer display before finally deciding to commit.

When all was said and done, we had enough crap in the car that we decided to drive back around the block and do a drop-off. That doesn’t often happen after a single sale.

Our next stop was something listed at a corner which has not quite a perma-sale, but a fairly frequent recurring sale of vintage furniture. I said if it was them, we’d just drive by. Instead, it turned out to be in the front yard of this law office.

I couldn’t really figure out why a law office would have that much crap, but maybe they were just letting the (mulleted!) sellers use their space. In any case, we left empty-handed.

Next was a sale listed as huge, but when we got there we hardly saw anything. “There’s more in back,” someone said. And there was: stuff spread over the entire back yard and deck. Unfortunately, it was all bad. Tidy and well organized, but bad.

Next was a sale that sounded vintage-y and wacky. They had boxes of odd books and magazines, a really strange assortment — electronic music mags from the ’70s, various foreign oddities, Circus and other rock titles, and more. I started to amass a huge pile … then I got real and narrowed it down to just a few choice scores. Meghan uncovered the most impressive items: a few really old issues of High Times, including the premiere issue from 1974.

We decided to check out a neighborhood sale, passing by this sad free pile on the way.

At the first sale, we immediately saw a rack of dresses with a sign that said “Special, $5.99 Plus Tax.” WTF? We asked the couple standing nearby if they were really charging tax at a yard sale, and they said no (without offering any other explanation). $5.99 still seemed like a weird price, but whatever. Aside from the dresses they had a typical spread of random kitchen and household items, plus some odd new stuff: a box with something like 75 brand-new toothbrushes, and a bunch of still-sealed packs of band-aids. Between that and the tax thing, we figured they might have owned a store at some point. Meghan asked if this was the case. The guy rolled his eyes and said, “No, her hobby is shopping.”

On the way out I wanted to take a picture of the “$5.99 Plus Tax” sign … but they had amended it! For some reason this made me laugh even more.

The neighborhood sales seemed pretty bad, but there was one I wanted to hit that had been listed as “beach shack estate sale” — the house wasn’t actually on the beach, so I wasn’t sure what was up with that, but something about it sounded good. Sadly, it wasn’t, and on that note we decided to give up on that neighborhood and move to a new area.

After a few uneventful stops, we came across this. Uh, what?

That didn’t exactly bode well, but we went in. I quickly realized this was the sale which had mentioned “dozens of vintage clocks.”

One of the sellers was sprawled upon a couch, possibly to emphasize the claims made on their sign.

It was really mostly crap, and their “wacky” labeling didn’t help much.

Erica attempted to buy one of the $5 clocks, but when they wouldn’t take $4 she decided to pass.

Next was a fundraiser sale where one of the sellers was a ten year old girl wearing the top half of a bee costume and the bottom half of a pig costume. (It was a good look.) It seemed like they might have some good stuff, and I started to dig in a box when a woman came up and said, “Oh, that’s my box.” I stopped looking, and then she said “It’s a great deal!” So, I figured she’d meant it was her box of stuff she was selling, and she wanted me to look after all … but when I bent back down she repeated, “That’s my box.” I was too annoyed after that to look around much more, but everyone else found some good stuff.

By then it was getting close to quitting time, so we started to make our way back home, hitting just a few more on the way. One of them had junk strewn around haphazardly in the back yard, and then a very organized (but odd) display in the basement.

One of the sellers walked over right as I was taking that picture, and made a comment about how I must be getting display ideas for MY yard sale. I just nodded my head.

I went back out to the back yard and browsed around with Karl and Erica, waiting for Meghan to come out of the basement and joking around about various oddball items. Then I got a text message: “What are you 3 doing? That sale is bad.” She was already out at the car, wondering what was taking us so long.

And with that, we were done!

This lady does.

Yes, it’s insane …

Supposedly she collected for many years and wrote down every single thing she purchased. She collected everything. Not really sure if you can see all the items under plastic (that weren’t for sale), but you get the idea.

Pretty intense for a quick Friday sale stop!

Okay. Two weeks ago (yes. really, two weeks ago) I hit some sales with Karl and one of my girlfriends and favorite derby skaters, Maliboozer Barbie, who has been threatening to come to sales for the past year.

The first sale we hit was a horrible rummage sale, but I spied this framed Goldberg print. I really like the way they did their signs: large red dot = 50 cents.

Man, if I wanted furniture our next sale would have been great. But there’s that pesky fact that I am not allowed to bring home any more large objects. They had tons of stuff and they were already making plans to get drunk that day … my kind of sale.

One of the sale we hit was listed as a carport sale with all of grandpa’s stuff. Karl purchased a lot, but I was just really excited to find this simply awful 1980 Mechanix Illustrated with a cover story about “the cars that are driving OPEC crazy.”

At this point it seemed like a good time to get the heck out of Ballard, but Karl isn’t the navigator that Jenny is and we ended up taking some twists and turns winding up at a sale described as “cream of the crop sale.” This super hippie painted sign really doesn’t make me think about an amazing sale.

The only interesting thing was a really nice Gottlieb scuba pinball machine (that they wanted $500 for and all the rubber parts needed to be replaced).

After getting turned around a few more times we hit a huge sale that wasn’t very good, but how could we miss it with their “huge sail”?

It was for some sailing club and they had been giving cards good for free lessons, which all seemed a little strange.

The last sale was really weird, since the woman had my old cooler that I sold years ago.

After talking to her and working out that it was the same cooler that I’d sold in our basement sale (you can see it in the fourth photo down), I re-purchased it from her for $5. Then Karl talked her into bringing out all her LPs from the ’80s and bought a ton.

Sadly, with Jenny out of town I forgot to take a trunk photo, but it was a pretty good day.

O.K., so we haven’t blogged for almost three weeks in the middle of summer. Well, I am a married woman now and Jenny took off mere moments after the wedding to head off to Europe. So, now we are catching up on a back-log of blog posts. Anyone that knows me know that I hate blogging two weeks after the fact, but here we go.

Karl was unable to get to my house until almost 9, so I just took off on my own and hit this very strange sale with revolutionary books and this huge free pile.

I really love the idea of a yard sale sign that tells you to smile.

Honestly the whole day was already looking bad from our lists and we hadn’t even started. And that kept on going for the whole day. We hit one crappy sale …

… after another crappy sale.

Karl and I both belly-ached about how badly it was going for most of the day. Then we hit an area that had this huge rock. I mean it’s HUGE. You can tell how gigantic it is, no?

As we walk to the sale we see the Snoopy Psychiatric Advice tent.

Karl gave the kid 10 cents and asked if he should go to the gym or go play tennis. The answer? “Whatever you want to do.” Even his parents laughed at this bogus advice.

Then we randomly hit an estate sale that had what I can only describe as the scariest crawl space filled with stuff.

It was probably about 350 square feet, and jam packed. There was other stuff in the house too (like the portrait below) but that crawl space was too much.

Our very last sale had this amazing sign with the barefoot bandit.

We worked out right away that it was a sale we’d hit last year (from the photo at the top of this post). The sign made up for the sale being just “eh”.

Not the best day ever, but we did somehow manage to pick up a few things.

Last Saturday we ventured out of our usual territory to hit a huge rummage sale hosted by a Japanese community center. Karl said it had been great in past years, so we drove over, passing a ton of signs — now that the weather has finally gotten hot I guess everyone decided this is the time to have a sale! We met him at the rummage sale at 8:30, where people were already lining up for the 9:00 opening.

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!

We were thrilled this week to get a hot tip about a juicy-sounding sale in our neighborhood! We got an email from a woman we know (who runs estate sales in town) tipping us off to a sale being run by two packrat guys who had moved in together and needed to pare down. It started at 10:00 and sounded great — phrases like “weird collectibles” were used — so we decided to try to get there right when it opened (or maybe a little earlier if it seemed cool). That left us an hour-plus to hit a few other sales on Saturday morning.

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 …

Last night I discovered that I had left my debit card at the Title Nine warehouse sale — ehg. Now I’d have to drive over first thing in the morning hoping they have my card, vs. going to Friday yard sales … Lame!

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.