The plans weren’t entirely organized and we weren’t even sure what time we should get there on Sunday morning. A little before 9:00 I showed up and found Meghan talking simultaneously to the (very confused) cleaning woman finishing up at the bar, and to one of our other friends on the phone. The girl who coordinated everything showed up with the keys and we managed to straighten everything out.

The rest of the sellers (6 in all) started to trickle in and we got to work setting up. Our friend Michelle had brought some clothes racks, which were great since we all had a ton of those. We also hung some up using a homespun rope contraption, which didn’t really work so well. Some of the clothes I brought were the last bits from the crazy $3 sale — after sorting through and deciding what to keep, sell, or give away, there were a few items that had me scratching my head as to why I actually thought it was a good idea to purchase them, so they ended up here.

As we were setting things up who wanders in but Annoying Jewelry Guy! Even though we see him on a regular basis he never shows any sign that he recognizes us. I don’t know if he’s antisocial, or just so lost in his jewelry-seeking world that he truly doesn’t remember seeing us before. In any case, he didn’t stay long after we made it clear that a, we weren’t ready yet and b, we didn’t think anyone had any jewelry.

Finally everything was ready and it was just about 10:00. I have to say that it was a pretty good spread. The only trouble was that it was kind of dim — your eyes adjusted after a while, but when you first walked in it looked pretty bad. It was even too dark for our not-very-sophisticated cameras to get any decent pictures, but thankfully fellow seller and photographer extroardinaire Kevin Schlosser came to the rescue — all the photos in this post are his.

I have to say that this was one of the most fun times I have ever had doing a sale. We had a steady stream of shoppers throughout the day, thanks to a combo of word of mouth, our half-assed online promotion, and overflow from the Ballard Farmer’s Market happening right up the street. Meghan and I skipped out at one point to put flyers up by the market and spread the word. She kept saying she wished she had a sandwich board to put on and walk around, which would have been awesome.

Girls were going crazy over the vintage clothes. Some of them started accumulating quite the piles. We let people take stuff into the bathroom to try on (and/or inspect under brighter light). Of course, some folks just pulled stuff on over their clothes right by the racks.

The bar wasn’t serving, or I’m sure people would have been drinking and shopping at the same time. It was a pretty fun crowd for the most part, although of course we had our share of nutters. At least the freaks provided some good conversation as we rehashed the strangest behavior seen over the course of the day.

I managed to pull together a pretty entertaining (at least to me) lot of magazines, books, and other odds and ends. Lots of it I had purchased at various sales over the past year or so, but I was really ready to send it on to a new home (you know we are active participants in the yard sale catch and release program). Greyhound racing programs, Mexican comic books, horrid recipe booklets, assorted issues of Sexual Behavior magazine from the early ’70s … sadly, I was left with at least half of the pile at the end of the day. With such quality items, how is that possible?! I kept most of it to try again, not because any of it is worth very much money, but more out of a fervent longing to see these oddball items, which somehow grabbed my attention, finding new appreciative owners someday.

At about 3:30 we started packing it up. I think everybody kept some of their leftovers, but we had a big pile to get dropped off at Goodwill too. Except for the aforementioned ephemera and one or two other items, I was ready to see that crap move on out of my life. It didn’t hurt that the day turned out to be fairly profitable — I made close to $200, and I think everyone else did pretty well too! Plus I think we all ended up scoring a few things from each other. Not bad for a sale that I really thought might not actually happen.

My mom was navigating and she said that she recognized the address of an estate sale from having seen the house recently on a real estate tour. She said it was almost certainly going to be bad and we should just skip it. While I figured she was probably right, I was a little sad since the ad had made it sound pretty good. Meanwhile, we stopped at boring sale after boring sale and hardly bought anything. As we were navigating back from the last stop we drove right past a sign for the sale she’d recognized, and since we were practically there already we decided what the hell.

The house looked cute from the outside, but inside it was just yucky. Everything was dingy and there was a super strange vibe. It felt like something bad had happened there … or at least nothing good had ever happened there. The rooms appeared to have been decorated in the ’70s (in a pseudo-hippie bad taste kind of style), and their stuff was all terrible. The last straw was the basement, which could have been a testimonial for why you should really get rid of things, rather than stack them up in the crawl space (mattresses) or keep them in open cardboard boxes (newspapers) or just dump them on the floor (Easter baskets) and then not touch them again for about 25 years.

I did take some pictures, but I hope you will not be too upset to hear that I ended up deleting them off my camera. I just had such a weirded-out vibe from the place, I really didn’t want to see anything from that sale again.

So, my mom was right, thanks to her inside real-estate scoop. She mentioned how getting to know the city streets so well from her job was useful when trying to navigate to yard sales, or find an obscure address for some other reason. I’ve certainly been able to use my yard-sale-gained knowledge of Seattle’s streets to get around quicker. Granted, a lot of our streets are numbered, which makes it easier, but there are still enough oddball nooks and crannies that it helps to have driven through a whole lot of different neighborhoods already.

And then I started thinking about other aspects of being a real estate agent that have something in common with being a yard sale regular. Like the stuff factor. It’s obvious that you go to yard sales to find stuff. But did you know that real estate agents occasionally end up with random unwanted stuff left behind when a house is sold? My mom has ended up with furniture, rugs, planters — all from houses that she helped people buy. And while I was in town, she actually had to run out to pick up her latest score, which she had described as “stained glass art with a naked lady on it.” I guess the previous owner had been a stained glass artist and left a few pieces behind, and the new owners decided they could live without that one. I was kind of scared of what it was going to look like, imagining some kind of tawdry raunch, but it turned out to be rather pretty.

I think that real estate agents are also very tuned into the concept of value being fluid. That is, an item’s value is really whatever someone is actually willing to pay at a given time and place, and not some well-defined number that can’t be argued with (no matter what some “collectible price guides” would like to think). Haggling (or “making a counter-offer”) is a completely normal thing to do in both activities — though I’m glad to say that having someone offer more than the asking price is practically unheard of at yard sales. This price fluidity can be really great or really frustrating when you are dealing with secondhand items. Just like people might have a hard time accepting that their house isn’t going to sell for what they think it should, there are yard sale sellers who think that if something sold on eBay for a certain amount, their similar item should get the same price at their yard sale. On the other hand, when you find something that’s priced fairly to you, it’s a beautiful thing (even if the person next to you wouldn’t have paid half that much for it).

And of course there’s the fact that both of these activities involve going into a whole lot of strangers’ houses. That’s interesting in and of itself. Sales have taken us into some of the coolest houses around … and the creepiest ones too. And I think along with getting a glimpse of the insides of houses, there’s also the opportunity to see a lot of interesting outsides of houses too. Although maybe this last part is a stretch, because you can also see a lot of interesting houses just by driving or walking around. Like this one, which we were excited to stumble across randomly.

Now, granted, this is Berkeley, where you are about as likely to see a Republican as you are a leprechaun. But even so, it was cool to see so much enthusiasm for a presidential candidate. It’s pretty well-painted, too (even if I do keep trying to figure out if the hand is coming right out of his ear!)

That’s a No on Prop 8 sign there, too. I swear, it has been over 10 years since I moved out of California, but I keep sort of wishing I was still registered there just so I could vote against that shit.

There are certainly a lot of things that real estate and yard sales don’t have in common. For one thing, the general prices you’re dealing with are off by a factor of, oh … 10,000? And being in the real estate business certainly doesn’t necessarily mean one is inclined to like yard sales. But I do think it can give you an interesting take on things … and maybe even keep you away from some of the worst sales, if you stick to your intuition!

My mom had called me on Wednesday night wanting to know if she could come crash sales. Sure, but I warned her that we might not have that many sales to even hit, since it’s been raining and really feeling like autumn. Come Friday night, Jenny had sent me a message saying that she had found a total of 7 sales. EEEK! SEVEN? What is the point of even getting dressed? I called me my mom to see if she wanted to bail (since she lives over an hour away), but she didn’t seem discouraged.

Saturday morning – it’s misting out. My mom was running late, so Jenny said why don’t we run over and hit an estate sale listed as “Mink Coats and Muffy Bears” … whatever the hell that is. We got there and the first thing we saw was a bucket of antlers (and skull).

The sale turned out to not feel like an estate sale at all, but a garage jumbled with a really odd assortment of stuff.

Everything was thrown together randomly, with crappy books displayed right under $90 (fake) Juicy Couture handbags.

It was the first time I have been to an “estate sale” with live fish swimming around.

There was just a ton of overpriced crap. It was cramped, and I almost tripped and fell over this guy’s leg. This led to the following conversation:

Dude: “Sorry. My feet are big.”
Me: “And they’re in the walkway!”
Dude: (shrugging) “This is where they put the records.”

Total record squirrel.

In the time that we have done the blog we have talked about a few of our regulars, but one that we see every couple of weeks is “furniture guy.” He goes to every single sale and asks if they have furniture. We couldn’t get away from him this weekend and I was completely mortified to see him purchase blue, fleece, adult footed pajamas. I have never even seen him buy anything but furniture and most of the time he is trying to buy stuff that isn’t even for sale.

My mom was getting a lot of stuff, but for Jenny and I it was seeming like a total bust. We hit one estate sale that was strangely smelly and we hit another sale that we had been to twice before. This is the life, right? At one sale we were a little freaked out by this very large shoe-shaped chair.

We also had our second antler sighting of the day. I considered buying some, but when I asked the price on one pair they said $250. WTF?

Jenny mentioned a sale that had started on Friday, but beggars can’t be choosers, so we headed over. When we pulled up we looked down a little alleyway and saw an old rotting ’70s couch – eeew. We sat in the car for a moment thinking about whether we would even go in when an old guy walked up to the car. I rolled down the window and he said “Did you want to know what we have in the sale?” Um, no.

We did get out of the car and it was looking bad. If Karl was there he would have been humming the tune from Deliverance. Jenny turned to me and said “In case we die … it’s been nice knowing you.”

Well, this sale turned out to be so good. I can’t even understand how this stuff sat there for an entire Friday. I purchased two pairs of 1960s Big E Levi’s -– I swear to god. For $2 each! I bought a few other gems, too. We did see a box of panties, which is never good, but overall this was a great sale.

Between that sale and the stuff my mom picked up, we did manage to fill up the trunk, but everything was in boxes so a photo would have been pointless. All in all, for a day where we had low expectations it turned out to be not bad at all.

I’m sure most readers are already aware of some of the other fine blogs that focus on yard sales, estate sales, thrift stores, flea markets, and/or junking in general. But let’s take a step even further out on the retail food chain: the world of free items. In particular, free items where the value is so questionable that it’s not at all clear that “free” is even a good deal.

The Vintage Microwave blog covers “a selection of curiosities from the Free Stuff section on Craigslist.” Like this couch … described in the ad simply as having been “left out in the weather for some time.”

The amount of bad free stuff they find listed is staggering. Melted and rusted-out mopeds, ice chests of “unknown condition”, overhead transparencies with Christian music lyrics … enema kits? I’m all for trying to find a good home for unwanted items, but the idea of anyone wanting this stuff defies all reason. The blog’s commentary is brutally dead-on, too.

And then there’s NeighborGoodies:

The apartment complex I live in is full of crazy people…and their apartments are full of crazy crap. Sometimes, said crap is purged…but instead of throwing it out or donating it to charity, the residents leave it in the laundry room, which doubles as an unofficial, unmonitored community trading post. This is a sampling of the items that pass through on a daily basis.

These items are dutifully photographed … and blogger Jeff goes to incredible lengths to speculate on the history of the stuff and the reason it’s being abandoned. One day six purses appear; Jeff concludes, “These six very different bags all seem to represent a woman in search for herself. We can follow her journey through life via these sacks of memories.” And then he takes us on that journey, whether we really wanted to go there or not. When a motley assortment of glass vases, bottles and bowls show up, he deduces that the owner clearly must have suffered from hyelophobia — the unnatural fear of glass. (Following this line of inquiry to its conclusion, this post somehow ends up with a dating-site photo of a shirtless man trying to look suave while wielding some weaponry.)

I have personally been sucked in by the lure of FREE STUFF so many times, only to often end up thinking “why the hell did I take this?” I try really hard to keep it in check, but there is just something exciting about the prospect of getting something for free. Even so, none of the stuff featured on these two blogs would make me want to do anything but run away from it. But it’s nice to see that all this unwanted crap has somehow led to the creation of something worthwhile, in the form of these two witty and focused blogs.

(Only because there is no board game called “Freaky Treasure Hunt,” which I think would be way more appropriate.)

We then went on to a few other sales. None were that great, even the one whose ad said “Earlies pay double, in Euros, and must weed my garden.” I thought the sense of humor might mean they’d have fun stuff, but it was pretty bland. At least a couple of the sales we hit had fantastically scenic views.

The sale immediately above was one that I’d predicted would be bad, based purely on their craigslist ad being in all caps and saying that it was on “SATERDAY.” This may be shallow, but it was pretty accurate — it was mostly just boring newer crap. There was a vintage dollhouse that was pretty cool, but she wanted $50 for it (with some furniture) — which I’m sure was probably fair, but not cheap enough for either of us to lose our sanity and buy it. Of course, that is probably a good thing.

These two old (as in really old) photographs were the most interesting things there. The bearded guy and his lady freak me out a little. I bet it is one of those pictures where the eyes follow you around the room …

We then headed up to an estate sale that sounded promising. It had been open for a little while, but neither of us had really felt like camping out in line with the die-hard shoppers. Like the sale last week, this was a smoker’s sale. The stench in the place was pretty unreal, to the point where you really had to question whether you wanted to buy anything that couldn’t be washed. I guess these Christmas ornaments would have been safe, but they would have had to have been a lot cheaper than $5 each to make me even think about bringing more holiday stuff into my house. (I don’t go super crazy with holiday decorations or anything, but let’s just say I have more than enough ornaments for the largest possible tree I might ever need to decorate.)

There was a pretty random assortment of stuff here. I noticed some healthy eating books and thought it was odd (although not unheard of) for such an obvious hardcore smoker to bother worrying about proper nutrition. Later I saw a sign mentioning that the estate sale company had brought two smaller estates’ stuff into the home, so who knows what belonged to whom. The fireplace had been used to display a few of the more entertaining items.

Meghan ended up buying a few things here, including a great pair of vintage roller skates. And that pretty much sums up our whole day — we capped it off by driving around for about 10 minutes following a sign for a “yard sale” which turned out to have nothing but bicycles. Great!

Going to sales in October — possibly really not such a great idea …

There are a couple things that we have learned from doing this blog.

1. If you wait too many days to post, it becomes really challenging to post about sales from the previous weekend. (I mean, I am already checking the weather for next Saturday.) You forget the sales, they blend together.
2. This is never going to be one of those blogs where there’s a new post everyday. Not that I’m knocking that, but there is only so much that happens to a person each and every day, right?

With all that said, I have been sick. I started to get sick on Friday and I almost thought I wouldn’t even go to sales. I came home early and slept on Friday and felt pretty good on Saturday morning. Little did I know I would be knocked on my ass by Sunday and not really feel better for a few more days.

Karl and Jenny both came over and it was pretty drizzly out. I am unwilling to even admit that fall is here …

Each time we go to sales we learn new (and sometimes “interesting”) things about people at sales. For instance, we identified the top 3 things not to have at a yard sale:

1. hair highlighting kit
2. chili
3. maxi-pads

Let me stress that all of these were at the same sale. I swear, they had homemade chili at the sale. That’s fine, but (and that is a HUGE BUT) if they are selling maxi-pads?!?! NO.

So, I have been sick and I mean really sick, so there are sales that I just don’t remember. We saw this large ostrich — I can’t tell you anything about this sale.

We hit a “book lovers’ sale” — sounds good, right?

When I hear book lover I never think “I love books that you can only buy at grocery stores and Costco!” Sadly, that’s what they meant.

A few things I do remember are an estate sale that was in the smallest one-bedroom basement apartment that was so unpleasant to walk around in. They didn’t have bupkiss. After a few minutes I went outside, since being inside was such a bummer.

After that sale we hit another estate sale — an icky smoker’s sale. When I walked in I said, “Oh, someone smoked!” The guy behind me AND the guy in front of me had this long conversation about how I knew this (oooo) and also how many times they have tried to quit smoking. I never said a word and I am an ex-smoker.

This sale was major record nerdlinger territory. Karl was in his natural element.

I found this sale really boring and even Jenny just parked it on a couch in the rec room reading old Cosmopolitan magazines. Which turned out to be more entertaining than we expected. Check out these centerfolds!

I amused myself by trying on yet another pair of wacky headphones.

I did ask nicely if I could take a photo of these two organs next to each other. Some lady tried to charge me (didn’t that just happen to Jenny?!?!) I just said “good luck getting it.”

As we drive I do keep an eye out for signs (and sometimes see sales that Jenny misses). I saw a sign that I thought said WISPY THRIFT. I mean if you had a thrift store wouldn’t that be a good name? Um, no … the signs said “Where’s Tipsy?”

That’s really about all I can remember. Jenny and I really hardly purchased anything, but Karl picked up enough crap to make the trunk shot look halfway decent.

I got to Meghan’s around 8:30 and we went to the bank … then drove around to sales that hadn’t quite started yet. Some days it really isn’t worth leaving the house before 9. As we were cruising around I fished in my purse for a pen so I could cross off the sales as we hit them, and write down any addresses that we saw on signs — standard routine. But I had no pen. I then searched all the spots in Meghan’s car where she usually has a pen or two kicking around. She informed me that over the last few weeks, I’d apparently taken all the pens from her car (presumably sticking ‘em in my purse without thinking about it) and now she was completely cleaned out. This sucked. Even before we had hit any sales, the lack of pen was making me antsy. I decided to keep an eye out for a pen at a sale — not really that typical of a sale item, but it could happen.

One of the first sales we found that was actually open sounded pretty bad from the ad — for one thing, they had mentioned “old rocks.” (Which prompted a rather philosophical discussion about whether there were really any new rocks.) There were indeed a few rocks for sale, sitting in a wire basket. They didn’t appear to be particularly special, but hell if I know what’s hot in the rock collector marketplace. Meghan found a cute vintage dress, but it turned out to have mold on it. Yuck! I noticed this peculiar looking book sitting on top of a crusty box of more normal books, and snapped a quick photo.

As an afterthought, I picked it up and started flipping through it. I thought it would be some kind of cheesy psychological manual with overtones that passed for racy back in the day but would be humorously quaint now. Let me tell you: I could not have been more wrong. This is without a doubt the dirtiest book I have ever seen at a yard sale. There were full penetration close-up shots in all kinds of graphic, hairy detail — “fully illustrated” is an understatement. Those of you who were upset that I passed on Super Boobs or the Mister Peter Ice Mold might be happy to learn that I then purchased it for the princely sum of twenty-five cents. However, once the initial shock wore off, I kinda wished I hadn’t. It’s nasty. Meghan suggested that I could leave it at someone else’s sale, or just start tearing out pages and leave them at all the crappy sales we were sure to hit that day as a form of retaliation for their lack of good stuff, but I just threw it into the back seat and tried to mentally scrape some of the images out of my brain. I am sure that somehow I will find an appropriate home for it at some point. Perhaps it could be a bridal shower gift, or I could bring it to a white elephant party at my workplace and then deny that I had anything to do with it. Nah, probably not such a good idea …

The next sale was in an alley. This is always a pain in the ass, and indeed, the sale sucked … but what is this? As we were heading to the car, I spotted a ball-point pen in the driveway! It appeared to have been run over, and was bent into almost a 90-degree angle, but it still worked. My crisis was happily averted.

We moved from one sale to the next pretty quickly, being ruthless about driving past anything that looked bad. There was one that had advertised vintage/antiques which turned out to be a couple who were about to move and were in the process of getting rid of nearly everything they owned. Oddly, none of this actually appeared to be vintage or antiques, but we each bought a few things anyway.

Another sale was huge, with stuff from multiple sellers. Right when I thought I was going to strike out, I saw something I decided I was interested in: a brand new Crock-Pot! Oh yeah … you know you’re jealous. I have sort of wanted one for a while, but never badly enough to deliberately go out and get one. The sellers said it had been a gift and they wanted five bucks for it, which I happily paid.

We then hit a sale was listed as a girly-girl who was moving in with her boyfriend and thus had to get rid of some of her girly furnishings and things. To keep things fair, she was making him pare down too. They were nice and had some decent stuff. I thought these glasses with peeing cartoon characters were pretty funny.

There were a ton of clothes and accessories but at first I didn’t find anything. Then Meghan uncovered two purses from Smoking Lily, a cool independent store in Vancouver/Victoria where we have both purchased things before. We each grabbed one of those. I also picked up a cute pair of stud earrings with luminous blue stones, then found a bunch of sunglasses. After trying a few one I found one pair that looked good on me — by Armani! Most of the clothes weren’t priced and I was a little nervous about how much things would be, but it ended up being reasonable: $4 for the purse, $1 for the earrings, and $10 for the sunglasses (which she said she had spent over $200 on). Meghan also got a really cool huge leather purse for something like $15, and we both left happy.

We headed into a different neighborhood which included a sale with an ad that bewildered me. It sounded pretty normal, but they included this (and only this) photo.

This is the actual photo from the ad, with my very sophisticated addition of blocking the eyes out. We couldn’t figure out what the hell they were thinking. Why the hell did they add this photo? When we got there, it was a really sparse, boring moving sale in front of a newer townhouse. The sellers were a couple and sure enough, that was the guy (but dressed much more casually and with no ornate doors in sight). We left no less baffled than before.

We hit a sale where two twenty-something dudes were cleaning house. They had a great DVD selection, but the guy wanted $5 each — too high. He then told his friend to watch the sale while he went inside for a sec. Meghan asked if we could get a deal if we bought a few DVDs, but the other guy was understandably hesitant, since they weren’t his. After about three minutes we were sick of waiting and decided to move on. I did spring for Lost in Translation and while I was fishing out my five bucks Meghan noticed this bench amidst the rest of their crap.

Yes, that is the “when I am an old woman I shall wear purple” poem. Meghan asked the guy why they had it, since it didn’t exactly go with the rest of their stuff. He said they’d bought it used and claimed they had tried to paint over it several times but it never took. We decided that this was almost certainly a lie.

We then headed to another sale and drove right past it … then backed up to find this sign in front.

We passed on the free Sandra Bernhard photo out front, but Meghan grabbed her collection of about 20 copies of Bitch Magazine and I bought a few cheesy t-shirts.

One of the last sales we hit had titled their ad “What’s Up Yard Sale,” which sounded promising, or at least not boring. We passed one of their signs and it read “Fun Times Yard Sale.” The fun theme continued with this assemblage out front, featuring sidewalk chalk and a star-shaped balloon tied to a beer bottle.

While I was taking this picture Meghan walked up the stairs to their yard and said “I’m here for the fun times yard sale!” The seller waved her hands in the air and went “Wooooo!” We liked their attitude, but I don’t think either of us ended up buying anything.

All in all, it turned out to be a decent day. Aside from that skeevy book, I didn’t get anything that could be considered vintage (those boots in the trunk shot were Meghan’s score), but I was really happy with all the stuff I bought. And for the first time in ages, we ended up crossing every sale off my list. (Good thing I found that bent-up pen!)

I have to be honest here –- I had a shitty week and was getting a little stressed about finding the time to price the carload of stuff that I was able to get together. Add that the forecast was calling for rain and sun. How does a person plan for what could be a really nice day or pouring down rain?!?

On Friday I had gotten through some of it, but I was pretty much saying that I wouldn’t price any more. I didn’t want to waste the time to price everything if we were gonna get rained out and I would just have to store it in my basement for another winter. Ehg. Jenny was pretty optimistic that it was all going to work out and it would stay dry, so we each loaded up our cars on Friday night.

Come Saturday morning it was gray and raining. We called Libby who said that we should give it an hour and see how things go. We got some breakfast and had to admit to ourselves that it really wasn’t going to happen. I know when to admit defeat.

To add insult to injury, we hadn’t looked up any sales happening in the area, with the exception of one that Jenny happened to remember seeing on Craig’s as she was posting our ad. A local art program, BRAT, was having a fundraising/moving sale, so we headed over there. I had never been into the space before, I remember it had been a blind and window treatment place for a long time. I have probably walked by it many times since I have lived in Ballard.

There was some decent stuff there, but since we had both been in purge mode, we weren’t really feeling like bringing more stuff home. We started chatting away with the guy who was running the sale and after I mentioned that our sale had been rained out he said we were the second people to tell him that today. He then offered to let us bring our stuff down and join his sale. Really, this happened! After Jenny and I looked at each other for a second in disbelief we decided to go for it.

I called Libby telling her to come on over and that we needed to kick him down 10% of our proceeds for his art school. She seemed confused but interested and said she would grab one of the other rained-out sellers and come over.

We ran back to the house, updated our Craigslist ad with the new address, and drove both our crap-filled cars back to the sale. By the time we started to unload it was getting close to 10:00 –- pretty late for a rainy day sale, but WTF did we have to lose, right? We commandeered some empty space and quickly started putting out our stuff.

The guy doing the sale ended up being really cool and he seemed happy to have someone else to B.S. with during the sale.

Libby and Michelle showed up after a while — to shop, not to sell. They said they were going to try and plan an indoor group sale in a couple of weeks instead. A girl we had seen at the crazy vintage sale came by and we talked for a while about how amazing that sale was. Karl eventually showed up as well and couldn’t believe I was using Babee Tenda for a display table.

We only had a few people come to the sale and really neither of us made a bankroll, but we had a good time and laughed about being invited to another person’s sale. As Jenny said, “This would only happen to us.”

I took a few boxes to the Goodwill and we both packed up some of our better items for the possible future sale and called it a day around 1:00.

This Saturday though … it was bad. So bad, I really debated whether to even give you our usual runthrough and pathetic assortment of photos. I mean, how many times do you want to hear us ragging on someone’s bad free box? (Or in this case, free crusty shopping cart that has probably been stowed away in their garage since the ’80s?)

Well, maybe you do want to hear about it. (You’re here, aren’t you?) At least this particular sale had a few interesting items. Meghan bought a handful of things here, although we left this gem behind (figuring the box had to the best part … and it was too large to be purchased purely on those grounds.)

This sale was the first one we hit, and even though it wasn’t that great it was way better than most of the others. I mean, you think that free box up above was bad? Try this.

This was outside an estate sale that we hit purely because we needed to kill ten minutes before another estate sale. We could have just waited in the short line, but Annoying Jewelry Guy was there. We both felt that we would rather get there later and possibly miss out on the best stuff than have to spend ten minutes listening to that doofus. Unfortunately, the sale we ended up at was a total dud. The house was cool, but that was about it.

We headed back to the first estate sale, which was now open. They had some interesting clothes … for crazy prices. Crazy! Shoes were $10, dresses were $15, “vintage tank tops” (whatever the hell those are) were $8. No thank you.

The basement had some odd items, like this creepy-ass calendar. The inside featured way-too-graphic drawings of craggly cartoon characters getting it on. Gross!

While in the basement I heard a guy talking about how some item had been in his family for at least 25 years. (Not that calendar, although I suppose it actually must have been, too.) We had been wondering which estate sale company put it on and why their prices were so crazy. The fact that it was run by the family explained a lot. Meghan ended up pulling two vintage corsets out of a box that said everything was $2, and when she went to check out the woman said “$10 each.” Huh? When Meghan explained that the box said $2, the woman harrumphed. “Unless priced.” I guess they had tiny $10 price tags on them somewhere. Meghan somehow restrained herself from throwing them at the woman in disgust, but she didn’t hold back from announcing loudly that the sellers were on crack as we tromped out the door, extra-glad we hadn’t bothered to stake it out early.

That was probably the most annoying of the sales we hit, but it’s not like any of them were all that great. We went to one sale where they had chickens wandering around, which was a nice diversion. Meghan picked up a bunch of books from one woman who seemed to have every book ever written about understanding your dog, listening to your dog, talking to your dog, thinking like your dog, and so on. And we each got a few other things that I can’t even remember (because the day’s haul wasn’t even worth a trunk photo). However, as bad as it got, at least neither of us was even remotely tempted to pick up this crazy purse that looks like a Fender Stratocaster.

One of the more interesting sales we stopped at was at a senior center. Rather than being a big rummage sale, there were about six or seven tables set up, run by individual people, like a mini-fleamarket. I got the feeling maybe they did this on a regular basis and brought their stuff out over and over. Not that I had been there before, but it just had that vibe. They also had a barrage of very elaborate hand-lettered signs outside.

While we were perusing the goods one seller said something about Obama, and one of the other senior sellers said, “Don’t talk to me about Obama. I’m for McCain.” Oh boy, here we go, I thought. Then he added, “Yeah, I’m for more war!” and everyone laughed, relieved he wasn’t actually going to go into a pro-McCain tirade. He then started joking about how if McCain was in office it would be the Bore Wars. (Or it’s possible he was making some arcane reference to the Boer Wars, but if so, it went way over my head.) I was sad that there were no old-lady baked goods to be had, but Meghan and I picked up a book each: she got something by Timothy Leary and I bought The Vinyl Closet: Gays In The Music Industry. All in all, definitely not your run-of-the-mill senior center sale experience.

In between complaining about the lack of scores, we talked a lot about some of the folks we see out at sales. There are some regulars that we love, but lots of them just seem to be really unhappy folks. The super-competitive ones are the worst. There are a lot of people who seem to be way too hung up on who’s going to get to the good stuff first, stressing out over what they might be missing out on or what someone else got instead of them. I think anyone who goes to sales on a regular basis can get caught up in that mentality from time to time (I’m no exception!), but you have to get over it. There is plenty of good stuff out there, and there is no way you can be everywhere at once, so you just have to take your chances. “Let go and let god,” Meghan remarked … with uncharacteristical serenity, but she had a good point. “Or let go and let goddess,” she continued. “Or hey! Let go and let Garage Sale Goddess!”

We had been talking earlier about the Garage Sale Goddess. This is not actually a mystical deity that we pray to for good scores, but an actual woman we’ve seen a few times who goes to sales wearing a Garage Sale Goddess t-shirt. The last time I saw her she was asking a seller how much his toaster was. “$30,” he joked, and she shot back, “The Garage Sale Goddess says that’s too much!” He said she could have it for $2, and she bought it. As she was walking away the seller commented, “Enjoy the toaster. It makes special sparks when you use it.” She looked concerned for just a second, then strode off, happily chatting about herself in the third person to her friend all the way back to her car. She was definitely a goofball, but at least she seemed to be having fun, rather than treating yard sales like some kind of talent/endurance contest to see who can find the rarest, most underpriced item.

So, that was pretty much our day. I don’t know if it’s a sign that the true sale season is starting to wind down, or if we were just due for a strike-out day after the run of great weekends we’ve had lately. Maybe a little of both!