Yard Sale Bloodbath

It’s been ages since we’ve had a guest star come along! With Meghan out of town, my Portland pal Bonnie Ditlevsen came along for the ride. I warned her that October didn’t promise a whole lot in the way of sales, but she was still excited to have the Yard Sale Bloodbath experience, and kindly offered to write up the day’s report! Take it away, Bonnie …

The fall rainy season finally hit the Pacific Northwest, ending our unbelievable streak of heat-infused summer drought. Seattle somehow seemed like its old self as we got into Jenny’s car to check out some sales, both regular and estate.

First off, there was a fundraiser yard sale benefitting a preschool. Note the Seattle-savvy tarps and canopies!

As we imagined, there were all kinds of ex-baby and toddler items, pint-sized wooden furnishings, and this bevvy of books in a tub indicating what happens to many women when they breed: The Expectant Father and the ever-scary What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Children’s Vaccinations followed by Danielle Steel, Mary Higgins Clark and Patricia Cornwell books (all now passé due to the fervor over Fifty Shades of Grey, I’m certain). These were sharing plastic-tub space with old Baby Einstein DVDs, Mom and Baby Fitness, and The Art of Aromatherapy. And alongside those, a couple of titles that gave me pause: Heart Full of Lies and If I’d Killed Him When I Met Him…. Slit my wrists now!

Kudos to the kids selling drinks and crispy rice bars.

I was eyeing a nice retro-ey set of wooden alphabet and vocabulary picture blocks for $5, and said to Jenny, “You know, for five bucks, it’s okay with me that there are a couple missing. “I count 26 blocks, Bonnie,” she said. “I’m sure you’ve got the alphabet covered.” “Oh,” I said. Hmm. So…why do they leave a couple out? Would the seven-month-old baby I was buying these for ever notice, or care?

I picked up on a mysterious European baritone accent under the blue canopy. After 12 years spent in four different regions of Europe, I like to think I’m rather good at pinpointing any European dialect accurately within 100 miles, but this guy? He had me really stumped. Just then, Jenny whispered: “It’s Furniture Guy!” Oh, how this made my Yard Sale Bloodbath day. To get to meet one of the characters from the blog, right off the bat like that? It was electrifying. “He’s some kind of European!” I whispered with excitement. Jenny said, “I never really noticed an accent. He’s just annoying.” “So he’s Annoying Furniture Guy?” I asked. “No,” Jenny clarified. “We just call him ‘Furniture Guy.’ You’re thinking of ‘Annoying Jewelry Guy.’”

I was impressed with Jenny’s reserve. I don’t get out much, nor am I the big shopper. So after getting the wooden baby blocks, I coveted a $2 stainless steel OXO utensil holder with rubberized base and several pricey metal spatulas of varying forms. A decent enough deal, I thought.

We then drove to Broadview, a gorgeous hill of ’50s- and ’60s-era homes north of Ballard. I admired the sweeping views of Puget Sound and all the successful and well-tended landscaping of the homes. Yet I was puzzled by strange signs that read, “Arterial Ends Here.” We have no such signs in Portland. I asked Jenny, “Does that mean it turns into a vein?”

Our estate sale looked busy; there was even a line. Jenny pointed out that under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t waste precious morning yard sale minutes waiting in a line, and so we decided to check out a nearby sale. But Jenny warned me once we saw its sign: “Balloons are one of the telltale signs that a yard sale might suck.”

Ruh-roh! There were the balloons, all chipper and flowing in the breeze. I spotted some ugly, Boomer-style golf clubs right at the front of their carport.

A woman was selling mostly kitchen items and clothes. She needed to slice her prices by about 80%, but who was I to tell her that? She lives in a house in Broadview, and I don’t. Rich people don’t stay rich by giving things away for free. But one item caught my eye, and wasn’t horribly overpriced: this lovely red enamel griddle with panini-making lid for $5.

I wanted it. I wanted it bad. But I also wanted one textured-fabric black skirt, too, and this delusional woman had priced it at $10. Crappy purses Jenny looked through were $15, $20, or more. Her overpricing actually started pissing me off about buying anything at all from her, even the panini griddle. I started making some dumb small talk about The Surprise Chef on PBS, how he would use two heated cast iron pans, one on top of the other, to smoosh marinated chicken pieces into grilled, crispy perfection. The woman didn’t give a shit. We left, me babbling about the panini pan, Jenny swearing that the lady would have every single item still in her possession the next day.

As we approached the estate sale, we noticed men scurrying to and from their cars, like leaf cutter ants, loading ’50s- and ’60s-era merchandise. They shot furtive glances at one another and at us, like anxious squirrels in autumn. The house had enormo windows upstairs and on the basement level, all overlooking gorgeous Puget Sound. We had to stand there in a really long line that simply did not move. It got ridiculous with the big, fat windows we peered into showing that there weren’t all that many people inside. What did they think we all would do? Shoplift? Still, it was while peering in those megawindows that I noticed the insanely overpriced stickers all over everything. Items had not one, but three, four, even five stickers covering them: $55 for some lousy end table. $175 for a weird retro lamp — that I coveted, but still. $28 for some dumb bronze statuette.

This place was betting on all of us yard sale saps to show up on the opening day and pay their doubled, tripled and quadrupled prices out of fear, and the peer pressure of standing in line with no way to buy anything.

So we stood there, wasting our precious lives, watching the human squirrels come and go with their purchases (Latin plural: “purchi”), hearing the occasional disgruntled remark about the cashier’s utter rudeness. Was this going to be the Estate Sale Soup Nazi? One man who exited the heavily guarded door said this as he emerged, head turned back at her: “I was just making sure I wasn’t the guy you were yelling at.” Niiice.

I noticed an abandoned coffee cup wedged into the shrubbery. Many of us felt a bit like that coffee cup. Then I saw a plant that looked just like marijuana, but Jenny assured me it wasn’t.

A couple of people in front of us left the line once they saw the inflated numbers on the little red-orange neon price stickers. Yay for moving up, any way we could! I snuck off to peer through those windows again. Red-orange stickers on everything, multiple times each. It certainly looked as if some obsessive type, or perhaps a person with delirium tremens in both hands, had applied those stickers to everything. I felt the strange lure of a yellow plastic toy horse that contrasted so nicely — so Swedishly, really — with the house’s slate blue exterior. The horse just seemed, well, special. My sons are 12 and 9, too old for such an item. But I wanted it.

Jenny was getting increasingly bored and annoyed. “Why do they only let one person in? It’s empty in there!” But on the front door, there was an aggressively masking-taped, explicit set of rules & regs. (Cash only! You haul larger items! No wire hangers!!!)

There was also a list of numbered signups that went all the way to #63 and included the names of people who’d come by early … some in the wee hours of the morning like 3:15 AM!

A couple of men in front of us, whose native language and origins I couldn’t discern (Armenia? Georgia? Afghanistan? Azerbaijan?) began joking around with us. They’d heard me whine about somebody buying my yellow horse out from under me. One of them jokingly told me he’d buy it, then sell it back to me at a higher price.

It had been more than an hour, and we began wisecracking about the Art Deco hand-shaped doorknocker and the woman behind the door who guarded the estate sale like a junkyard dog.

A lady behind us picked up on our merry banter. When one squirrel-like dealer exited, then entered, then exited again, hauling his purchases, she wondered out loud if he was a dealer, or if maybe he worked at Microsoft. She got bold on his fifth trip, and asked him both questions. “No,” he insisted, to both. “Maybe he just has good taste,” I said, which he heard, and actually turned around appreciatively to smile at me about. Is this the way to flirt in Seattle? Compliment some dude on his good taste in buying overpriced, Boomer-era crap? Maybe.

Finally, we were allowed in. Whew! Right away, we realized why we hadn’t seen people through those massive front windows: the house itself was labyrinthine, and a cornucopia of fascinating old merchandise of all kinds awaited us. Vintage clothes. Portraits. Furniture. Shelf items. Books. Collectibles. These people had traveled the world, and must have been some sort of ethnic Scandinavians, too, judging from all the music and story books in Icelandic. I picked up a couple of Norwegian and Icelandic little flags for a buck apiece, and grabbed a mug with a 3-D raptor’s head poking out over the handle for my crazy sons.

We were mesmerized by this bizarre 3-D puppy portrait (it’s hard to see, but the heads were puffed out in a trippy manner):

And this naked doll with multiple price tags stuck to her, right next to a cash register. It looked like some anti-human trafficking ad sponsored by the ladies of Hole.

Jenny couldn’t take her eyes off of a vintage Creepy Crawlers set with metal molding plates, but didn’t want to spend $35 on it. I spotted this gorgeous old Danish doll — just like one from my girlhood. Did I want it for $32? Um, nope.

I went down to the basement to the spot by the window where my beloved yellow plastic horse had beckoned me for well over an hour. Gasp! It was … gone. My heart sank. Then I realized that maybe, just maybe, the friendly and joking Armenian/Georgian/Afghan/Azerbaijani guy ahead of us had gone and grabbed it just to make a practical joke. I hoped so. But where was he? More and more people now were allowed in, and I got lost in the labyrinth. We made it to a room in the basement full of old music stands, sheet music, and miscellaneous books and papers.

We also spotted this frightening portrait (I wish I’d noticed how much they were asking!)

And around the corner … surprise! There was my guy, yellow horse and all. “I saved it just for you,” the man beamed, and I laughed a full belly laugh and thanked him for his very good deed.

Jenny was delighted by this exchange, but pointed out, “Bonnie … what do you want with a $16 yellow plastic horse?”

“Oh,” I said, “nothing, really. I have no use for it. It just looked so special sitting in the window of the blue house while we were bored shitless in line.”

“So … why buy it?”

“Because of the guy.” I didn’t want him to see me abandon the thing, not after all that merry banter.

Reason won out, though. Sixteen bucks for a dopey yellow plastic horse? I figured I’d spend the money more wisely buying us some pho for lunch.
Overhearing our decision to ditch the horse, a nice lady before us in line for the register whispered about the Estate Sale Soup Nazi, “She’ll make you put it back where you got it, you know.” Jenny, by this point, was OVER this sale, no matter how fascinating some of the items wound up being. “I’m not fucking putting it back,” she said to me as an aside. She set the horse high up atop a filing cabinet, where it stared out at Puget Sound.

And it wasn’t too out of place there. There was a myriad of oddball vintage toys spread out on a table near the register.

I couldn’t wait to hear and see the Estate Sale Soup Nazi lady in all her rude glory. I figured I’d stir the pot a little by asking if, as an Oregon resident, I could please be exempted from Washington sales taxes. This meant forty cents in my case, but it’s the principle. “Sales tax exemption doesn’t apply to estate sales,” Rude Lady told me in a cold voice. “At least I asked,” I smiled at her. Jenny got a little Ratfink charm and a couple of vintage monster art cards for her husband. They were all unpriced, and she was fearing the worst, but pleasantly surprised to only be charged a dollar for the bunch.

Our next adventure took us to the enclave of Magnolia, to yet another estate sale. We loved our first glimpse of the lavish lifestyle this formerly-alive-and-well couple must have enjoyed. Trips galore to Russia, Holland, and Egypt! Collector plates and spoons from all states and presidents! Hummel figurines! (Even a Hummel nun’s head!)

I loved how you could take such places as Saint Basil’s Cathedral and the Notre Dame de Paris home with you in your carryon, for posterity.

These little figurines were a reminder of who truly built America. Not my generation, that’s for damn sure, though we enjoy blogging about it!

There were just so many collector’s items and souvenirs from everywhere that I started thinking about it. Would I someday wind up like that? In assisted living, surrounded by a few items of collectible crap while, back at the house my kids were liquidating out from under me, some snippy yard sale bitches were having a righteous laugh at my expense? Should I become a Buddhist, maybe? Follow the four-fold then eight-fold path, and aspire to not own so much shit? Sigh. I pondered this while looking at more and more and more realms of stuff.

Jenny got all crazy-claustrophobic in one bedroom, seeing this Wall of Shelf Objects and Stuffed Animals from Hell. Yikes!

I almost thought she might need to buy some of this ancient liquor and pour herself a shot of Caffe Lolita or Pineapple Liqueur.

In another room, we found this stack of a frighteningly-named item: Wee-Wee Pads. Complete with possible picture of the puppy who wee-wee’d on them.

And that wasn’t the only dog … this guy was taped up to the wall of the downstairs bathroom.

I got all giddy when Jenny pointed out a Pepsi bottle with Cyrillic writing! Later that night (at 826 Seattle, in a performance with Verbalists) I would be reading from my 1989 memoir story of traveling from Munich to Moscow via Berlin. I was THERE around the time these estate sale’s elderly folks must have been! They might have bought and actually drunk from the $1 bottle, in Russia. Or not — I know that when I was in Russia, I’d have given my right arm to drink something other than nasty rye bread kvass or sickly-sweet port. Pepsi, no matter the funky writing on the label, would have been a welcome sight.

Then we encountered a chatty, friendly old guy who was walking around the estate sale carrying a huge bird cage housing his sulfur-crested little parrot!

At first I thought he had bought the cage or bird there, but pretty quickly we figured out he lived down the street and was using his pet bird as a conversation starter. “I like to take him out around the neighborhood,” the guy said, holding up the cage to us. “He likes meeting new people.” It was sweet, and somehow I felt he’d beaten me to the punch. After all, I’m the Portlander, not him. I was supposed to put a bird on it, right? Seattleites, always outdoing Portland. At least now I know why the caged bird goes estate sale-ing!

And the best thing? The estate sale cashier at this second place answered my sales-tax-for-Oregonians question honestly. “Just show me your license and I’ll jot down your address, and that way, you save ten cents off the $1 Pepsi bottle,” she said, friendly and helpful as all get-out. I didn’t make her bother, but was happy to have confirmation that the woman from the first sale was not only rude, but a baldfaced liar to boot.

Jenny and I had a $13 day overall. A day of fun and laughs, with a bit of rudeness and frustration for good measure, and a whole lot of cool old stuff no one really needs, but a surprising number of people will stand in line to paw through.

A hearty salute to Bonnie for riding along to sales, resisting the siren songs of the yellow plastic horse and the red panini pan, and making it out with her wits intact. And for saving ME from having to recap this questionable, yet entertaining day!

The weather has been sort of freakishly nice in Seattle for the last couple of months. So last Saturday it still really felt like yard sale season … even though we know full well that October is when sales really slow down around here (and the few there are tend to be questionable). Still, we headed out with a list of possibilities, hoping for the best. One of them had been listed as “EPIC YARD SALE” and had signs galore promising the same.

After looking around, all I can say is that perhaps they are interpreting the word in their own special way. I’m not sure anyone has ever used “epic” to describe used crockpots and George Foreman grills.

The rest of the sale was pretty bad and Meghan even spotted a neti pot — used. Gross! As far as I’m concerned, once that thing goes up your nose, you own it for life.

Our next stop didn’t look too bad from a distance …

… but up close it was a bit sketchy.

We’ve joked about the “top three things not to have at your yard sale” before, but let me add that anything that has come in close contact with an intimate part of one’s body probably deserves an honorary place on that list.

It wasn’t all scary … these school desks with years of carved graffiti were pretty cool, though it’s not like I have a place for them or wanted to spend $65.

An hour or two in I still hadn’t purchased anything. Meghan picked up a cute vintage dress for $2 so the day wasn’t a total bust. But it didn’t seem to be going great … especially when we came across this!

Another one?! At least this time it wasn’t used … but still. Meghan stated that it was not acceptable if “neti pots” were the theme of the day, and I wholeheartedly agreed. But the only other possible themes that presented itself wasn’t t much better … creepy angels and elves, anyone?

At least there was some comic relief. When we drove up to an intersection and saw this sign with arrows pointing in two completely different directions, we laughed for a solid minute.

We had just about decided to call it a day when we saw signs for a church rummage sale. I hadn’t seen any listings for it, but when we got there we both recognized it from last year and remembered it being pretty good. It was around 11:00 and they seemed to have just opened, judging from the people just putting up signs out front … and the fact that there were several prime pieces of vintage clothing sitting there waiting for Meghan to purchase them for a few bucks each.

I remembered the books being good last time and started accumulating a pile. Some of them were advance reader copies but lots were just recent purchases someone had decided to get rid of. I spent six dollars and filled most of a small box.

That one sale sort of saved the day for us … it’s really the only reason we even have a trunk shot this week!

The last time my mom and aunt had come down that I remember was back in 2009, though I think they must have come down since then. It’s always comical when they come along, with the same issues every time: my mom can’t manage to navigate to a sale and she reads off like 8 sales at once. I was really missing Jenny, since we are pretty much on the same page about how to navigate from sale to sale. But I tried to make a nice list in large letters and the times all spelled out clearly, and we did make it to a ton of sales.

One of our first sales was right by my house and I ended up getting some really crazy 70s-does-30s-meets-disco outfits. They also had some good records, but smelly. I can’t bring musty stuff into my house, since it just makes me sick. But the clothing was good and I did see this incredible wood framed picture.

It’s amazing, right? Sadly, I didn’t buy it, but then after I posted it onto my facebook page a bunch of my friends were freaking out, so a few hours I went back. It was gone, but I met the guy from the picture. He said it was based on an actual photo, although his hair wasn’t as long. Jenny seemed seem obsessed by the glitter fairy stickers in the corners.

So, we have talked about how balloons at sales can be a sign of bad sales – what about a sign with balloons?!?

Yup, but they did have this “make an offer” on this super pack of fireworks. Hell, you paid $14 and I don’t know what year, so what sort of offer are you looking for?!?!

We did a ton of driving around, since my mom couldn’t seem to work out the addresses or the times. So, at 9:30 we would be a sale that didn’t start until 10:00 or at 11:00 she would direct me to one that had been going since 8:30. Fun times!

We went to some serious duds and some just OK sales, then found an estate sale. Yeah, that is really their sign just scrawled on the side of a box –- not sure from what, a bracket?

She had this snazzy painting.

And the Christmas tree was set up and going.

My mom seemed to pull the best thing out of the sale with some amazing chairs that I wouldn’t have even noticed, but I guess they were pretty hot stuff a hundred years ago (not my style, but nice).

One of our last stops was an Estate Sale of some old western dude and I would have purchased all his clothing and boots, but they just wanted way too much money for them. Sadly, it seemed like he had started doing work on the house and then just stopped. Everything sort of looked like this.

He did have some great pictures on his many unfinished walls, including these naked ladies.

I took this photo from upstairs at the house, to give you an idea of what the yard looked like. Sorry you can’t see the $300 YUGO (“Runs. With Tabs” was the selling point!)

Throughout the day we did fill up the car — we even filled the trunk twice and had to drop stuff off. But I realized it was mostly my mom. I had spent a whopping $22 by the end of the day. Sorry no trunk shot this week!

Last Saturday was the first time in ages that Meghan, Karl, and I all went to sales together! We were excited and even more so when our first stop was some crazy sale listed as “DJ and yard sale” promising a variety of DJ-riffic items including a LASER LIGHT SYSTEM! Of course, we were all fighting over who was gonna get dibs on that. It ended up being a total driveby — a woman sitting in a chair next to three or four boxes of what looked like total junk. Eek!

As we sped away from that, we randomly passed a sale where Meghan knew the seller. She had a ton of stuff, and was it wacky? You know it!

Meghan bought a bunch of vintage sewing patterns here and I made one purchase — the “I Hate Brenda” paperback! For 50 cents, how could I resist?

Next up was a sale whose ad sounded great — it was listed as “part 2″ but Meghan hadn’t hit it the previous weekend and they promised to have brand new stuff. Most of it was clothes. She had some great stuff, but the prices were on the high side.

However, her CDs were a buck and she had good stuff — I think we all picked up a few. I looked through the books, but didn’t find anything, though I thought this “warning label” was pretty cute.

Meghan did buy a few things here including a large letter “U” and a sweet pink Lomography Diana camera in its box.

I was excited to hit our next sale since it was listed as vintage — even showing a picture of a vintage house, which I assumed was where the sale was, but no! It was actually a sale we’d hit last year where the guy had tons of old posters and rock flyers. We recognized it right off the bat.

Funny, looking at the last pic — the Gary Numan and Bogart posters were in the sale last year. If at first you don’t succeed, try again, I guess! He had new stuff out this year though, like a double-sided Tubes promo display that gave both Meghan and I flashbacks to the record stores of our youth.

Here’s the back side, in case you needed to know what that looked like …

He also had this box of vintage sunglasses.

Some of these were amazing and he said they were $10 each, which is higher than we would have liked … but we had to dig through. A couple pairs were sadly a bit too damaged, but a lot of them were really amazing. I grabbed one pair and he ended up charging me $5. I also bought some old iron-on t-shirt displays with ’80s skating and surfing logos for my skater-dude husband. Meghan splurged on about three pairs of sunglasses and I think a couple of other things — she was also tempted by this statuette, but it was just too chipped up.

We then hit a “two-block sale” which turned out to be one sale on each block. The first guy had some intriguingly oddball art books but the mood was sort of spoiled when he yammered on and on about how much stuff he had had earlier that already got bought. While he was talking to me about a vintage library-card cabinet (that would have been cooler if all of the pull knobs hadn’t been broken off) Meghan was taking a picture of this creepy portrait in his garage. (I don’t think it was part of the sale.)

We got a snack and then debated whether to stay in Ballard, or head over to a “rock and roll sale” in the parking lot of the Rickshaw Restaurant and Lounge, a fairly bizarre and divey Chinese restaurant/karaoke bar that has been closed ever since they had a fire back in March. The potential for strangeness won out and we headed up there, only to find … nothing at all in the parking lot! Then we spotted a sale in front of the house next door. Close enough, I guess. We pulled up and were greeted by this masterpiece.

Both intrigued and scared, we got out and started to look around. Karl and Meghan beelined over to the records while I perused the other stuff. Books and zines were spread across the driveway and while it was an encouragingly odd mix, I didn’t find anything I needed to bring home.

Most of the cassettes were of the indie/weird variety, but there were a couple of cheesy looking motivational items as well.

They also had a handful of t-shirts and other random items.

I think I was the only one to leave this sale empty-handed.

At this point we were sort of close to an estate sale that had been listed as “What a digger!” Honestly, I am not sure what the sellers think that “digger” means … everything was arranged fairly neatly, maybe there were a few boxes that needed to be unearthed in the basement but on the overall scales of estate sale this one was pretty sane and tidy. And expensive … they had a few items I was sort of drawn to, but not for what they were asking.

This was not one of them — I do not want this in my house for any price.

One room had an odd assortment of toys and games. This pink elephant and mutant-looking dog seemed to belong together. I don’t know what is up with that “Jogger” thing in the background.

At one point Meghan called out, “I love Benji!” I thought it was a random proclamation, but no.

As we drove away we decided that the three most overused words in sale ads at the moment are “digger,” “picker,” and “hoarder.” Sometimes your sale is just a sale. You don’t have to make it sound like whatever dumb show is on TV right now. If your sale isn’t potentially hazardous I don’t consider it a digger, and if you are selling your own items you are pretty much by definition not a hoarder. As for pickers, I think Meghan said it best earlier this year: “You don’t need to carry a fucking loupe and a flash light with you to yard sales. Yes, I get that you saw that on TV, but are you Frank Fritz? No. You aren’t.”

We stopped at one sale where they had this wacky outfit hanging up.

Karl bought a perfectly-sized-for-records wooden crate from them and found out they were moving to Berkeley, where I’m from — one of the sellers asked me if I had any advice and I couldn’t think of a thing. I should have told her not to take the brown acid — yes, that is Woodstock, not Berkeley, but hippies gonna … hip? The seller also told me a funny phrase she had heard to describe newer-style hippies, but sadly I have completely forgotten it now.

We then drove by this sign for a “Stupid Sale.”

I remembered that Meghan had blogged about going to a “Stupid Sale” a few years back and I thought she’d said it had been bad, but now that I look at the post again I see that it turned out to be “so stupid that [she] couldn’t even find it.” We didn’t end up going to this one, but we did have a discussion about how if you are going to call your sale stupid, you might as well take it all the way and write “STOOPID.”

That turned out not to be the only stupid sign we saw. BARGANS, anyone?

And there was this — though technically not so much stupid as dyslexic.

This other sign was cute — not stupid at all (unless you count the fact that it was lying on the ground in front of the sale, which I suppose isn’t really the best advertising method).

We went to a few more sales, but honestly it’s a blur. All I can tell you is that we saw a family of dog statues …

… and a $200 lobster painting.

All in all, I was happy with the few purchases I made and it was a pretty fun day.

Once again both Jenny and Karl couldn’t do sales, but it was Olympic Manor sale day so there was no way I going to flake. I didn’t think to make a list, since Oly and the surrounding areas can usually take care of most of a morning. But this was not the case. I even called Jenny at 8:45 to belly-ache about the lack of sales. Oly Manor always has sales! They might not always be the best sales, but there are tons. This weekend? Like 15. Maybe 20.

This was one of the largest, being put on by the girl scouts.

At this sale, everything had “make offer” or “free” signs.

Along with a free fountain –- no, I didn’t go look at it!

After hitting a few more sales I thought I should just start heading out of there. I think I was 100% out by 9:20. Since I was too dumb to make a list, I just drove around, ending up back at the old lady hoarder sale from last week. They had pulled out a ton more stuff.

Last week when I was on the phone with Karl he had asked if I had hit the crazy book seller house? Why no I hadn’t, but since it was already the second day of the sale, I wasn’t that interested. Oddly, I just ended up there after following some Estate Sale signs. WOW, was Karl not kidding about the books!

On every surface throughout the house, books and more books. Everything was old and oddly not all that crusty.

This was the second weekend and the book dealers and the University of Washington had already hit the sale. Karl did tell me that a book scanner left in disgust, since he “couldn’t scan” any of the books. Poor baby! I picked up a few things, mostly wacky lefty stuff from the 1960s.

Pretty slim pickings on the trunk photo, but at least you can see one of my best scores: a bell you can ring when it’s “time for another round”!

Jenny bailed on sales and so did Karl, leaving me alone on Saturday morning. I was up insanely early and decided to hit a 7:30 AM sale across town and then head back to hit a sale a little closer to Ballard. The one across town was a bust and I could barely get away from the seller that wouldn’t stop talking to me about the crap in his sale, including a homemade coffin (that I didn’t feel comfortable taking a photo of) – EEEK!

The next sale had tons of great stuff, but I did see a younger guy digging into the records, I sort of peeked over his shoulder to see what he was looking at and I felt like looking at the rest of the sale was a better bet. He purchased 5 records out of 2 boxes, so I didn’t feel like I had missed out. I did pick up a ton of stuff at this sale including a really cool vintage fan, an old beer box, some books and a nice old bottle with a marble stopper.

All of a sudden Jewelry Guy is at the sale and for some reason he thinks we are friendly now and he starts talking to me. I feel like I am bordering on rude in my responses, but he doesn’t seem to even notice. To make matters worse this super record squirrel guy that we see all the time shows up and starts tossing records around like he owns the joint. I have already gone off about how much I hate how he treats records at sales, but then Jewelry Guy starts saying “Yeah, another record collector was here before you and he picked up all the good records,” rubbing it in and making up that they had some super valuable LP that I have never heard of just to mess with him. Hmm … I am sort of liking Jewelry Guy a little more now. Even if it did feel a little like a “what did one record squirrel say to the other record squirrel?” joke.

After that I was on my way to hit a sale on my list, but wound up at a crazy old lady digger sale. There were no prices and they just kept bringing out more and more boxes.

Box of fun fur? Check!

Elvis collectables? Check!

Four boxes of Avon perfume? Sure! Sadly, someone broke one of the bottles, making the entire sale reek. You know something is smelling really bad if it makes the outdoors smell bad.

This woman seemed to have everything, and I sort of had the feeling that they hadn’t even scratched the surface of what was in this house.

They had everything you could think of, but no clothing. I asked about it and a woman said she would bring me a box down. Nice! I kept looking around, but I felt like once I started to dig into a box I would sort of get a bad hoarding vibe, so I would put things back. Then the nice woman brought me a box of vintage clothing and before I could even set it on the ground a woman almost pounces on me and starts pulling clothing out. When I looked at her, she said “I have been waiting for them to bring out clothing!” Oh, OK.

I am not going to fight over clothing or anything else for that matter, but one of the gals comes over and quietly says in my ear, “I did bring those out for you, not her. I don’t like her.” It’s then I notice that she has collected about 5 boxes of stuff and whenever anyone gets near them she starts freaking out on them.

At this point I just decided to make my few purchases and get the hell out of there.

I hit a few more sales, but none of them were all that blogworthy. Sorry Jenny wasn’t here to style my trunk shot, making it look pretty boring …

After a couple of non-blogworthy sales (Meghan alone w/ no interesting sales one week, neither of us going out the next) we made the rounds again last weekend. Our first stop was a block sale that we’ve been to a few times before. Meghan immediately got wistful remembering her huge Aveda score way back in the blog’s early days. We did go to the same woman’s sale, but she didn’t have anything nearly that exciting. In fact, most of the stuff on the block was perhaps a bit odd, but not really score-worthy.

Meghan did buy a bunch of clothes at one house, including some crazy Versace jeans which may or may not be fake, but all in all it wasn’t amazing. So we headed over to our next stop. I’d gotten excited when I spotted the listing for the “Green 55 Memorial Yard Sale” — we know those people! They’re friends of our pal and occasional guest star Leslie (who contributed one of my favorite-ever posts about her demented Swiss Colony Christmas catalog purchase). Thanks to the historical record that our blog provides I can tell you that the last time we hit their sale was four years ago (almost to the day). It was wacky then! And it was wacky now.

One of the first things we spotted was this sign promising “Hellish Deals.” Awesome!

Meghan beelined over to a pile of sewing patterns, but this huge spread of books grabbed my attention first.

As expected, the mix was … interesting.

Some of them were a bit steamy!

I picked up a couple of titles and then moved on to the tables, where I admired these smiling clam plaques.

There was a lot of oddball stuff …

That creepy-looking doll in the corner looked so familiar and I had to rack my brain and dig through our photos to figure out where I’d seen it before — I thought it might be a leftover from four years ago, but turns out it just has the same face as one we saw long ago at what we now refer to as “the freak sale.”

I laughed at these coasters with the “Watergate Bug.”

And admired this amazing Faberge box (but did not dare to smell it).

I picked up a little box marked “Things of science” and a woman next to me gasped, remembering how her family had once had a subscription to it — I guess they sent you a different thing of science each month. This particular thing? Latex.

We each made a few purchases, then moved on. Our next few stops were pretty boring, except for spotting an asparagus umbrella holder, something that I can honestly say I never would have imagined existed.

One sale had an impressive selection of pug-themed decorative plates.

They also had pug ornaments. (And a lot of Barbies.)

We worked our way through my list, turning down one block before realizing that it was blocked off by a bunch of construction happening right in front of the sale.

The sellers seemed amazingly unfazed by this — I would be freaking out if that was going on in front of my sale. I didn’t buy anything here, but I did snag a cassette tape out of their free pile.

And right after I grabbed that one, I found this. Our theme song!

Well, at least our theme song when we go to a sale that seems creepily isolated. If Meghan actually had a cassette player in her car I would have cued it up and left it ready to go.

It was around this time that Meghan mentioned that the signs for a “3 GALS SALE” that we had hit three or four weeks back were still hanging up. As we have mentioned many times, it is just plain rude when people leave their signs up long after the sale is over. Especially when they are on a busy intersection that you know those people must be driving by all the time, seeing their signs, and not caring. This one had been up long enough that it was spattered with dried-out mud. What to do? Well, Meghan pulled over, I grabbed the sign, and we added a friendly reminder.

And then? The sign was repatriated.

Yes, we drove to their house and stuck it into their yard. I cannot tell you how hard we were laughing about this.

Our next stop? A church rummage sale that we’ve hit a few times with mixed results. Walking in, it didn’t seem too promising.

I picked up a couple of books and Meghan got a jacket, then went back to dig through the stuff outside. It was there that Meghan found one of the day’s best scores, an old wooden box marked with warnings about the explosives inside. A woman there said her father had been a scientist and it still had the paper mailing label from when it had been sent to him. Meghan purchased it for a whopping five dollars.

We then stumbled upon another church sale nearby — we’ve been to this one a few times and it is never very good, but we went in anyway. This time it seemed like there might be potential there, so we started looking around. A guy at a table full of scented candles started talking to us and giving us a sales pitch about why we should buy some. Just then Meghan looked up and pointed at a couch in the corner. “Is that guy sleeping?” Sure enough, a guy was lying there sleeping, and snoring — I hadn’t noticed until she pointed him out, but I’m not sure how I missed it. It was loud! “Oh yeah,” the guy at the candle table said. “He worked last night.” I was trying to figure out how that really explained anything, and whether I could possibly take a picture (or get some video!) without it seeming super weird, when he grabbed one of the candles and shoved it into Meghan’s face, urging her to smell it. At that point we decided to flee the premises.

I had a sale on the list nearby, but it had started on Friday and their sign looked kind of perma, so I wasn’t expecting much. But when we pulled up Meghan got excited, saying she’d been there before and it was an estate sale where they were slowly digging through the house, bringing out new items all the time.

While she chatted with the lady to see if they had gotten into the clothes yet, I went into the little shed, where they had housewares and other items set up.

I noticed this little sign about the same Falopy-Occupants (?!) being there since 1947 and reserving the right to refuse entries to unwanted persons — I can only imagine what kind of encounters prompted them to put that up.

I almost succumbed to the temptation of purchasing a large box of christmas wrapping and cards for $2 until realizing that I needed more of that kind of crap like a hole in the head. Meghan bought something here but I have honestly forgotten what it was.

We hit another antiquey sale where everything had ridiculous prices …

… and one where things seemed very pink.

Another sale had a really demented selection of rock t-shirts.

We also spotted this self-announcing dry erase board.

And finally we hit a sale that stretched out over a whole block — this was only half of it. It looked promising, but was not.

Our trunk actually had some cool stuff in it, but it was so bright and sunny out that the photo came out terrible! I had to tweak the contrast like crazy just so you could see anything, and you still can’t see much.

So to make up for that, let me share with you a dream that Meghan had last week. She told me that she dreamed that she and I had lived through some sort of disaster situation — everyone else seemed to be dead and we were trying to figure out what we needed to go out and gather to survive. As we were roaming around through the deserted streets, we saw another person in the distance! We approached cautiously. Any guesses who that other person turned out to be?

Yes. The two of us were alone in the world with … Annoying Jewelry Guy. Cue scream of apocalyptic horror NOW!

Meghan hit some sales last Friday. I don’t think she bought much, but she did see this amazing sign.

Sadly, their sale didn’t, um, perform as advertised, at least for Meghan and her friend. But they get high marks for hilarity!

I didn’t actually start looking at Saturday’s yard sale ads until shortly before we headed out. To be honest, I wasn’t in that much of a junking mood. Not until I saw a listing that I realized must be the same person/house as one of the most legendary sales we’ve ever hit: the woman who had over 1,000 pieces of vintage clothing priced at $3 each. We more than filled the trunk at her sale alone. Say no more, I am there!

We knew she wouldn’t have nearly as huge of a spread this time, but even so, we were all over it. We got there a bit early and she already had shoppers looking around. Meghan and I each started accumulating a pile of clothes — it was easy to go a little nuts since most items were a whopping $2.

Whereas the last one was a “getting out of the vintage reselling business” sale, this one was an actual moving sale. She had lots of books, housewares, and other fun stuff.

In addition to the clothes, Meghan got a fantastic vintage mobile and I purchased a vintage kitchen shelf — I have no idea what I’m going to do with this, but it is cool. I really have no business buying any furniture right now, but sometimes I just have a moment. I guess I’ll find a place for it, or else it will end up in our next yard sale.

The sale ja vu theme continued when we headed to our next sale. As we turned up the street I said “hey, is this that wacky multi-family sale we’ve hit here a few times?” The address seemed right, but that sale always had crazy elaborate signs (like the top one on this post), and we hadn’t seen any. But right when I had decided it must be a different sale after all, we spotted these women walking down the street.

If you can’t tell, that particular sign features Sloth from the Goonies … one of several amazing designs they busted out this year. Like this one!

“All proceeds from this yard sale go to ALF House” — hmmmm. And what’s this?

Definitely one for the yard sale sign hall of fame. That writing at the bottom? “IS the Goblin King. We just sell stuff.” Who can argue with that?

These people definitely know how to have a good time at a yard sale. And their stuff? Not bad at all.

I admired this amazing mirror with its exhortation to “Go To Church Every Sunday” — the inset revealed it had been provided by “Russell Towner, Graduate Masseur.”

At first Meghan was disappointed, since last time she’d been here she’d bought all kinds of great newer high-end clothes. We wondered if that person hadn’t joined in this time — then realized she was there and just getting her things unpacked! Meghan swooped on that (very politely), ending up with a bag full of shoes, clothes, and purses, and officially out of cash after just two sales. We hit the bank and made a snack stop, then moved on through the other sales in the neighborhood. At one of them, I noticed this older guy haggling over some items — he was wearing shorts and had tattoos on both calves which seemed to be names of antique/resale businesses. One was something like “Auction Wizards,” the other “Antiquing with Dave and Bill” (probably two completely different names, but I have already forgotten). I went and whispered for Meghan to check it out, but couldn’t get the nerve up to ask him about them. He seemed to have a bit of a competitive “I’m a pro” vibe (though I could have been projecting, based on the tats) and was also at our next stop, arriving in a truck with New York license plates. We started joking that he was on a big pickin’ trip and wondering where his film crew was. Then we decided to head into a different area. I promptly found (but did not purchase) this mysterious thing.

Next, a sale that looked good … at least from a distance. While Meghan stammered over an amazingly hideous green satin party dress, I drifted over to the troll n’ viking table. Uff da!

Our time at this sale was cut short, due to a woman carrying a wind chime all around the sale, making sure to shake it rhythmically for maximum annoyance value. She seemed not to even realize she was doing it, but it quickly became maddening and we had to flee.

Next, a sale which didn’t have much except for a $2 Judas Priest t-shirt. Meghan bought it and the guy told her, “Be careful about banging your head too much in that shirt.” She gave him a blank look, and he went on to clarify that it was a headbanging shirt. Um, thanks, man. I’m sure she’ll keep that in mind.

Sadly, after such an amazing start, things seemed to be fizzling out. After a few utterly boring stops we drove to an estate sale that sounded promising — first off, we almost didn’t even see it and then it ended up just being two small rooms, not the whole house like I’d thought. We then hit a sale in a basement that was in the process of being converted to a separate apartment. There were a bunch of cool books here — Meghan picked up a bunch, but I somehow restrained myself. Neither of us were tempted by this very large wall hanging.

There was one more sale I wanted to hit that had just opened up at 11, and whose ad had an possibly-intriguing, possibly-stoner vibe: “Hey Now – We’re selling STUFF.” All right, dudes! They had tons of CDs — all over the map, with a heavy local bent (like old fundraiser or live-at-some-long-gone-club compilations) and conveniently still in roughly-alphabetical order. At $2 each both of us had to grab a handful. After that we called it a day. And in my opinion, this is definitely the best trunk shot we’ve had in a while!