Beautiful day in Ballard on Saturday with TONS of sales. I had put together a printout listing four pages of sales, and after four hours I don’t think we even got to any of the sales on the 3rd and 4th pages.

We met at my house at 8:30, had a quick bank run and started hitting some sales. This week we had not one but two guest stars — Karl and a new addition, Cathy. I hope that Cathy guest blogs, but this is questionable, since she was insanely hungover/still drunk from the night before.

I have to say that with the amount of sales, it wasn’t spectacular overall. I am not saying it was bad, but it just wasn’t AMAZING.

The first sale we hit was sort of “Mommy gets rid of her vintage.” They had some good stuff, but it didn’t really fit the folks selling it (like a Schlitz beer vest!). These folks seemed way too straightlaced to own anything not made by Baby Gap. As we got in the car to leave, one woman started hanging an old alphabet teacher’s aid in a tree. It looked cool and I yelled “I’m buying that” out the window of the car. One of the salers said “I just beat you to it!” Thwarted by a pregnant lady!

The next sale was way too hippie, and I don’t mind going to older hippie sales (aka REAL HIPPIES) but not hippies that like Phish — if you are even remotely close to my age and hippie, I know you aren’t going to have good stuff.

We went to a horrible rummage sale for the Ballard High Beavers Basketball team. It was the WORST!

Not even worth wasting time talking about how bad it was, because that is time that I can’t get back. In fact that team owes me 10 minutes and about 50 cents’ worth of unleaded.

A friend of Cathy’s was having a sale and this is when I sort of lost all reasoning and purchased an entire set of dishes. As I sit here looking at the four unopened boxes, I’m still not sure what happened. Let’s start by saying, I have absolutely no space for dishes. We don’t even have space for an extra coffee cup let alone a full set of dishes. I already have what I would call “Christmas dishes” or “fancy family dishes,” plus a full set of Fiestaware and a full set of Pomegranate Eclipse dishes.

So, I start asking questions about the dishes and the friend of Cathy’s is telling me how nice they are and how much money they are worth. I look at the back and I know that Limoges is good, so I talked her down from $50 to $45 and we filled the entire trunk in a matter of five minutes. When I called my boyfriend to tell him that “I might have purchased some dishes” his only response was “aw, fuck.” The dishes are Haviland Albany Limoges and I think I scored a really great deal.

Barry M. Later was having a yard sale. We have been to a few of his sales over the last three years and we usually don’t end up buying anything, but they are highly entertaining.

We hit a TON of sales over the course of the next two hours. I rarely ever grab stuff out of free boxes, but I found a crazy sea shell education toy, some scary sunglasses and some white ’50s pumps in different free boxes around Ballard. We also went to one sale which had a crazy amount of kewpie dolls, accompanied by the saddest looking seal ever.

It was a fun day, and we all ended up getting some good stuff.

I decided to check out an estate sale this morning. When I walked in, I thought it was going to be a dud. The family was running the sale and they weren’t very organized. They were still sorting through stuff and some rooms weren’t “open” yet. Nothing was priced and there didn’t seem to be that much. The main item of interest on the main floor was a huge collection of vintage salt shakers and small animal knick-knacks. I was wishing I’d had my camera because the sheer quantity of it was kind of fascinating.

I went into the dining room and the woman there said that the stuff in that room wasn’t for sale except for the stuff in the china cabinet (mostly teacups), and that the ceramic cat figurines were “taken.” (As you can imagine, I wasn’t sad about that.) I asked if there was more outside and she said “just some tools and stuff.” Then almost as an afterthought she said, “There are some things upstairs, but …” I was confused. “Can I go up there?” I asked, not sure what the deal was. “Yes, it’s just that the stairs are really steep.” I assured her I would manage and headed up.

The upstairs was one huge room and it was chaotic, with boxes piled up and stuff everywhere. A couple of guys were digging through corners in trance-like states. I started to look around and realized hardly any shoppers had been in there yet. I got all excited digging through an untouched closet, pulling out box after box with high hopes, but it was all random stuff like bills, saved greeting cards, or a bag full of shopping bags. Every time I thought I was on to something good, it was a dud, or something that would have been cool if it wasn’t kinda destroyed.

I poked around the perimeter of the room for a while and was just thinking it was going to be a total bust when I opened a small dresser drawer. Barkcloth! I grabbed the piece and under it were some vintage aprons. OK, now we are getting somewhere. I took my time pulling everything out of each drawer and soon had to get a box to stash everything in. I probably pulled out at least a dozen fantastic aprons (none newer than the ’50s) as well as some other interesting linens and fabric. My hands were starting to feel kinda crusty, but I had too much of an estate-sale-high on to really care.

Re-inspired, I surveyed the room and began my search-and-acquire mission in earnest. I moved a large sad teddy bear and found he was sitting on a barkcloth curtain. I cleared a bunch of empty shoeboxes off of a large chest which turned out to contain some chenille throws and vintage baby clothes. I found some t-shirts from the ’60s (or older?), an odd little firetruck toy, an old framed cat picture, some vintage unused decals, some small quilts, vintage baby blankets, more fabric, more linens, and other random things I’ve already forgotten about. I was pretty selective because I wasn’t sure how much they would want – I figured it would be on the cheaper side since they were so disorganized, but you never know, and I was starting to amass quite a pile.

Finally I had two overflowing boxes and I had been there for over an hour and I decided I’d better call it quits. I lugged my boxes down the treacherous stairs. “Oh, do you want more blankets?” they asked. I told them I had seen the others upstairs, but they said there were more in one of the downstairs rooms (which had opened up by this time). I really sort of just wanted to be done, but I went in, finding a few more things (including a demented yet cute old stuffed animal, which sort of looks like the vintage precursor to Ugly Dolls).

I was a little afraid about how much it was all going to cost. In my mind I decided that if it was $100 or less I would just pay it, but if it was more then I’d have to look back through and maybe take some stuff out. The woman poked through the boxes for about five seconds and said, “$30? Is that OK?” I managed to keep my jaw from dropping, and told her that was fine.

This trunk photo didn’t come out very well because it’s such a bright and sunny day, and a ton of the best stuff is buried. Still, you can get an idea of how much stuff I got, and let me assure you that it’s all pretty good stuff.

This was the most exciting sale I have been to this year!