The annoying side of the basement sale

Posted by Meghan in Hey Salers, Sales We've Had | Comments Off on The annoying side of the basement sale
24May2007

As Jenny mentioned, our basement sale was great. However, besides the guy showing up two days early, there were more than a few other annoying incidents that she neglected to mention. Most people were great, but some of them were driving us crazy with behavior such as the following:

  • People came an hour early (the line was huge).
  • Someone stole one of the planters in front of my house!
  • After we let 10 people in some folks demanded (and I mean verbally upset DEMANDED) to be let in, and when we told them “no” they threatened to leave. This was a farce, since we knew in the middle of March no one else is having a sale. (O.K. unless someone died, you got me there!)
  • Complained that it was too dark. It’s a basement, lady.
  • One confused woman lost her coin purse in our “free box,” then made me spend 20 minutes helping her look for it.
  • A couple wanted to purchase one of the book shelves, so I had to take everything out of it, moved it over by the door, and then they decided not to buy it.
  • Another woman had me help her out to her car with her stuff, she was old and I was fine with helping, but then she asked me to rearrange all of the items in her car for her (no, I’m not kidding).

Still, it was an awesome sale.

Our legendary basement sale of March, 2004

Posted by Jenny in Sales We've Had | 1 Comment
23May2007

In my last post I mentioned the sale we had (along with some friends) in Meghan’s basement. She was getting ready to move from the house she’d lived in for something like nine years into a pretty small apartment, so the bulk of the stuff was hers, but I definitely added a lot to the pile as well. Since it was in the basement we had plenty of time to get things set up ahead of time, so despite the multitude of junk, it was extremely well-organized. I remember looking around while we were taking pictures to use in our online ad and thinking “I would love to go to this sale!”

Having a sale in March is pretty great because the hardcore sale freaks are really starting to jones for good stuff by then and there aren’t a lot of competing sales. We had early birds lined up at least an hour before the sale opened (another advantage to an indoor sale: easy to keep people out until you’re ready.) We did have one guy show up on Thursday morning, the day our ad first ran (the paper charges the same for up to 3 days so we figured we’d get the most for our money). Meghan’s roommate wasn’t too happy when he woke her up. We grilled her about what he looked like so we could refuse to let him in if he showed up on Saturday, but we were never really sure who it was.

Without further rambling I will just show you the photos from the sale, which have been conveniently preserved in a nearly-forgotten corner of my computer!

The main area. (Having a cool-looking red and black painted basement adds to the groovy vibe, don’t you think?)
The legendary basement sale, March 2004

Miscellaneous bric-a-brac corner.
More basement sale

Art corner. I love that elephant.
And more basement sale

Kitchen stuff on the bar, plus a trio of body-part mannequins. For some unknown reason we didn’t get the light-up female torso in the picture very well. What a lost opportunity!
Still more basement sale

The clothes rack. This was in a walk-in closet room off the main area.
Closet of the basement sale

The rest of the closet. Accessories galore.
More from the closet

We got kind of creative making little dioramas in the built-in nooks.
Nook in the basement sale   More basement sale nooks

We piled a slew of random little stuff into this box.
Box of little stuff from the basement sale

I sort of like this little windowsill diorama.
Basement sale display

And finally, I leave you with a photo of this picture Meghan got rid of that cracked me up. Yes, it’s a boy squirting milk from a cow into a cat’s mouth. I bet it made whoever bought it very, very happy!
Prized basement sale item

On having a sale

Posted by Jenny in Hey Sellers | 4 Comments
17May2007

Lately (as you may have deduced) I haven’t been picking up a lot of stuff at sales. OK, I did have my crazy rummage sale moment, but other than that, I’ve been extremely restrained. Part of the reason is just feeling a bit overwhelmed by the amount of stuff in my house and wanting to pare down on what’s already there, let alone bring in more random crapola. Well, I don’t think I would ever say NO random crapola, but I’m trying to keep it to random crapola that I really like and/or think I will use. Although obviously I have my weak moments (um, stretchy exercise cord thing with missing videotape?!). And it’s easy to justify a questionable buy by saying, “Well, I can always put it in our next sale.”

In my halfhearted attempts to de-crap-ify I’ve been unearthing things in my office/storage room that I’d bought at sales years ago and never used or displayed: a portable lime green 60s typewriter, a slew of random paperbacks, orange and black ski gloves, a needlepoint flamenco dancer portrait purchased from Meghan’s mom at the last yard sale we had just last summer. All of this is going into a big pile destined for our next sale (probably sometime in June if we can get it together). It always feels good to get rid of things you’re not using, and there is something especially satisfying about seeing it go off to a new home with someone who’s excited about it. Of course, it’s nice to make a few bucks too. But I do get oddly sentimental about some of the things I end up selling at sales. Not in the “I’m sentimental about it, so you have to pay more than it’s worth” way that Meghan wrote about earlier, but more like “this thing is so strange and great, and even though I don’t need it in my life anymore, I still feel that it should be properly loved and appreciated.”

Meghan and I seem to have a sale about once a year. Sometimes it’s prompted by one of us moving, but just as often it’s just because we decide that it’s time to lighten the load (and clear room for future scores). I think we’ve had about six or seven sales together, often with other friends or relatives joining in under the theory “the more, the better.” We always try to have the kind of sales we like to go to: lots of stuff, priced to make it go away.

Twice, when our sales have been indoors and we could set up in advance, we’ve done a “pre-sale” on Friday night, by invitation only. It’s extra-great when your friends get first crack at the good stuff, and it’s a fun excuse to have people over. At one sale I was getting rid of a lot of glasses, so I had a special offer: if you bought a glass, I would make you the drink of your choice in that glass, but you absolutely had to take the glass home with you. I did get rid of a lot of glasses that night.

The biggest and best sale we ever had was in March of 2004 … it was in Meghan’s old basement, and I must say, it was epic. More on that in a future post!

West Seattle Junk

Posted by Jenny in Junk In My Trunk, Sale Tales | 1 Comment
15May2007

Junk In My Trunk 5/12/07

As Meghan reports below, we had a pretty good time hitting the West Seattle yard sales. I didn’t come away with any really amazing scores, but I did get a handful of interesting books and records and other small odd things. I saw some blue tiki head bookends which were kind of cool, but not $10 cool. This was at the same sale where Meghan picked up the barkcloth you can see in the trunk. There were different people selling stuff and the barkcloth woman had stepped out to get coffee. We waited for a few minutes and she still wasn’t back so Meghan eventually was able to get them to come up with a price, $2 a piece ($4 for the biggest one). When we got home she realized she had accidentally ended up with some not-so-great newer piece of fabric too – she wasn’t sure if she actually paid for that one or not, or how it even got into her pile.

I also had a few disappointing discoveries about some of my purchases: an exercise kit with stretchy cords you do stuff with – hey, it looked like it might be kinda fun – without the accompanying video telling you what to actually do (I did look in the box, and the case was there, but it turned out to be empty); a copy of Corduroy that had the last page torn out (discovery made while reading it to my daughter, who was totally digging it – whoops); and a pair of 80s plastic earrings that are apparently in the process of disintegrating. All of these things together cost $3.75, so it’s not like I’m out a lot of cash, but it did make me think I need to start inspecting my potential purchases just a little more closely.

It was fun to hit a part of town we don’t usually go to, even though our lack of familiarity with the streets made us waste a little more time figuring out where we were going. And we did have some memorable moments, like the guy who told us we were making him feel like he was in a porn movie because we asked him to “go down” on his prices. Plus the place we stopped to get coffee and treats was having a sale right in front of the cafe – we didn’t buy anything from their sale, but I appreciated the concept of the one-stop shopping!

West Seattle sale report

Posted by Meghan in Sale Tales | 1 Comment
14May2007

Jenny and I hit the third annual West Seattle community sale on Saturday. It was advertised as 100 homes and I would guess that we hit around 45 sales in a little under 4 hours. We left a little early for travel time and dealing with an area neither one of us go to very often.

We hit a very large cluster of sales right away and at the first few sales I purchased some Mexican jewelry, an old art deco metal box, books and a very large Japanese Pop Art print of a rabbit and a polar bear standing on top of a building.

We went to some real duds, including a really sad estate sale where the whole house had some of the most depressed items I have seen at a sale, including clown paintings! It didn’t have the spooky dead feeling, more the “just been carted off to an old folks home” vibe.

Pris Toff and Skate Trooper of the Rat City Rollergirls put on one of the sales that we went to, where I snapped this photo of the Dutch Masters cigar box labeled as
“Box of Things” – I thought it was a box of studs for a leather jacket.

Box of Things, $1

Sadly, there was nothing that we wanted to buy.

One way to get attention for your sale is the “wacky person” on the corner waving a sign and demanding for you to come to their sale. This will generally lead us both into hysterics.

Garage sale sign waver

The sale itself was just o.k. I purchased some old Neil Young and the first couple Talking Heads LP’s, but I had to wade though every Grateful Dead LP ever produced (with the exception of the only one any sane person might want to own, American Beauty). They also had mediocre rice crispy treats — how do you mess those up?! They only have 3 ingredients.

Taking the “Early Bird” concept to a whole new level

Posted by Meghan in Sale Tales | 1 Comment
8May2007

It’s not very often that I show up for a sale too early. I’ve mentioned this before, but we hate it when we have a sale and pickers show up 2 hours early – or in some cases I have had people come 2 days early. So, I try to be at sales a little early, but not what I would call RUDE early.

This weekend I was one week early to an annual area sale.

I became super frustrated after going to a couple of the places that the sale listing said would have maps, and of course I didn’t see any signs. It is my fault for not being able to read the listing correctly, but I also blame them listing their sale on Craig’s a week early. I wasted the first prime hour, was in an area of town that I don’t usually sale in and I hadn’t really printed out sales for the areas that I hit every week. In the end I picked a completely different area of town and thought I would make a large loop, hope to see signs, and if I needed to knock off early I would.

For $3 I purchased a department store glove display called Futurist Gloves with different compartments for different sized gloves. This is almost a good reason to buy the 50’s white and pink gloves you see at sales all the time. I have absolutely no clue what I’m going to use it for, but display stuff is so much fun that I’m sure I’ll figure out something.

Futurist Gloves

Overall the whole day wasn’t very notable. I purchased some books, a small fish vase, a really pretty 40’s gabardine woman’s suit, and a smelly candle that I talked a woman down from $4.

The high and low of my Saturday sales came later in the day. We went to an area that I don’t usually sale in, but she had posted her sale as the “mother of all yard sales”. The house was pretty picked clean, but in one of the bedrooms I found a large box of Sassy magazines. She was asking 2 for 25 cents, and I was thinking of buying them to see if I could re-sell them and in the process look over the magazine that I really loved in my formative years. I am not sure if it didn’t feel right or I just didn’t want more magazines in my house, but I decided not to buy them.

A few hours later I was checking my email and thought that I would look up what some past auction on Ebay had gone for and I was shocked by some of the prices. Some issues had gone for around $40 each! Jeez, I was kicking myself. I called my boyfriend to moan about it and he just happened to be working a few miles from the sale. He was able to purchase the remaining issues for $3 about an hour before she was getting ready to end her sale.

Embrace Your Inner Caveman

Posted by Meghan in Junk In My Trunk, Sale Tales | 3 Comments
1May2007

Decrepit Yard Sale Sign

On Saturday I ended up half-assing sales and started out super late, something I rarely do. At 10:00 I figured I would go to a few sales near by and call it a day.

The first sale was an old lady Eagles Rummage Sale less than a block from my house — their sign was on the pole right outside our front door, so I was hoping the yard sale gods might be telling me something.

Wrong! That guy that I tossed the garbage into his car last year was there. He was looking over my shoulder, mumbling under his breath about the sale.

The sale was mostly filled with modern clothes that only a hipster grandma would wear (aka the sparkle blouse or the crazy holiday sweater), some dreadful cookbooks, and trashy 80’s romance novels. It was pretty much a dud. I purchased a pair of purple shorty boots to try on ebay and some men’s stay press 60’s shorts. As you can see from the photo, it was mostly crap (does anyone really need your used ice cube trays?)

Pathetic sale

The next sale did bring one of the better signs I have ever seen at any sale:

Embrace your inner caveman

I did buy something that surprised me a little today: SUPPLEMENTS! A woman doing one of the sales today sells vitamins, and was selling anything about to expire for 25 cents. It does seem like I might have had a lapse in good judgment, but they are all safely sealed — how could it hurt me, right?

I went to about 15 sales — nothing earth shattering. My trunk wasn’t very full, but I didn’t spend very much either. There’s the box of vitamins.

Junk In My Trunk 4/28/07

My favorite rummage sale

Posted by Jenny in Junk In My Trunk | Comments Off on My favorite rummage sale
1May2007

Junk In My Trunk - 4/25/07

I stumbled upon this rummage sale last year (on a Thursday!) and freaked myself out by spending over $150 … mostly clothes, lots of them destined for resale (but I sort of went crazy and ended up buying a lot of things which no one wanted and I ended up donating). I heard it was coming up this year and wondered … would it be good again?

Indeed. I was more restrained this time and only spent $92, including $15 for the framed Miro poster (maybe overpriced, but I was influenced by just having seen something similar at another sale priced much higher, so I decided to go for it). Lots of clothes again, a handful of books, and I think that was it. After I paid I realized I’d skipped the jewelry so I went back in to browse but I was too vegged out to really care at that point, so I just bought $3.00 worth of pastries (love those church-lady baked goods!) and called it a day.

I thought I’d have some good stories about the crazed competitive freaks who’d started lining up an hour and a half early, but everyone seemed rather well-behaved. Yay!