Circle skirts and crusty phones

Posted by Jenny in Junk In My Trunk, Sale Tales | 14 Comments

We had a limited amount of time for sales on Saturday, but thought we’d get out for a quick run. Conveniently, our first stop was just down the street. I wasn’t sure if it would be that great, but the mention of multiple sellers getting rid of designer and vintage items sounded promising.

Meghan had remembered hitting a sale here before, but this time there were multiple sellers. They had some great stuff and a huge selection!

Glassware table

Poodle picture

Doggie napkins

They were just starting to bring out some racks of clothes — Meghan nearly screamed when she saw not one, not two, but three vintage Mexican circle skirts come out. She grabbed ’em all up quick and dug through the rest. I scored a very cool winter coat (not that exciting when summer has finally rolled around, but I’ll be happy in a few months) and a windbreaker with crazy patches on it. We contemplated buying these matching green jackets and wearing them around somewhere, but ultimately passed.

Three green jackets

The more I looked around the more I was picking up — Israeli boots, a Fiestaware butter dish, an apron made with Hawaiian fabric … I finally had to ask for a box. I had fully fallen into “sure, throw it in the pile” mode. Right after snapping this picture, I thought “hey, that lion is pretty cool” — into the box it went.

Vases, lion, tupperware

Meghan started getting rung up — it was a pretty slow process. While she was waiting, guess who showed up and started digging through the jewelry? Annoying Jewelry Guy! Apparently he started making weird and mildly pervy comments to her after spotting a pair of boots she was holding — “Oh, are those your go-go boots? Are you going to wear those with your go-go skirt?” I missed this whole thing, and I’m glad because I’m so skeeved out even thinking about it — not least because I have hardly ever heard him say anything other than “Got any jewelry?” I got in line to pay and one of the sellers came up saying “whose car is that?” Someone had blocked their driveway — one guess who the bad park-er was. When she asked him to move his car he was so odd about it and at first refused, then skulked away. When I finally had a chance to pay, Meghan started talking to some people she knew who revealed that they don’t call him Jewelry Guy, they call him “Ten-Dollar Guy” because they always see him make a huge pile of stuff at a sale and then say “How about ten dollars?” no matter how much the stuff was originally marked. He also attempted to buy the rings off of one of the seller’s hands. Have I mentioned we don’t like this guy very much? But not even his odd and obnoxious behavior could really dampen our sale high, and we both walked off in desperate need of more cash, but very pleased with our purchases.

Next was a “block sale” with only one sale (I couldn’t really bitch after pretty much doing the same thing at our last sale), and then an address that seemed vaguely familiar — egads! The sale at the creepy doll house is ON! Now, I don’t feel like my photo from last time truly conveyed the oddness of the doll display. Let’s have a close-up, shall we?

Creepy doll collection

Scurrying away from those dolls before they could come alive and suck up our souls, we went around to the back … passing this fountain on the way.

Horse fountain with duckie

I wasn’t sure what would be waiting for us back there. Dolls? Ax murderers? No … just a lot of junk.

Unwanted yard sale junk

Crap on yard sale table

Most of it looked like it had been stored away for a long, long time. Like this whole box of phones.

Box of crusty phones

And hey, remember Toughskins jeans? Well, they had some.

Toughskins

Do you really have to ask? We didn’t buy a thing here.

The next few sales were mostly duds. I was glad I didn’t need anything from this sale …

Yard sale mole trap

And I’m pretty sure that nobody needs any of these VHS tapes.

Too many VHS tapes

We hit a sale that hadn’t quite opened yet, and as we were walking up to check it out, two women came walking away shaking their heads and muttering as a warning “hamster balls.” Yeah, that looked like about all they had — we didn’t wait around for to find out more.

We made a quick snack break, then hit a sale where Meghan purchased this item (surely inspired by the Ballard Driving Academy skit from Almost Live).

Ballard Academy of Driving

Later I purchased a cool vintage thermos and a 1976 pamphlet called “How To Make Your Own Moonshine.”

One of our last stops was mostly kid items, but we spotted this sign. I knew that mentioning Antique Roadshow was probably a bad sign.

Collectible Items Are In The Back

Sure enough, it was CRAP. Worse, the seller forced us to listen to a verbal tour of all the craps, telling us how collectible her vases were (they looked like the kind that florists give you when you buy a bouquet, and that every thrift store is filled with) and trying to convince Meghan that some boring ashtray would be a great “decorative piece”, even when you don’t smoke. To be fair, I have seen ashtrays that could be considered decorative pieces. This was not one of them. We left muttering “more like Goodwill, here we come.”

And that was that for the day — we couldn’t resist spreading one of those purty skirts out in the trunk for you …

Junk In My Trunk 8-20-11

Possession is 9/10ths of the law

Posted by Meghan in Junk In My Trunk, Sale Tales | 6 Comments

Kid yard sale art

Of course we had to hit up sales, since it was National Garage Sale Day. When was this holiday created? I have no idea, but if we have National Talk Like A Pirate Day — why not.

Jenny and I made plans to meet at 8:30, hit a sale that started at that time, then do the usual get our bearings, get money and get a baked good. Our first sale was a group sale that we have been to the last three years. They make these pretty amazing signs that are different each year. We didn’t manage to take a picture this time but they were in the same basic style as this and this.

The problem with a group sale is when some folks are ready, some haven’t even unloaded their car. We were both grabbing stuff as they were still bringing more items out of the house, and even came back an hour and a half later and picked up a few more items. I was stoked to get a pair of Frye boots in my size for $7 and Jenny purchased a really cute winter coat for her daughter. The second time there I heard a guy say, “I am surprised no one purchased the Wii” — but I heard “I am surprised no one purchased the weed.” I mentioned this to one of the sellers, who laughed.

After that we went to a sale that seemed to only have three things: DVDs, Sci-Fi books and kitchen items. I know we have talked at length about scanners, but there is another type that gets on my nerves: a person that buys every single DVD or CD at a sale. The first time this happened, I had 2 DVDs in my hand and then heard that I couldn’t buy them, because they had already sold. What? If you don’t have it in your hands and it doesn’t have a sold tag on it. Hmmm…. This has now happened to me three times with the same woman (and also with another guy in West Seattle). It seems to be very similar to scanners, but Jenny feels like it’s less bad since they take everything, even the crappy stuff. I am mostly irritated if I want to buy a couple of DVDs or CDs for personal home use. This time, I had a DVD box set in my hands and heard “sorry, I just purchased that … ” Oh, hell no. I just said “Possession is 9/10ths of the law” and refused to hand the DVD over. In fact I just gave the seller the money and got into the car. After I bitched about this for about five minutes even I was sick of my own voice and I dropped it.

We stumbled upon this sign — hard to miss since they used a whole door.

Sale sign on door

The sale wasn’t that great, but at least it wasn’t ridiculously overpriced like the next one where they wanted $25 for crappy clothes.

Sale Inside

We hit up another sale that had a woman very carefully picking up each plate and then looking them up in a price guide book she had with her. It looked extra strange since she had bad eyesight, so she was putting the plates super close to her face and then the price guide super close to her face.

On the way to the next sale we had something happen that I can seriously tell you has never happened before: I accidentally drove into a cemetery. I know what you are thinking — “HOW???” This cemetery is very small and older, so there are no huge signs out front. It also has a small street that runs along one side, so when I whipped into the cemetery I thought I was on that street. Both of started cracking up at how absurd this was. I do some pretty crazy driving on occasion, but this took the cake.

After getting back onto a normal street we hit a very strange estate sale. It seemed like it was really a garage sale that they called an estate sale. The old guy that must have lived there had kept all his nails in old beer cans. Both of us picked up a few that we could call “pen cups for the office” — this led to trying to find places to dump out all the extra nails.

We decided to hit the Maple Leaf neighborhood sale — which by now we have officially taken off our list as being a “neighborhood sale.”

All Maple Leaf Garage Sale

11 sales is a couple blocks, not a neighborhood. The only exception would be if you lived in a town of 200 people!

One of our first stops wasn’t on that list, but had been advertised as a divorce sale. We have been to a few of these and I don’t recommend this. The vibe can be really bad. The first thing out of the woman’s mouth is “Who needs a wedding dress?” Let me just stop a second and say that this was the saddest wedding dress I have ever seen. It was made of that really horrible lace that 1980s prom dresses all seemed to use. Sort of like this monstrosity, but long and in a gross cream color. YUCK!

She did have a pair of shoes in perfect condition from the late ’80s that I remember seeing at the only shoe store in Omaha, Nebraska that was trying to bring interesting footwear to the mid-west when I was growing up. When I asked if she would go down on the price she said, “They are $5.” I just looked at her and said, “Yes, would you go down?” She mumbled something about it being early — sorry to break it to you lady, 11:30 isn’t early when it comes to yard sales. When we got into the car Jenny said “maybe she is getting divorced, because she had really bad taste.” OUCH!

At another sale I spotted this in their free pile and freaked out a little since I had one when I was growing up. Sadly this one was missing most of its pieces.

Barbie's Townhouse

We hit a few more sales, nothing really amazing, and then our last stop in the area was at the Eagles — the guy there started grilling Jenny about how much she knew about the Eagles, and probably would have tried to get us to join up if we’d stuck around longer.

Sale at the Mother Aerie

We hit a few more sales on the way back home, but managed to stay away from the Free Goddess Festival.

Free Goddess Festival

Over the course of the day we did see our share of strange and sometimes scary items …

Weird doll with ant farm

Bloom County fan art

Bev.

Orange panda

Poodle painting

Russian poster

Snooki costume & wig

And we ended up with a pretty good pile of junk in the trunk.

Junk In My Trunk 8-13-11

National Garage Sale Day

Posted by Jenny in Grab Bag | 4 Comments

Last night I dreamed that it was Saturday and I overslept by several hours, completely missing out on yard sales (and annoying Meghan). Seems extra-funny considering that apparently, the second Saturday in August — i.e., tomorrow — is “National Garage Sale Day”!

We were recently interviewed for an article which talks about this holiday, as well as other finer points of the yard sale experience. Here’s a snippet of the printed version (with our swanky bingo pic) — the full text can be found online here.

National Garage Sale Day article

Enjoy the article … and hope National Garage Sale Day treats you right.

A glass of Conoco Merlot to go with that SPAM?

Posted by Jenny in Junk In My Trunk, Sale Tales | 5 Comments

Buy Our Stuff

Last weekend was gorgeous and I had a list of more sales than we’d possibly be able to hit, all in or near our neighborhood. As we set off to hit the ATM around 8:30, Meghan saw a sign and made a sudden turn. “Oh, that one doesn’t start until 10,” I said after checking my list. But they seemed pretty close to set up, so we stopped and checked it out. Having first crack is always nice and especially when it results in a good score … I picked up a pair of worn-once-or-twice Fluevog shoes in my size for $10! Less excitingly, I also purchased a sealed package of rechargeable batteries. Meghan got a white Le Creuset dish and some other things that I’ve forgotten — I think Karl scored here too.

Feeling a little high on that first stop, we got some cash and then drove to our next sale, which turned out to be a big spread in back of an apartment building.

Sale of former antique-mall sellers ...

As we looked around it seemed like something good had to be in there … somewhere.

Yard sale oddities

But after seeing a few too many old price tags (from the items’ former residence at an antique mall) and realizing they wanted similar prices on most of the stuff, the possibility of a great score seemed to fade.

Clocks n' stuff

Karl bought a few items and I did laugh at this magazine cover, but ultimately left it behind.

Avocations

Also at this sale: a very dreadlocked dog. I couldn’t resist taking a quick pic.

Rasta dog

Our next few stops were bad, including accidentally ending up at a sale we’d hit a few weeks ago in the rain when it was all tarped up — we decided to pass on a second round. Then as I was navigating us to the next stop on our list, we couldn’t believe it — it was this house we’ve long been obsessed with, with a permanent, mildly creepy doll display in its windows!

Dolls in windows

We got so excited at the idea of getting a closer look at this place … until we realized the signs out front said “Garage Sale Cancelled.” We can only dream that they’ll try again some other day.

We made a few boring stops, then found a sale with a bounty of interesting goods: records, CDs, books, magazines … and some vintage items. But not the type of vintage items I’m ever going to be looking for.

Vintage baby food

We have seen plenty of ancient food before, but ancient baby food?! They also had some very old SPAM.

Ancient spam, baby, and corn popper

After this we ventured into a different area, where we spotted some signs … we followed them for a few blocks, and then came to this.

Where is the sale?

Not sure if you can tell from the pic, but those arrows are pointing at each other. Where is the sale?? We laughed, then spotted it as we turned the corner — a janky-looking display in an industrial garage. (We didn’t bother to stop.)

As we moved along we were finding nothing but duds. With a few weird items to keep it interesting. Like, what the hell is this?

What is it?

I dared to pick it up and discovered it was a scarf.

Another item we laughed at (for its dated packaging) was this.

Touch & Sew

Perhaps the strangest thing we encountered was this bottle of Merlot … from Conoco. Is that regular or unleaded?

Conoco Merlot

We were starting to feel like we needed another good sale and then we found two sales in front of a newer townhouse building — these generally tend to be bad.

Birds and dogs

But as we dug into the items, we found some great stuff. I grabbed some vintage wallpaper — after our recent wallpaper freakout I was hesitant, but this stuff was old and in good shape. I limited myself to the one roll I liked best until I discovered they were 25 cents a roll — then I grabbed all the others that were halfway decent. Meanwhile, Meghan was looking through the shoes and clothes and amassing quite the pile after discovering the woman was about her size and had some great stuff for cheap — Camper boots for $5, anyone? I grabbed a few t-shirts, although I passed on this one.

03687 Days

We probably should have ended on that note, but of course we had to make one more stop. It was a multi-seller sale with a lot of stuff. The first thing we saw when we got out was this art display.

Art at yard sale

Um … that purple and blue one in the background … is that … uh …

Suspicious painting

Oh, dear.

We should have just turned around and gotten back in the car. The only thing we purchased here were some homemade cookies and they were terrible.

And that was it … most of our stops were pretty bad, but the good ones let us fill up the trunk and then some.

Junk In My Trunk 8-6-11

You mean this moped?

Posted by Meghan in Sale Tales | Comments Off on You mean this moped?

I am not that used to going out to sales alone anymore, since I usually have someone with me. I don’t mind going, but figuring out the addresses while driving gets me a little turned around. The upside is I can leave when I want or not go at all or drive around in circles and no one cares.

Pole full of signs

This weekend was the Crown Hill Neighborhood sale. Some years it’s been really good, some years not so great.

Happy shoppers

As less old people live in our part of town and more families move in, they have less old/good stuff and for lack of a good way to put, more disposable goods. When I say disposable, I mean items that come into your home from Old Navy or the dollar store for a year and then end up at Goodwill.

Driveway sale

The first good sale was a woman that honestly I can’t tell if she is a picker or collector, but I have been to her sale a few times. This time around she and her guy planned to move, so she was really unloading.

Pile of clothing

There were piles of clothing, and the book sellers had stacks going — this is what the books looked like after they left.

Boxes and bags

I picked up a few things for a whopping $6. She told me that if I came back on Sunday at 3:00, everything left over would be free. She hadn’t really finished unloading the entire garage, but I knew I could be there all day if I waited around.

The next street of sales I hit had this nice sign.

Traffic circle sale sign

But once I turned, then I saw a ton of caution signs on their street about kids playing. I had a woman screaming at me to slow down, “KIDS ARE AT PLAY HERE!” First of all, I am going 5 miles an hour. Second, there aren’t any children currently playing on your street. Third, you are standing in the middle of the road and I am not going to hit you (I did think about it). After that I didn’t want to buy a fucking thing from this family or her neighbors. I am not trying to be a total jerk, but I could barely go a slow enough speed to have my car stalling … it wasn’t like I was flying along at even 20 miles an hour.

I was also getting a little miffed about the overall quality of the sales, plus that interaction about my driving bugged me enough that I just picked a new area to hit. Blue Ridge has a yearly sale at a different time, but it’s close enough, so I drove over and found this funny little sale.

Sale sign with umbrella

Her sign was great and I picked up some really nice design magazines that I would never pay $7 for on the newsstand. She had some other nice items, but not really my style.

I thought I would just wander around and stopped at a sale where the woman was a lawyer who had just lost some weight and of course her old size is my current size. She had nice taste and the tags were still on most of her clothing. I picked up a few items, including a really nice $300 suit with the tags still on for $30. I rarely ever have to dress like that for work, but the suit is really pretty.

All these tutus at the next sale made me sad that Jenny wasn’t with me, since they seemed like something her daughter would love to have in her selection of dress-up clothing.

Ladder full of tutus

The next sale was at a huge ranch-style ’50s house. I remember buying records here many years ago. They had a nice display of tables with vintage dishes –- not that I’m allowed to buy dishes.

Tables in driveway

I stopped at another sale to looked at this 70s moped.

Yellow moped

I was taking a photo of it for my husband. I had my hand on the seat and the man that we like to call “furniture guy” walked right past me and asked the price. Before the owner could say anything I said “Oh, do you mean the moped that I am currently looking at?! You mean this moped?” He became sheepish and skulked off.

I did call my husband and he almost purchased it, but couldn’t get the guy to come down from his $200 price for a moped with no title that hadn’t been running in over 15 years. I went to a few more unremarkable sales and ended up calling it quits around 11:30.

Owl art and scary clowns

Posted by Jenny in Junk In My Trunk, Sale Tales | 10 Comments

How do you get to the point where making owl art out of any possible material seems like a great idea?

Dried bean owl art

Really, dried beans? Hmmm. How about pinecones?

Pine cone owl art

These were at an estate sale we hit on Saturday. Along with many other questionable items.

Found a peanut

There was more out back …

Outdoor swinging chair

… including this terrifying pair of clowns.

Open-mouthed clowns

A friend of mine asked if they were clown glory holes. There’s a phrase I wish I’d never heard.

This sale was (obviously) not much of a winner, but Meghan did pick up a great pile of vintage sewing patterns. We’d also both grabbed some clothes, but had to put them back when it turned out they weren’t part of the “$2 unless marked” section after all. The people running the sale had used the worst price stickers ever — apparently our items had all been priced, but the stickers drifted away. (I did notice a bunch of $10-and-up price stickers scattered around the floor and walls.) I ended up buying a furry fuchsia hat (which truly was $2) and a demented-looking contraption: the Decoregger.

Decoregger

It wasn’t a big deal not to find much here, because we had both already gone a little nuts at a moving sale — we hadn’t seen an ad for it but were lured in by their jaunty signs.

Wet but jaunty sign

Yes, that is rain. Can we not talk about it? Seattle’s summer has been … challenging.

The sellers were a really nice couple who were moving to New York and had recently closed a home-decor type of store. They were selling a bunch of its groovy leftovers, at way-cheaper-than-retail (if still higher-than-your-average-moving-sale) prices.

Mysterious couple

Among the items: many rolls of unused wallpaper.

Wallpaper galore

This wasn’t vintage stuff — it was newer rolls from schmancy design companies like Ferm Living.

Yummy wallpaper

I love this kind of stuff (even though I have no practical need for it) and I knew that if I really started picking stuff up it could get bad. I kept circling around to the boxes, starting to look, then walking away. Eventually I gave in and bought a few of the smaller rolls with patterns I really loved. Meghan bought a few as well, plus a bunch of other miscellaneous items. As we drove away she realized she sort of wanted another roll and did something I don’t think we’ve done before: drove back to the sale and asked if she could do an exchange! They took back the storage boxes she’d purchased and let her have another roll instead.

Most of the other sales we hit were pretty blah. The only thing worth mentioning was that we got boxed in by a truck while trying to drive away from one sale and Meghan was inspired to sing a song to its driver (not that he could hear us): an upbeat little ditty with the lyrics, “It’s all about you — other people don’t matter!” I’m sorry there’s no audio of that gem.

Then at our last sale of the day, what did we find but the counterpart to last week’s “World’s Greatest Wife” mug!

World's Greatest Husband

It would be great if somehow those two end up together, but I sure don’t want them in my house.

All in all, we didn’t buy much, but we were pretty happy with what we got.

Junk In My Trunk 7-16-11

The customer always comes first

Posted by Jenny in Junk In My Trunk, Sale Tales | 8 Comments

Last Friday I saw an ad for something claiming to be a 75-family sale right near my house. I decided to swing by in the afternoon and it turned out to be a church rummage sale — really bad, but at least I got a picture of this mind-boggling mug.

World's Greatest Wife

That has got to be a contender for “worst art ever to appear on a commercially produced mug.” How does that even happen?

Saturday I headed out with Meghan and Karl for the first time in a few weeks. One of our first stop had this wagon full of records.

Record wagon

Karl dug a small pile out of there. Meghan made a couple of small purchases and as she was putting them in the car, noticed a vintage child-sized metal shopping cart priced at $5. She pretended to think about whether she really needed it, but I think it was love at first sight. She did mutter something about possibly receiving divorce papers once her husband saw it in the house.

We made a couple more stops and then pulled up to a sale with a bunch of great-looking vintage items. Meghan yelled, “I want those bowls!”

Mmmm, vintagey

They would have been hers, except for their crazy price — I can’t remember what it was, but almost everything at this sale was expensive. The exception was a box of shot glasses marked at fifty cents each. Karl and I pulled a couple out and the guy made some comment about how we should see all the ones he wasn’t letting go. Then for some reason he told us about one of his favorites, a Mustang Ranch souvenir shot glass reading “The Customer Always Comes First,” which he claimed he wouldn’t let go of for his life. He told us he found it at an antique mall, and I accused him of lying about that.

As we continued onward we found some wacky holiday decor …

Crinkly plastic holiday decor

Flags galore

… and a whole mess of Santa hats that someone had decided would best be displayed in a tree.

Tree full of Santa hats

Another sale had a lot of wacky stuff. Meghan found some post-it notes labeled with swear words which were pretty awesome, as well as some great vintage clothes. After talking with the seller she figured out she’d been to a previous sale at the same house seven or eight years ago, and scored a bunch of clothes there too. None of us bought these odd foot candleholders, though … or the accompanying, um, paraphernalia.

Feet and paraphernalia

We saw some creative sign repurposing as we made the rounds.

Beginning Sale Lessons

Sale sign with beehive

Then there was a neighborhood sale that took forever to get to and turned out to be so-so. Driving away we saw their sign — it looked like the tiniest sign ever, but we realized the real sign must have been taped on and fallen off. I decided to continue what seems to be an occasional trend of altering yard sale signs, mostly because it cracked me up imagining that someone would drive by and think this sign was for real.

World's tiniest yard sale sign

Not long after that, we drove past this.

Hydrant with hat

I have seen yarn bombing before, but this is the first time I have seen a fire hydrant with a hat … we had to take a picture.

The day sort of started to go downhill. From interesting but ultimately undesirable free items …

Free items on tablecloth

… to the jankiest moving sale sign ever …

Mo Sale

… to a tooled leather clock …

Tooled leather clock

… to a life-sized Hobbit stand-up.

Hobbit standup

We took an extended snack break, then followed some Burma-Shave-esque signs down the street to a yard sale … which completely sucked.

All sales final :)

We didn’t want to end on that note, so we veered over to one last sale, whose ad had been interestingly wacky. (Pair of moose-antler hats! Dinosaur-shaped cake pan!) They seemed pretty cleaned out by the time we got there. I’m not sure it really would have been all that better earlier, anyway. At least I spotted this painting — it looks more like a chortling space alien than the Dalai Lama.

Free Tibet

By the end of the day, I had only purchased a few small items. Meghan and Karl had some interesting stuff in the trunk, but you can’t see much of it here. But get a load of that shopping cart! Can’t wait for that to be filled up with beer and wheeled around at some future barbecue.

Junk In My Trunk 7-9-11

Grumbling is $1 extra

Posted by Jenny in Sales We've Had | 7 Comments

Film noir yard sale

Over the years we have held plenty of yard sales (many of them predating the blog). It seems like there are a few things we can always count on …

  • We will stress out about possible weather issues.
  • We will be getting set up right up until the last minute.
  • Some early bird shoppers will act like jerks and piss us off.
  • We will have a lot of stuff, much of which is making its way through the yard sale catch and release program.
  • Meghan will have more stuff in the sale and will make more money than I do.
  • We’ll be amazed that a couple of really cool things never end up getting purchased.
  • As the day wears on we’ll start shoving more and more items into a free pile on the curb in the hope that it will all go away.
  • We will both crack up a lot and have a good time.

Stuff for sale

Our sale last Saturday pretty much fit that model. In a new twist, I actually tried to organize a block sale on my street — we only ended up with three confirmed houses, and then one of them had to back out a couple of days before the sale. Despite my misgivings about whether two houses really counts as a block sale, I listed it that way on craigslist and some of our signs — after all, it was really three households’ worth of stuff if you count Meghan bringing her stuff over. And there were a bunch of other sales in the neighborhood, so I hoped we’d get some good traffic.

Setting up

On Friday I made some signs, with help from my daughter and the neighbor’s daughter. It ended up raining on Friday evening, so we couldn’t put signs up that night. (Saturday came through with dry weather, if a bit cooler and cloudier than we would have liked.) Meghan and I got up extra-early to go put up signs. There didn’t seem to be quite enough, so I grabbed a bunch of paper and a huge marker and we ended up doing more signs in the car as we went along, following the time-honored format of “SALE” in huge letters, an arrow, and little else. (Then a few hours into the sale, I found a whole separate pile of signs I’d forgotten making. Oh well …)

Picture gallery

Around 8:00 we went back and started dragging stuff out. Of course we had a few early birds. When they pulled up, we’d politely say we weren’t ready yet; some of them were cool, some of them were jerks. Of course the Annoying Jewelry Guy that we’ve mentioned here before was one of the earliest. I took great pleasure in telling him “NO” when he asked if we had any jewelry. Meghan got into some altercation with some other guy — I didn’t hear the whole thing, but when she told him we weren’t ready yet he started ranting about how it’s not illegal for him to sit and wait in his car. He eventually gave up and drove away and by about 8:50 we figured we were set up enough to let people shop.

Shoppers peruse the goods

We didn’t have the early crush of shoppers that we sometimes see — with so many sales going on I think people were pretty spread out as far as what their first stop would be. For the first hour or so it was a steady but manageable stream. After that we had some lulls, but most of the time we had people shopping. Most of them were friendly and we had quite a few friends stop by to hang out and/or buy stuff (or take stuff we forced on them for free). My neighbors had a smaller spread but they sold almost everything they put out and seemed pretty happy with how it went.

The catch-and-release activity was pretty intense. Remember the estate sale with the cellar full of old wine? Meghan decided to let her 1958 bottle go.

Wine and other detritus

I told her if it was still there in a couple of hours we’d have to crack it open and pour a glass. It’s probably a good thing that someone came along and purchased it as an oddball gift for her father. She also bought a Vera tablecloth and told me some wacky story about one of Vera’s relatives, a butch lesbian musician with a house full of Vera stuff that doesn’t quite seem her style.

Spread of stuff

A while later Meghan noticed a book scanner doing his thing on our book pile. She made a comment about how she wasn’t really into having people use scanners at the sale and he snidely asked, “Well, do you want me to leave?” Without missing a beat she said, “Yes, I think I would.” He skulked away quietly. A few hours later (when anything halfway decent had to be long gone) another guy started scanning, so we started BOOPing and BEEPing at him like Meghan and Karl had done a couple weeks back. Next time we have a sale we are going to put our price stickers right over the bar codes on all the books and CDs.

I have to say that Meghan was in fine form all day. Shortly after telling the scanner to leave, some guy came along wanting to get a deal on one of Meghan’s items — she said she couldn’t lower the price on that particular item, and he made some crabby reply. She told him grumbling was gonna cost him an extra dollar. I think he ended up paying the stickered price.

A few people did ask for ridiculous discounts (offering $1 for something priced at $8, or complaining over items priced at a quarter), but we did give a lot of deals on stuff that was already priced very reasonably. I gave a couple discounts that I sort of regretted later (especially on one of Meghan’s few unpriced items when she was out getting coffee — I felt bad about that), but all in all I was happy to make things go away.

And of course, there were some items where seemingly no price was low enough.

2 Ski Racks

These Hefty garbage bags with the Mobil gas log on them didn’t go either — we thought for sure someone would grab ’em for the novelty value.

Hefty Garbage Bags - by Mobil

And most of the vintage fabric pieces were still left at the end of the day.

Bin o' fabric

We also kept thinking someone would need to own this square dance sign Meghan had decided to part with. I decided if it was still there at the end of the day I’d grab it — it’s now sitting in my office.

Square Dance For Fun

My friend Pat showed up and I gave him the “My Chinese Wife” book I’d purchased with him in mind way back in May of last year. Our friend Irene was with him and she purchased a few items, including a wireless electronic rabbit that wiggles its ears and tells you the weather or some shit like that. Meghan had purchased this at a sale some time ago — I could swear we blogged about it, but I can’t find the post anywhere.

Dog and rabbit

Before she left I talked her into taking one of the two punch bowl and cup sets I had in the sale. (I have not served punch in something like eight years.) As she walked away she joked about having to go and take a picture of the stuff in the trunk — I laughed, but then later that day she sent this!

Junk in Irene's Trunk

Our junk in someone else’s trunk = awesome. Especially with all that quality photo-styling.

And maybe I’ll end this post with a few of our own trunk shots — featuring some of the items that we sold here, back when we first bought ’em. Here’s some of that vintage fabric, black and white snakeskin box, My Chinese Wife, the bottle of wine, one of the framed pictures, another framed picture (the one with the cows), and the round lamp (seen being held by a shopper in one of the pics above). Plus, I found three or four other trunk shots with items we sold but hadn’t photographed. When we say we do the yard sale catch and release program, we aren’t messing around.