We were thrilled this week to get a hot tip about a juicy-sounding sale in our neighborhood! We got an email from a woman we know (who runs estate sales in town) tipping us off to a sale being run by two packrat guys who had moved in together and needed to pare down. It started at 10:00 and sounded great — phrases like “weird collectibles” were used — so we decided to try to get there right when it opened (or maybe a little earlier if it seemed cool). That left us an hour-plus to hit a few other sales on Saturday morning.

I’d seen a listing for an estate sale which sounded promising, so we headed there first. They were still getting set up and I wondered if I’d misread the ad and it hadn’t actually opened yet. Meghan asked, “When are you starting the sale?” The seller said, “The moment you guys got here, it started.”

It’s always exciting to be the first shoppers at a sale. There were some cute and cheap dishes outside and it kept feeling like it really had the potential to be great … but never quite got there. The sale continued inside the house and we took note of this sign by the sink.

By the time we left, more people were starting to show up and scour through the goods.

We made a snack stop and hit a few more unremarkable sales. Then it was getting close enough to 10:00 to head to the main event! The vast array of strange junk spread out on the lawn definitely piqued our interest.

Good god, there was a lot of stuff. Mostly small stuff, though they did have this lovely table and chairs.

Oh, that picture? It was priced at “$10,000 O.B.O.”

Thankfully, most of the stuff was cheap — it looked like they were using what we like to call “make it go away” prices. And some of that stuff … you could tell they really wanted it to go away.

Meghan recognized one of the guys and we introduced ourselves. It turned out they’re fans of the blog. They jokingly worried that we might talk smack about their sale. No way! Their stuff was so much fun to dig through. You truly never knew what you were going to find next.

There was really a little bit of everything. It reminded me of the kind of stuff we usually have at our sale … stuff that is wacky and entertaining, but do you really need to own it forever?

Though I’m not saying we’ve ever had items like these in one of our sales … then again, I can’t promise we haven’t. (To be honest, I can’t even remember all the oddball stuff that we have put through the yard sale catch and release program.)

But I can assure you that neither of us have ever owned a caged fake crow.

The sale went on and on, stretching all the way down the driveway.

In the back we found this sort of “office supply section” ….

… as well as a small rack of Hawaiian shirts and other clothing.

Meghan bought a few shirts and an old FFA jacket, and Karl picked up a box of old buttons (the pin kind, not the sewing kind) and some other odds and ends. I bought a vintage Seattle-themed pencil case and an old deck of playing cards put out by The Stranger (that will in fact probably end up in my next sale). None of bought a ton of stuff … but that sale got a solid thumbs up!

After we finished up there, we backtracked to a few other sales nearby. At one, all of their stuff was bad, but at least some was interesting-bad. (But definitely not worth-ten-dollars-bad).

Along these lines (i.e., “good luck getting someone to buy that”) we soon encountered this extremely large and trippy hand-painted clock.

Then we went to a sale where the seller was wearing a Duran Duran shirt (that she’d presumably owned since the ’80s). Meghan asked if she wanted to sell it, sort of on a whim (to see if she could actually purchase the shirt off someone’s back). The woman said “Sure, for twenty bucks.” Yeah, not gonna happen. Karl and I did each buy a few records here. (No, not Duran Duran records.)

We decided to head to a new area. There was a sale that sounded good and ended up taking way too long to get to, between a couple of street closures and us getting decoyed by signs for non-existent sales.

It turned out to be a small estate sale … with big prices.

Next was a fundraiser sidewalk sale in a spot where we remembered going to to a sale maybe six or seven years ago (before this blog was even a glimmer in our eye).

Karl bought some CDs — while we were looking at them some woman sort of muscled her way in and started digging in the box right in front of us. Super obnoxious, especially when it wasn’t even anything that great.

Then we hit an estate sale, where our minds boggled at all the taped-off kitchen drawers.

They didn’t have a lot of stuff, but some of what they had was just plain odd. What in the world is up with this mug?

Outside on the porch we noticed this sign. Judging from the few random items there, I don’t think they really had to worry …

It was getting to be time to quit, so we decided to make our last stop on a block with ads for two separate sales. When we turned onto the street Meghan said, “This better not be that antique lady” — sure enough, one of them was this house where they have sales all the time and everything is priced like you’re at an antique mall. We drove past that one and went to the yard sale up the street. They were friendly, but had nothing we wanted to buy, or even take out of their free box.

And that was it for the day! I think I spent less than two dollars, but Meghan and Karl did their part to bring you yet another bountiful trunk shot …