Jenny and I tried to hit some sales on Friday, even though it was rainy and cold. After looking through the ads we found a total of three sales in our area. Eh, we ended up getting breakfast instead.

Saturday turned out to look much more promising, including a block sale directly behind my house. Most of the houses there didn’t even seem halfway ready for a 9:00 sale when we came by at 8:45. I did manage to pick up a couple of Votivo candles for a dollar each from the family that lives directly behind me.

We headed to an estate sale in Olympic Manor where they were giving out numbers, and ended up as #10 and #11. When the guy working the door started talking about no big purses and how everyone needed to take their coats off, I had a flash back to the sale we hit a few years ago that we had to take our shoes off for. There is no way I will ever take my shoes off again for a sale!

One of the first things we saw was this riding costume with the fox mask. Directly next to it was a early ’60s prom dress, displayed with a photo of the woman wearing it at her prom. The price? A whopping $175 … good luck!

This was the sale of the smalls. Pretty much the whole sale was shelves of small stuff. The woman was a crazy collector and everything seemed to have a theme. Dogs, Bugs, Horses, Quilts. Add in the freaks with their loupes, all talking about what this item is worth and what is old and what isn’t. Ehg. This shit gets old really fast. We both managed to get a few cool items.

We went on to a sale in a woman’s garage and it was the most boring sale, but it’s worth noting just because a woman drove by and started yelling, “You’re blocking the driveway!” She said it again, really loud. There was a car parked in front of the driveway where the sale was happening, but the odd thing is she wasn’t trying to come to the sale, it wasn’t her driveway, so why did she even care? Both Jenny and I talked back to her while the woman having the sale was chuckling.

We headed off to something called the St. Margaret of Scotland Parish Yard Sale, Car Show and Polish Festival. We ended up being a little misdirected and went to a completely different church sale across the street. This turned out to be not actually a church sale, but a benefit for someone who had cancer and the church had offered up their parking lot.

It had tons and tons of books, most of them pretty good. The flip side was that nothing was priced — they said “pay what you want.” I don’t mind making an offer, but it’s a little loaded when it’s a benefit for someone that you don’t know. We each left there with a box of stuff, and they seemed happy with our donation.

We crossed the road to hit the Polish festival and it was just bizarre. Two tables of rummage sale items, tables set up for food, and we didn’t see one car that could have been considered as “car show” worthy, with the exception of three guys on Harley Davidson bikes.

The Queen Anne neighborhood had a huge block sale that had been advertised as 30+ homes. At 11:30 we didn’t have that high of hopes, but there were sure a lot of people making the rounds. One of the first sales we hit had a huge table of beakers and glass stoppers.

On another table were a bunch of old food and spice containers. Some of them were really great.

I was tempted by an old Ovaltine container, but when I opened it up it looked a portion of the 1958 classic The Blob had been contained in a jar. SCARY.

At one sale there was a lemonade stand set up which also offered comics at 25 cents. Jenny purchased one of these just because she thought it was cute that the kid was so enterprising (although her mom was the one actually running the stand). She was pretty entertained trying to read it and figure out what was going on. It helped when she figured out that “Monopile” was supposed to be “Monopoly.”

We hit a basement sale whose sign advertised “kiddie courture,” antiques, and more. This sale sucked at a new level. Not everything old should be considered an antique, and just because you can sew doesn’t mean you should.

The 30-house sale stretched over about eight blocks, and since it wasn’t raining we had a nice walk. The sales were pretty picked over, but we did get to see some really great houses. Finally, we raided a free box that was next to our car right before we drove off.

It turned out to be a pretty good day.