Meghan blogged about the amazing vintage clothing sale — MAN was it great! The four of us (Karl, Leslie, Meghan, and I) were all flying high after dropping off our spoils and hitting the bank to restock our cash supplies. After a quick coffee stop we headed up to the Olympic Manor neighborhood sale, not long after the 9:00 starting time. One of the first things we saw was this festive display.

Olympic Manor sales can be really great, but a lot of them are just new boring crap. Or in some cases, new and kind-of-fascinating-yet-not-at-all-desirable crap.

We made the rounds for a while, finding mostly things we didn’t want. I was thinking of “Got any jewelry?” guy when I saw this array of fake Chanel jewelry, artfully arrayed (for some inexplicable reason) on the rung of a stepladder.

I think Meghan might have been the first one to actually make a purchase … when she found these crazy star-spangled ski pants.

I was so stunned by those that I almost missed this gigantic Lego wall in the same garage. (I wonder if they had to put that sign up after getting too many inquiries?)

One sale I was excited to hit was the final occurrence of an estate sale we went to a couple months ago — they had held several sales, emptying out the house section by section, and were now unloading the very last of it.

There was still a lot of stuff left … like this box full of furry critters!

There was also a free pile.

It wasn’t that great (though Leslie did grab that freaky book), but it was exponentially better than the free pile at the house next door.

I think we all ended up buying stuff at the estate sale, although hell if I can remember what I got. Meghan bought two quilts for $10 apiece, and Leslie picked up a somewhat disturbing doll. She excitedly told us that it’s a Vogue Brikette — famously used as “Talky Tina” in that creepy episode of the Twilight Zone.

Most of the streets of Olympic Manor are only wide enough for one car to drive down at a time, and it was getting so jammed up that driving around making us crazy, so we moved on to other sales. This one didn’t look very promising.

Meghan said we should skip it, but Karl and Leslie were already out of the car heading inside. I paused to take one more picture of the desolate-looking exterior.

When I walked in, the sellers were giving someone a price for something … then one of them looked at me and said, “And that’ll be twenty-five cents for that picture you took of our sign!” I was a little flustered, but explained that we have a collection of yard sale sign photos. This is actually true, and I figured they didn’t need any more details than that. Their sale was completely fruitless (Meghan’s instincts are almost always right on these matters) and as our crew quickly started filing back out towards the door, I fished out a quarter and put it on their table. They were amazed and tried to make me take it back.

As we got back into the car, a girl pulled up in front of us and got out of her car, heading to the sale. Meghan leaned her head out the window and quietly said, “Don’t do it.” The girl looked at her questioningly and Meghan said, “Don’t go in. Really. It’s bad.” We have tried to warn people away from horrible sales before, but they never seem to believe us. This was the first time the person realized we were really doing them a favor and just drove away.

After a few more unremarkable sales we hit a church rummage sale, which looked like it would be a bust, but turned out to be all right. They had a pretty fun book selection.

We hit some more sales, then went to one that had advertised as having funky vintage clothing. It looked great and Meghan got excited thinking it was a sale she had been to before where she scored.

Sadly, their prices were perversely high. I saw a tag for $75 on one item and was thinking it couldn’t be the real yard-sale price, but it was! Most things were a bit less … like $20. That just wasn’t going to cut it, especially when we’d gotten all those great clothes for $3 each just a few hours earlier.

A couple more stops brought us to another sale with higher-than-normal prices, but it seemed somewhat justified since she had super high-end stuff. I’m sure a lot of things had already been purchased, but there were some cool items left. Meghan purchased a pair of purple suede Manolo Blahnik pumps for $40, which seems like a pretty killer deal … especially if they actually fit her. They are about a size too big and she was talking about trying to make them work with an insole. I think she may be in denial about the realities of shoe sizing, but I hope I’m wrong and that she can make them work. I mean, that’s gotta be way less than 10% of their original price, so who can blame her for dreaming?

We kept going for another hour or so, and found a few more things to buy … and a lot more that we didn’t. Here is a selection of some of the crazy and unwanted items that we found.

And here is the trunk at the end of the day … man, what a glorious mess!