Between being out of town, and a number of Saturday social events, last weekend was my first time hitting sales in over a month! I was excited, especially with nice weather in the forecast and our friend Erica guest-starring. And there were tons of sales listed. I was choosy about which ones made it onto our list, only including ones that looked promising and were reasonably nearby (even if that meant passing up possible gems like the one that claimed “my boyfriend wants to cook you hotdogs at our garage sale” and the ever-scary “Going to Burning Man?”).

Deciding on our first stop was easy: there was a sale two blocks away from Meghan’s house. We got there a few minutes early, but they were pretty much set up.

They had all kinds of stuff … some good, some bad, and even a few things from the dreaded “no one wants to see that at a yard sale” category.

Meghan pounced on a Kitchen-Aid mixer ($15!) while I dug through the books. Meanwhile, they kept bringing out more stuff, so we were there for a while. Karl hemmed and hawed over this amazing light-up Rainier beer display before finally deciding to commit.

When all was said and done, we had enough crap in the car that we decided to drive back around the block and do a drop-off. That doesn’t often happen after a single sale.

Our next stop was something listed at a corner which has not quite a perma-sale, but a fairly frequent recurring sale of vintage furniture. I said if it was them, we’d just drive by. Instead, it turned out to be in the front yard of this law office.

I couldn’t really figure out why a law office would have that much crap, but maybe they were just letting the (mulleted!) sellers use their space. In any case, we left empty-handed.

Next was a sale listed as huge, but when we got there we hardly saw anything. “There’s more in back,” someone said. And there was: stuff spread over the entire back yard and deck. Unfortunately, it was all bad. Tidy and well organized, but bad.

Next was a sale that sounded vintage-y and wacky. They had boxes of odd books and magazines, a really strange assortment — electronic music mags from the ’70s, various foreign oddities, Circus and other rock titles, and more. I started to amass a huge pile … then I got real and narrowed it down to just a few choice scores. Meghan uncovered the most impressive items: a few really old issues of High Times, including the premiere issue from 1974.

We decided to check out a neighborhood sale, passing by this sad free pile on the way.

At the first sale, we immediately saw a rack of dresses with a sign that said “Special, $5.99 Plus Tax.” WTF? We asked the couple standing nearby if they were really charging tax at a yard sale, and they said no (without offering any other explanation). $5.99 still seemed like a weird price, but whatever. Aside from the dresses they had a typical spread of random kitchen and household items, plus some odd new stuff: a box with something like 75 brand-new toothbrushes, and a bunch of still-sealed packs of band-aids. Between that and the tax thing, we figured they might have owned a store at some point. Meghan asked if this was the case. The guy rolled his eyes and said, “No, her hobby is shopping.”

On the way out I wanted to take a picture of the “$5.99 Plus Tax” sign … but they had amended it! For some reason this made me laugh even more.

The neighborhood sales seemed pretty bad, but there was one I wanted to hit that had been listed as “beach shack estate sale” — the house wasn’t actually on the beach, so I wasn’t sure what was up with that, but something about it sounded good. Sadly, it wasn’t, and on that note we decided to give up on that neighborhood and move to a new area.

After a few uneventful stops, we came across this. Uh, what?

That didn’t exactly bode well, but we went in. I quickly realized this was the sale which had mentioned “dozens of vintage clocks.”

One of the sellers was sprawled upon a couch, possibly to emphasize the claims made on their sign.

It was really mostly crap, and their “wacky” labeling didn’t help much.

Erica attempted to buy one of the $5 clocks, but when they wouldn’t take $4 she decided to pass.

Next was a fundraiser sale where one of the sellers was a ten year old girl wearing the top half of a bee costume and the bottom half of a pig costume. (It was a good look.) It seemed like they might have some good stuff, and I started to dig in a box when a woman came up and said, “Oh, that’s my box.” I stopped looking, and then she said “It’s a great deal!” So, I figured she’d meant it was her box of stuff she was selling, and she wanted me to look after all … but when I bent back down she repeated, “That’s my box.” I was too annoyed after that to look around much more, but everyone else found some good stuff.

By then it was getting close to quitting time, so we started to make our way back home, hitting just a few more on the way. One of them had junk strewn around haphazardly in the back yard, and then a very organized (but odd) display in the basement.

One of the sellers walked over right as I was taking that picture, and made a comment about how I must be getting display ideas for MY yard sale. I just nodded my head.

I went back out to the back yard and browsed around with Karl and Erica, waiting for Meghan to come out of the basement and joking around about various oddball items. Then I got a text message: “What are you 3 doing? That sale is bad.” She was already out at the car, wondering what was taking us so long.

And with that, we were done!