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.

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

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.

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

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

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!

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.

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

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.

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?

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.