Friday morning = RAIN. I am not sure how almost every single Friday morning for the entire summer has turned rainy, but it’s sort of been making me crazy.
Two sales listed had been listed as estate sales. That’s great once you are in the house, but standing in the rain listening to people belly-ache is sort of a bummer.
So, I drove to one sale and the line was so long that I thought I would hit the other one about 30 blocks away. Major bust.
When I drove back to the other sale I was #65 in line. This isn’t my day.
This sale was listed as some crazy artists sale and the folks coming out kept saying stuff like “it’s crazy in there” or “so much stuff.” When I did make it to the porch, the sign said just about everything you would want to know. Or at least #5 did – EEEK!
The house was packed and it was good stuff, but what really struck me was the guy’s love affair with Elvis and Karate. Elvis trained in the ’70s in Memphis, TN. You have to assume that this and Bruce Lee had a huge impact on many people, but an adult man with Elvis posters … it’s not great, right?
There were tons of books about ninjas and tons of martial arts magazines.
He had a karate sign.
A black and while Bruce Lee painting (that I can only assume he painted).
And a poster of Mount St. Helens. Classy.
I hit one other sale on the way home — nothing too crazy. I loved these new old stock fences.
But the best was this sign letting you know how long someone lived in the house. Um, thanks!
A “museum of things”? Sounds like what we see every weekend … But it’s a real place that I was able to visit during a brief stay in Berlin. Intrigued by the brief write-up in Time Out (and knowing we’d be right in the neighborhood) I decided I had to check it out.
The museum mainly consisted of case after case of things … all kinds of things.
The first thing it made me think of was being in an antique mall … a very tidy, well-curated antique mall. (Without price tags, of course.)
The things were displayed in lined-up cases – there were probably at least fifty of them, each with a different, specific selection of items inside.
It was cool, but kept wondering how they decided what to include in the collection. I mean, it seemed to span every conceivable type and style of item. How did they possibly narrow it down, when more artifacts could presumably obtained at any moment from various thrift shops or flea markets (not to mention newer items still available in stores)? I mean, why these bars of soaps and not others? Why so many soaps, and not a corresponding number of shampoos or deodorants or combs (which were all represented, but in smaller quantities)?
My next thought was that it was sort of like if you went to an estate sale of someone with hoarding tendencies, then carefully cleaned, arranged and displayed all the items. Because it felt almost like that amount of rhyme or reason as far as what was included: a somewhat random selection from all the “things” in the world (or even Germany). I’m sure there’s more to it than that, but it was a mystery to me. For the most part, there was no information about the items on display to clue visitors in to the thinking behind the exhibits, aside from each case’s label which gave a brief description of what it contained. (This one said something like “yellow and black things”. Of course I still wondered how they chose these out of every possible yellow and black things.)
My husband said that it reminded him of going to the Hobby Hall at the Puyallup Fair, where people’s collections of various things are displayed (always running the gamut from lame to amazing), and I could kind of see that too.
Maybe I was just thinking about it all too much. Or maybe looking at that much stuff was giving me flashbacks to those huge antique malls that would take hours to really get through (but you know there’s something good somewhere, so you scour through as best you can before running out of steam). Eventually I decided to just enjoy the crazy ride … and then discovered one of the most amazing things there, and one of the very few items not enclosed in a case: this mind-blowing television, complete wiith stereo components in built-in slots. Whoa!
Here’s a great post I found about the museum that actually digs into more of its philosophy, structure, and design aspects … way better than I could manage, and worth a read (great photos, too). Though I was happy to see that the author stlil reached somewhat the same conclusion that I did:
… on a purely surface level it’s just the coolest, best-organized thrift store you have ever seen.
It was an interesting, if somewhat baffling, experience. I’m glad I went! And I do think that everyday things should be preserved and admired. That’s often the subcurrent in my brain when I find something cool or strange at a yard sale … but then I think, do I need to be the one to preserve this? Usually, the answer is no. So it’s kind of nice to see someone else taking up the cause … and sharing the bounty with anyone who happens to be in Berlin (with four euros and a little time to spare).
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.
Supposedly she collected for many years and wrote down every single thing she purchased. She collected everything. Not really sure if you can see all the items under plastic (that weren’t for sale), but you get the idea.
Okay. Two weeks ago (yes. really, two weeks ago) I hit some sales with Karl and one of my girlfriends and favorite derby skaters, Maliboozer Barbie, who has been threatening to come to sales for the past year.
The first sale we hit was a horrible rummage sale, but I spied this framed Goldberg print. I really like the way they did their signs: large red dot = 50 cents.
Man, if I wanted furniture our next sale would have been great. But there’s that pesky fact that I am not allowed to bring home any more large objects. They had tons of stuff and they were already making plans to get drunk that day … my kind of sale.
One of the sale we hit was listed as a carport sale with all of grandpa’s stuff. Karl purchased a lot, but I was just really excited to find this simply awful 1980 Mechanix Illustrated with a cover story about “the cars that are driving OPEC crazy.”
At this point it seemed like a good time to get the heck out of Ballard, but Karl isn’t the navigator that Jenny is and we ended up taking some twists and turns winding up at a sale described as “cream of the crop sale.” This super hippie painted sign really doesn’t make me think about an amazing sale.
The only interesting thing was a really nice Gottlieb scuba pinball machine (that they wanted $500 for and all the rubber parts needed to be replaced).
After getting turned around a few more times we hit a huge sale that wasn’t very good, but how could we miss it with their “huge sail”?
It was for some sailing club and they had been giving cards good for free lessons, which all seemed a little strange.
The last sale was really weird, since the woman had my old cooler that I sold years ago.
After talking to her and working out that it was the same cooler that I’d sold in our basement sale (you can see it in the fourth photo down), I re-purchased it from her for $5. Then Karl talked her into bringing out all her LPs from the ’80s and bought a ton.
Sadly, with Jenny out of town I forgot to take a trunk photo, but it was a pretty good day.
O.K., so we haven’t blogged for almost three weeks in the middle of summer. Well, I am a married woman now and Jenny took off mere moments after the wedding to head off to Europe. So, now we are catching up on a back-log of blog posts. Anyone that knows me know that I hate blogging two weeks after the fact, but here we go.
Karl was unable to get to my house until almost 9, so I just took off on my own and hit this very strange sale with revolutionary books and this huge free pile.
I really love the idea of a yard sale sign that tells you to smile.
Honestly the whole day was already looking bad from our lists and we hadn’t even started. And that kept on going for the whole day. We hit one crappy sale …
… after another crappy sale.
Karl and I both belly-ached about how badly it was going for most of the day. Then we hit an area that had this huge rock. I mean it’s HUGE. You can tell how gigantic it is, no?
As we walk to the sale we see the Snoopy Psychiatric Advice tent.
Karl gave the kid 10 cents and asked if he should go to the gym or go play tennis. The answer? “Whatever you want to do.” Even his parents laughed at this bogus advice.
Then we randomly hit an estate sale that had what I can only describe as the scariest crawl space filled with stuff.
It was probably about 350 square feet, and jam packed. There was other stuff in the house too (like the portrait below) but that crawl space was too much.
Our very last sale had this amazing sign with the barefoot bandit.
We worked out right away that it was a sale we’d hit last year (from the photo at the top of this post). The sign made up for the sale being just “eh”.
Not the best day ever, but we did somehow manage to pick up a few things.
We’re thrilled to have a guest post from Tom Zarrilli of Yard Sale Addict. Tom started the blog in 2004 and closed up shop just a couple months back. When we got a peek at the photos below (via the still alive and kicking Yard Sale Addict Facebook group), we practically begged him to do a guest post for us. Kick your feet up and enjoy!
Creationism or properly Creation Science has made a name for itself in debates over school textbooks. But it has also fostered the establishment of a number of small museums around the country that offer those who prefer a biblical inspired version of natural history a place to see dinosaurs and other things prehistoric in a different light from those old line humanist institutions one encounters in major cities.
One of these establishments, The Museum of Creation, is located in Social Circle, a small charming town about forty minutes east of Atlanta. Social Circle is mostly known for the Blue Willow Inn, a highly touted southern restaurant located in an old Victorian home. I had heard some talk of a creation museum there, but I never considered a visit until I saw the ad in the Sunday paper for an auction indicating that it had become a victim of these recessionary times and its entire contents were up for sale. The museum is the brainchild of John Hunt, a skilled taxidermist who in his long career has created elaborate displays for theme parks and museums. The sale appeared to be the cultural opportunity of a lifetime, mixing yard sale, roadside attraction and religious dogma into one fun-filled package.
I set out to explore the place on the preview day with two other artists, Stan and Devidyal, who shared my bizarre curiosity about the place — not only for the odd religious aspects we might encounter, but also for a love of taxidermy. I have always had a love of mounted animals. There were no hunters in my family, so we had no mounted stags over the mantle. As a child, I concluded that those dead heads that forever stared at you with glass eyes were something only the rich and elegant enjoyed in their homes. But my love of really great mounts (never used the word stuffed) was formed when my family lived within a day’s drive of the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History. Frequent visitations invoked dreams of having a home containing not only mounted yaks and okapi, but also life-sized dioramas of Eskimo hunters and tattooed Maori warriors.
We found the Museum of Creation in a strip mall built directly behind the town’s noted restaurant — conveniently located so one could fill up on collards, country fried steak and peach cobbler, then wander through its doors to marvel at the wonders of creation.
To my surprise the place was not overrun with curiosity seekers. Perhaps more people would turn out for the sale itself, in lieu of today’s preview. At the entrance we were given a bidding number and an inventory list. Inside we found the museum for the most part unchanged from when it was open for business. Near the entrance we encountered the first animatronics display, a life-like talking lion.
At the push of a button he instructed us to enjoy the museum, go to the theatre and to be sure to visit the gift shop on the way out.
Past the talking lion was a hallway where seven huge paintings were hung depicting dramatically the seven days of creation. Past the seventh day of creation (which was really a day off for God) we encountered what happens when you hoard a goodly amount of creation by displaying it wildly arranged in massive glass cases. One case was a dizzying array of butterflies whose arrangement screamed of a serious OCD.
Some cases contained mostly skeletons, well-assembled skeletons but gathered together in no particular order. In one display the backdrop was a gigantic painting of Noah’s ark in a stormy sea, in front of it was a selection of rocks, eggs, assorted bones and a model of a velociraptor.
The whole thing began to look like someone was trying to create a TV show entitled America’s Got Taxidermy.
More animatronic creations showed up in the form of a pair of pandas silently nodding and shaking their heads. Another showcased two brightly colored macaws sitting motionless on a slowing spinning perch. One case labeled The Old Curator’s Office appeared to offer homage to the general confusion of the place. This display looked like it started as a curator’s office but soon turned into a junk pile badly in need of a garage sale. Scattered about were old lamps, a telegraph, a cast of the head of Abraham Lincoln, plush cats, more bones, more rocks, old furniture, a human skeleton, an old fire extinguisher, a selection of claws, assorted turtle shells, several pelts, and a faux Gila monster,. The best feature was that the glass was removed from the case and the general public could step into the display and shift through the clutter.
Another case offered a backstage look at how the animatronics were created. Here was the bare Plexiglas body of a lion with a good deal of electronics trailing out of its body so it appeared like some discard from an unfinished, low budget Terminator film. It was placed in a scary looking workshop littered with power tools, test equipment and remote controls that looked like they came from Radio Shack.
Amid, between, and scattered near the display cases was a mixture of minerals, bones, petrified creatures and objects of dreadful decor. I have no idea what purpose the five foot stylized metal chicken served. Among the mix was a mummified cat (technically not natural history), an alligator skull with a frog in its jaws, a large ceramic sculpture of a fairy with a flamingo, and an Asiatic elephant skull with a sign adjoining it reading “Please touch Asiatic elephant skull.”
In a corner was a pair of benches flanked by a massive faux elephant head, possibly placed there to give museum visitors struck with sensory overload a place to rest.
More hands-on exploration could be done in the back storage rooms away from the watchful eyes of the auction security officers. Here we came upon a metal case full of large broken insects and crustaceans. While I have drawers in my own home that have large broken insects in them, I would not consider putting them up for auction.
The back rooms contained not only the contents of a museum, but also the contents of a gym with a variety of exercise machines. In the center of the room were an unfinished full-size model of an orca and a full-size unicorn (thankfully not crafted from a dead horse).
But our greatest surprise was finding a cardboard drum marked “elephant hide.”
The theatre mentioned by the lion at the entrance was a large empty room with a stage at one end with a lion and lamb sitting in what appeared to be the set of a passion play. At the push of a red button located near the entrance the lamb and lion began a lengthy theological discussion. The lion’s remarks were accented by growls that sounded as though he suffered from a serious case of post-nasal drip. While the lamb that spoke in a very wimpy voice mostly remarked, “tell me more Mr. Lion†as he rolled his head and eyes about.
The area of what had been the gift shop was mostly empty, and most of its contents will remain a mystery. But left in the room scattered on the floor were a variety of carved figures of Native Americans, a wicker container used by the Swiss military for carrying munitions, a painting of a desert scene that incorporated real sand on the canvas, old coke bottles from around the world, and a huge stack of large plastic reproductions of the tablets of the Ten Commandments.
The largest single item in the gift shop was a Jurassic Park pinball machine. I have yet to determine what day of creation it was manufactured on.
We did not return for the actual auction held over the following two days, but some of the results of the sale (along with more photos) can be found on the Morbid Anatomy web site.
Last Saturday we ventured out of our usual territory to hit a huge rummage sale hosted by a Japanese community center. Karl said it had been great in past years, so we drove over, passing a ton of signs — now that the weather has finally gotten hot I guess everyone decided this is the time to have a sale! We met him at the rummage sale at 8:30, where people were already lining up for the 9:00 opening.
When they opened the door there was a little confusion about what was where — there were two separate entrances and different areas for clothing, books & records, antiques, housewares, etc. Meghan and I went through the main building and decided to hit the clothing out back first. We were practically the first ones in.
There was a ton of stuff, all neatly arranged in sections. And things were cheap! Meghan started to clean out the vintage clothing while I dug through the purses. I kept finding stuff that was almost cool, but not quite. I had picked up a tiny little Coach purse priced at a buck (!), but then I noticed it had a big rip near the zipper that I knew I wasn’t motivated enough to get fixed. I finally gave up on the clothes and headed inside. There were three different rooms and they were really starting to fill up.
Meghan eventually made it inside and proceeded to find the world’s largest superball in the housewares section — it was the size of a grapefruit. She said it was taking all of her will power not to bounce it in there near all the glasses and dishes. Next we hit the books area, which still had a lot left (even though we’d heard it’d been a madhouse when it opened.) Eventually Meghan and Karl each had so much stuff that they had to make a run to the car before coming back to finish up. We made another pass through the clothing area and each grabbed a couple more items.
All in all, we were there for about an hour and completely filled the trunk.
And there was overflow in the back. I think that tiger picture would go really well with Karl’s tiger rug from a few weeks back!
See that little paper bag on the floor? That’s all I got – a few books, an older Vera scarf with dice on it, and a tablecloth/picnic blanket. Even though I wasn’t buying much I had to agree it was a swell sale. I think Meghan and Karl each spent less than $30 for their hauls and you can see how much crap they bought (even if you can’t really see what it is — that’s the downside of everything being crammed into bags).
Since there was almost no room in the car and we were close by, we decided to leave our stuff in back of Karl’s house while we cruised around to more sales.
Karl had made a list of a few sales that sounded worthwhile. This one ended up being really strange — lots of bellydancing outfits and not much else. (That thing with the colored squares was labeled “ART” — in case you weren’t sure.)
Next we went to a moving sale and drove by a sale that had a big crazy add mentioning lots of vintage and kitsch — kinda too good to be true, and when we got there it looked lame and there was nowhere to park. After a half-hearted attempt to find a spot we decided it didn’t look worth the trouble. I had to be back home on the early side, so Meghan decided we could hit some sales on the way back, then she and Karl would continue on. We soon spotted some prominent signs which led us to this.
Yeah, there better be more! And there was, around back.
It had a weird perma-sale vibe — not being our usual stomping grounds, we weren’t sure what the deal was. Some of the stuff was good, but some was just scary.
Both Meghan and I thought this puppy was real until we got close up.
Most of the stuff was priced high. Karl asked how much the records were and when the seller said “twenty-five,” I really thought she might mean dollars. Thankfully that wasn’t the case. I think he bought one or two.
We hit a few more sales, including one where I bought three squirt guns. Hey, it was a hot day, they called to me. (I’ve already more than gotten my fifty cents’ worth!) Then on to an estate/moving sale … which always seems questionable. Which is it?? Thankfully this one seemed much more on the estate side.
There wasn’t that much stuff … but they did have this “headchair.”
Kind of awesome, no? I am sort of regretting not purchasing it, but I think I’ll live.
It was almost time for me to get home, and we kept seeing tons of signs! It was hard not to pull over. Finally we drove right in front of a big sale , so we made a quick stop. We shouldn’t have bothered.
Meghan and Karl went on hit some more sales — including one that she recognized as the sock guy’s sale, then was crushed to learn that he was no longer in the sock business. Finally, they went back to the rummage sale for the end-of-the-day special, “fill a bag for $3.” They each got a bag and later on, Meghan found $9 in the pocket of a dress that she’d stuffed into hers. Nice!
