We were thrilled this week to get a hot tip about a juicy-sounding sale in our neighborhood! We got an email from a woman we know (who runs estate sales in town) tipping us off to a sale being run by two packrat guys who had moved in together and needed to pare down. It started at 10:00 and sounded great — phrases like “weird collectibles” were used — so we decided to try to get there right when it opened (or maybe a little earlier if it seemed cool). That left us an hour-plus to hit a few other sales on Saturday morning.

I’d seen a listing for an estate sale which sounded promising, so we headed there first. They were still getting set up and I wondered if I’d misread the ad and it hadn’t actually opened yet. Meghan asked, “When are you starting the sale?” The seller said, “The moment you guys got here, it started.”

It’s always exciting to be the first shoppers at a sale. There were some cute and cheap dishes outside and it kept feeling like it really had the potential to be great … but never quite got there. The sale continued inside the house and we took note of this sign by the sink.

By the time we left, more people were starting to show up and scour through the goods.

We made a snack stop and hit a few more unremarkable sales. Then it was getting close enough to 10:00 to head to the main event! The vast array of strange junk spread out on the lawn definitely piqued our interest.

Good god, there was a lot of stuff. Mostly small stuff, though they did have this lovely table and chairs.

Oh, that picture? It was priced at “$10,000 O.B.O.”

Thankfully, most of the stuff was cheap — it looked like they were using what we like to call “make it go away” prices. And some of that stuff … you could tell they really wanted it to go away.

Meghan recognized one of the guys and we introduced ourselves. It turned out they’re fans of the blog. They jokingly worried that we might talk smack about their sale. No way! Their stuff was so much fun to dig through. You truly never knew what you were going to find next.

There was really a little bit of everything. It reminded me of the kind of stuff we usually have at our sale … stuff that is wacky and entertaining, but do you really need to own it forever?

Though I’m not saying we’ve ever had items like these in one of our sales … then again, I can’t promise we haven’t. (To be honest, I can’t even remember all the oddball stuff that we have put through the yard sale catch and release program.)

But I can assure you that neither of us have ever owned a caged fake crow.

The sale went on and on, stretching all the way down the driveway.

In the back we found this sort of “office supply section” ….

… as well as a small rack of Hawaiian shirts and other clothing.

Meghan bought a few shirts and an old FFA jacket, and Karl picked up a box of old buttons (the pin kind, not the sewing kind) and some other odds and ends. I bought a vintage Seattle-themed pencil case and an old deck of playing cards put out by The Stranger (that will in fact probably end up in my next sale). None of bought a ton of stuff … but that sale got a solid thumbs up!

After we finished up there, we backtracked to a few other sales nearby. At one, all of their stuff was bad, but at least some was interesting-bad. (But definitely not worth-ten-dollars-bad).

Along these lines (i.e., “good luck getting someone to buy that”) we soon encountered this extremely large and trippy hand-painted clock.

Then we went to a sale where the seller was wearing a Duran Duran shirt (that she’d presumably owned since the ’80s). Meghan asked if she wanted to sell it, sort of on a whim (to see if she could actually purchase the shirt off someone’s back). The woman said “Sure, for twenty bucks.” Yeah, not gonna happen. Karl and I did each buy a few records here. (No, not Duran Duran records.)

We decided to head to a new area. There was a sale that sounded good and ended up taking way too long to get to, between a couple of street closures and us getting decoyed by signs for non-existent sales.

It turned out to be a small estate sale … with big prices.

Next was a fundraiser sidewalk sale in a spot where we remembered going to to a sale maybe six or seven years ago (before this blog was even a glimmer in our eye).

Karl bought some CDs — while we were looking at them some woman sort of muscled her way in and started digging in the box right in front of us. Super obnoxious, especially when it wasn’t even anything that great.

Then we hit an estate sale, where our minds boggled at all the taped-off kitchen drawers.

They didn’t have a lot of stuff, but some of what they had was just plain odd. What in the world is up with this mug?

Outside on the porch we noticed this sign. Judging from the few random items there, I don’t think they really had to worry …

It was getting to be time to quit, so we decided to make our last stop on a block with ads for two separate sales. When we turned onto the street Meghan said, “This better not be that antique lady” — sure enough, one of them was this house where they have sales all the time and everything is priced like you’re at an antique mall. We drove past that one and went to the yard sale up the street. They were friendly, but had nothing we wanted to buy, or even take out of their free box.

And that was it for the day! I think I spent less than two dollars, but Meghan and Karl did their part to bring you yet another bountiful trunk shot …

Last night I discovered that I had left my debit card at the Title Nine warehouse sale — ehg. Now I’d have to drive over first thing in the morning hoping they have my card, vs. going to Friday yard sales … Lame!

So, this morning I hatched a plan — find sales on a direct route to the warehouse (on the other side of town). Then I noticed there was a sale on the grounds of Northwest Hospital. We’ve been to tons of sales in all kinds of strange places, but at a hospital? That never happens.

Could be a massive bust, right? They had great signs and free parking, and the sale spread over the parking lot.

It was pretty big, but that doesn’t necessarily mean much in the overall scheme of things.

I started to dig around and found a huge amount of purses. I ended up grabbing three — one is a super high end purple suede Moschino (that is not my style at all, but I secretly like it), plus a crazy brown roller bag that says “My kind of town. Seattle” from the late ’70s or early ’80s.

I snapped up a nice ’70s motorcycle jacket with no price. I passed on the Jesus and unicorn prints.

When I went to look for someone to help me with prices, I discovered that the workers were dressed in snappy green t-shirts with yard sale sayings.

They were happy to let me snap photos of them. It was kooky enough that I’m surprised Jenny and I have never done anything like that. Maybe we are lazy.

All told I spent a whopping $10.

After getting my debit card back, I hit a few more sales. One said it was an “everything goes” sale, but it was mostly a ton of fishing stuff from some old fisherman.

As a side note: we have talked a ton about Ballard (our regular stomping grounds), but haven’t mentioned that this is the area where many of the guys from the show Deadliest Catch live, along with many, many other fishermen … so this isn’t all that strange.

Next I hit one of the more depressing estate sales ever, about 15 blocks from my house. They had a huge box of like fifteen pairs of shoes for free, but you had to take all of them. Almost everything was free, but in such large amounts that you wouldn’t want it.

I went into one of the bedrooms and all of the clothing was free, but the smell was enough to deter me. Then I went into an empty room, with what looked like old dusty mold on the wall, from where they had taken some photos down. After that I just got the hell out of there.

My last sale of the day was listed as “the fun sale.” It wasn’t all that fun, but I did end up buying three teen magazines from the early 90’s for a buck and found this ad for a fake cell phone/AM-FM radio. Look — it’s “Cellu-RAD!”

For a Friday, I ended up making a pretty decent haul.

While putting together a list for last Saturday I saw that it was the Madrona neighborhood sale day. But due to my growing feeling that annual neighborhood sales tend to start sucking after a while, combined with a pretty lackluster report from last year, I decided we might as well just stick to our neck of the woods. There was that one sale which boasted of having a Kenny Rogers black velvet painting … tempting, but maybe not worth crossing town for when there are plenty of sales closer to home.

We weren’t sure if Karl was going to make it or not, but when I showed up at Meghan’s house at 8:15 he was already there — possibly a first! Our first stop was a sale that had started at 8:00, right around the corner. It was a bust, but the next block down was having a block sale starting at 9:00. We made a quick drive by since we were right there. Only two sales were getting set up and neither of them seemed like they would be worth coming back to.

We headed to another early-starting sale. They wanted $30 for this space painting.

We left without purchasing anything, then noticed their sign. What were they starting to write – “HUGH” sale?

We hit a few more duds, made a coffee stop, and then it was just about 9:00. There was a sale which had mentioned vintage items and sounded fun, so we decided to pass over some closer, iffier sales and head straight there.

It turned out there were three sales all at the same corner. At one of them we spotted a cute little brindle-y dog wearing a tiny pack. Somehow, this led to me singing “Brindle in a Backpack” to the tune of the Smiths’ “Girlfriend in a Coma.” (“I know, I know, he’s really cute!” — uh, don’t ask.)

We were amazed and a little freaked out by the moving, singing Caddyshack gopher.

One of the sales did have plenty of vintage clothing – but all ’80s. It looked like someone had raided Alexis Carrington’s closet.

Karl and Meghan each made some scores here, but I don’t think I bought anything — if I did, I’ve already forgotten.

There was another sale nearby and when we pulled up, Meghan said “Oh, here’s my sale again!” She started chatting with the seller, and Karl mentioned having looked at the records. I was really confused trying to think why I had no memory of being there before and finally Meghan mentioned they’d hit it when I was out of town. As we drove away, we spotted their signs. I would’ve asked the seller if she was from Northern California (homeland to people who say “hella”) if I’d seen them earlier.

Next we hit this big corner sale.

It was mostly kid stuff, but Karl pulled out a few records. When we got to the car he pointed out that one of them had his own price tag, from when he sold it at a record swap for $10. He had just repurchased it for a buck.

At another sale I was looking through the books and found one called “Cat Repair Manual” — my mind kept trying wanting to make it say CAR, but it was CAT. The seller said, “Yeah, nothing in that book is stuff you really want to do at home. I take my cat to the vet.” Which seems like a good call to me. Later I was telling Meghan about this, since she’d missed it, and Karl said “Oh, you mean Cat Surgery for Beginners?” The confused and horrified look on her face was kind of amazing.

Next on the list was an address on Aurora Avenue. This seemed a little suspicious, since it’s a busy highway known primarily for its sketchy motels and late-night activity.

The sale was in a regular old house — we thought it was funny to see the second “redo” sign of the day. It’s like the surprise sunshine was messing with everyone’s writing skills.

There wasn’t a ton of stuff inside, but there was a ton of ancient makeup!

Meghan picked up a bottle of foundation which had completely separated into clear liquid and tan cakelike gunk. The sellers said that some relative had lived there and she used to be in the cosmetics business, but now she was getting out and moving away. Now she was getting out? Judging from those products she got out about twenty-five years ago.

We got back into the car, drove off and … where’s the list? It was gone! I’d left it on the dashboard and to my great dismay, it seemed to have blown out the window. “Okay, now we’re FREESTYLING!” Meghan joked, poking a bit of fun at American Pickers. I did remember a listing at one address, then we saw signs for another. Somehow the two locations sort of merged in Meghan’s mind, and she drove to a spot right in between the two of them. When she realized she had to choose which way to go, she turned and drove around a roundabout …. then proceeded to drive around it three or four times, just for the fuck of it. I’m still laughing just thinking about it. We decided that going around in circles worked just as well as a unicorn chaser to clear out any leftover bad sale vibes.

We eventually got to the intersection where the signs had pointed us. No sale! We couldn’t figure it out — there had been signs everywhere, up until the actual intersection, which had nothing. We were sure it had to be there somewhere, and backtracked until we saw … this?

Thankfully, the real sale was across the street. It was big, and looked full of crusty treasures.

It was a pretty odd mix. It seemed like it had been pulled out of a garage or basement where it had all been sitting for god knows how long.

At one point Meghan dug through a box of clothes and something reeked so bad of mothballs that I could smell it from thirty feet away — and this was outside! There was also a large, strange selection of books, but they were all on the musty side.

To save Colleen the trouble of asking, let me go ahead and say that I didn’t buy the sex manual. Or anything. But Meghan and Karl each picked up a bunch of stuff. Meghan’s total for everything was $2.10 and the lady refused to take her dime. Karl racked up a bigger total, I think something like five whole dollars.

Next was a sale that seemed okay, until I heard Karl ask how much something was and the seller said “It’s $30. Because I could get that much if I sold it on eBay …” Karl calmly replied, “Then I think you should do that,” and walked away. I found a pair of cute kids’ boots, and asked how much. “$10,” the seller said. Not completely unreasonable, since they were in decent shape, but between her previous eBay comment and the tweaked-out look in her eyes I decided to just walk away. As we left Karl pointed out that she had been eating ice cream out of a pint container. Keep in mind, it’s like 10 a.m.

Meghan suggested that since we no longer had a list, we should head off to Madrona, where we knew there would be a bunch of sales. Despite my misgivings, I couldn’t really argue with her logic. On the way there we saw a bunch of well-placed, clearly-marked signs. Great arrows and directions — everything you could want in a sign. We found the place easily … and were greeted with this.

Grim, right? The sale continued inside, but it was all boring and overpriced. When we went into the kitchen, Meghan looked around. “I kind of want to wash my hands,” she whispered, still feeling the ick from the funky crusty sale. “Do it!” I said. After a moment of hesitation, she tiptoed over to the sink and did the speediest hand wash ever. The seller came into the room right when she had finished, obviously having heard the sink come on and wondering what was up. She saw Meghan drying her hands with a paper towel, but didn’t say anything.

On to Madrona, and look who we found: Kenny!

He was $100. I don’t think they really wanted to let him go.

The sellers had a ton of great vintage stuff, most of it priced much more reasonably – not dirt cheap, but fair. At one point Karl randomly told the woman about seeing a book called “Cat Surgery for Beginners,” then started up some pointless banter about her prices. After a while, she sidled up to Meghan and asked, “What is wrong with him?” Meghan explained that he was just trying to be difficult. The seller made a comment about how he must be hard to be married to, and Meghan quickly assured her that neither of us were married to him. He did end up purchasing an awesome tiger rug from her for $5, so I think it all worked out.

All in all, the neighborhood sales were actually decent. They didn’t seem as super-baby as I’d expected, based on Meghan’s recap from last time. Like this sale had a bunch of music t-shirts … with bands you don’t see too often at yard sales, like 45 Grave and the Dead Boys.

They also had a goth section. (And it was all sitting out in the sun! Oh, the irony.)

We hit a little rummage sale with these wacky paintings.

And then we meandered on through the neighborhood, eventually getting into a ritzier area. We spotted signs for two sales at the end of this street.

After driving along some winding streets for a few minutes, we found it.

We climbed up all those stairs and found a few things set out on the deck

But there was more inside … and more stairs. When we made it up to the main living room we saw people just kicking back on the couches, taking a rest! There were yet more stairs leading up to a bedroom and bathroom upstairs. But there wasn’t much there. I got the feeling that most of their really good stuff hadn’t made it into the sale.

We were astonished to find this sign up in the bathroom — something you really don’t usually see. How civilized!

And we were even more amazed by this needlepoint sign we spotted on the way out.

We decided that was a fine sale to end the day on. Here’s the trunk shot — we wanted to show you the tiger rug, but ended up covering up a lot of the other stuff in the process. Dang!

Friday Karl and I spoke about trying to hit some early morning sales, but since it was raining we both flaked, making a plan to just do our regular Saturday morning thing instead.

Both Jenny and I have been trying to stay excited about sales, but going out in the rain each week is starting to be a massive drag. But this Saturday was perfect weather and we had not one, but two annual sales to hit: first the Whittier Heights sale, and then a huge multi-block sale on Queen Anne.

We hit about ten of the Whittier Heights sales right off the bat, the highlight being a friend of a friend’s sale — she had been a buyer for Anthropologie for years and is now a personal shopper. We all purchased stuff from her sale. I was happy to pick up a couple of framed prints, books, and some knick-knacks.

We hit a couple more sales nearby, then pulled up at a sale that had a huge abacus leaning up against a table.

The sale itself was just eh, but then I saw this sign for Sourdough Starter. Odd, right?

We started driving towards Queen Anne, but after about a mile my boyfriend called saying that he was locked out of the house and could I drive home to let him in.
This led to a conversation about everything happening for a reason and how maybe it was meant to be. So, after letting my guy into the house and doing a drop-off we hit a few sales thinking that we might magically hit the jackpot, since we hadn’t even expected to be back in the area.

This turned out to not be the case. We hit a large sale that looked like it could be good, but was crappy …

… a sale where the most interesting item was her vacuum sign …

And a sale that almost defied all logic. Right off the bat we see this insane pattern.

And then some men’s thongs!

Karl picked up a pair of early ’80s Frye boots, but when he went to pay for them she started talking about how they would be $300 if they were in better condition and I just started to tune the whole thing out. Really, if you are that nuts I am not going to give you any attention. Jenny and I went to sit in the car waiting for this conversation to end. Then I heard Karl tell her that he needed to go, since we were on our way to an AA meeting. Karl got into the car and proceeded to rant to us about how insane the entire boot conversation really was, finally cracking us up when he said, “Lady — I know this is your house, but you need to go home.”

We took this as our cue to head over to Queen Anne. I like this sale, but it seems like a lot of people are just bringing out the same stuff year after year. What is the point? When I have a sale it’s to get rid of stuff, not re-pack everything and bring it out next year.

There are always new sales, but right off the bat I saw items that I had looked at a year ago. Maybe after a while you learn which sales to avoid.

The walk was so nice, it really started to feel like a nice summer day.

Karl started to rush off two and three sales ahead of us. This is a pet-peeve of mine. Aren’t we doing sales together? I yelled at him saying as much and he started waiting for us.

We hit one sale filled with clothing. I have never seen this much clothing from the same person at a sale. When I asked about how she had this much, she just said “she liked to shop” — well, yes. That was obvious.

Later, I saw this huge perfume bottle on a table — I asked the woman if I could take a photo and she said sure. Then when I got my camera out, she said “OH, YOU ARE TAKING A PHOTO???” Well, yes … you just said I could. She started to ramble something about how it was fine, but she just seemed to think it was really strange.

At one of the sales I picked up this bottle that looked empty, but then the outside had some foul smelling men’s cologne that made my hand reek. I stumbled around two sales just freaking about it. One guy at a sale heard me complaining and gave me a Clorox wipe. That made it a little better. Then I ran water over it a few times. In the end I had to wash my hand six times to get rid of the smell.

We honestly didn’t buy much at these sales, but we purchased delicious home-made cookies and wandered around taking pictures of some of the odder items …

Here’s the trunk shot from our earlier drop-off — nothing much to show you after that.