Meghan was kind of sick last Saturday and this week it was my turn. I had a cold on Friday and thought I might flake, but after resting up all day I felt much better — and seeing that it was supposed to be sunny on Saturday I decided we should at least a hit a few sales. I was especially intrigued by one that was listed as “Vintage Diva.” We pondered the address trying to determine if it was someone we knew (or even just someone who’s sales we’ve been to before)? It turned out to not be a repeat sale for us, just a girl who was moving and getting rid of a lot of stuff — not all vintage, but a good helping. Her mom had brought in some kitschy stuff too, including a large collection of elephant-themed items. Sadly, we neglected to get a photo of those, but we each bought a few things here.

We then went on to a few other sales. None were that great, even the one whose ad said “Earlies pay double, in Euros, and must weed my garden.” I thought the sense of humor might mean they’d have fun stuff, but it was pretty bland. At least a couple of the sales we hit had fantastically scenic views.

The sale immediately above was one that I’d predicted would be bad, based purely on their craigslist ad being in all caps and saying that it was on “SATERDAY.” This may be shallow, but it was pretty accurate — it was mostly just boring newer crap. There was a vintage dollhouse that was pretty cool, but she wanted $50 for it (with some furniture) — which I’m sure was probably fair, but not cheap enough for either of us to lose our sanity and buy it. Of course, that is probably a good thing.

These two old (as in really old) photographs were the most interesting things there. The bearded guy and his lady freak me out a little. I bet it is one of those pictures where the eyes follow you around the room …

We then headed up to an estate sale that sounded promising. It had been open for a little while, but neither of us had really felt like camping out in line with the die-hard shoppers. Like the sale last week, this was a smoker’s sale. The stench in the place was pretty unreal, to the point where you really had to question whether you wanted to buy anything that couldn’t be washed. I guess these Christmas ornaments would have been safe, but they would have had to have been a lot cheaper than $5 each to make me even think about bringing more holiday stuff into my house. (I don’t go super crazy with holiday decorations or anything, but let’s just say I have more than enough ornaments for the largest possible tree I might ever need to decorate.)

There was a pretty random assortment of stuff here. I noticed some healthy eating books and thought it was odd (although not unheard of) for such an obvious hardcore smoker to bother worrying about proper nutrition. Later I saw a sign mentioning that the estate sale company had brought two smaller estates’ stuff into the home, so who knows what belonged to whom. The fireplace had been used to display a few of the more entertaining items.

Meghan ended up buying a few things here, including a great pair of vintage roller skates. And that pretty much sums up our whole day — we capped it off by driving around for about 10 minutes following a sign for a “yard sale” which turned out to have nothing but bicycles. Great!

Going to sales in October — possibly really not such a great idea …

There are a couple things that we have learned from doing this blog.

1. If you wait too many days to post, it becomes really challenging to post about sales from the previous weekend. (I mean, I am already checking the weather for next Saturday.) You forget the sales, they blend together.
2. This is never going to be one of those blogs where there’s a new post everyday. Not that I’m knocking that, but there is only so much that happens to a person each and every day, right?

With all that said, I have been sick. I started to get sick on Friday and I almost thought I wouldn’t even go to sales. I came home early and slept on Friday and felt pretty good on Saturday morning. Little did I know I would be knocked on my ass by Sunday and not really feel better for a few more days.

Karl and Jenny both came over and it was pretty drizzly out. I am unwilling to even admit that fall is here …

Each time we go to sales we learn new (and sometimes “interesting”) things about people at sales. For instance, we identified the top 3 things not to have at a yard sale:

1. hair highlighting kit
2. chili
3. maxi-pads

Let me stress that all of these were at the same sale. I swear, they had homemade chili at the sale. That’s fine, but (and that is a HUGE BUT) if they are selling maxi-pads?!?! NO.

So, I have been sick and I mean really sick, so there are sales that I just don’t remember. We saw this large ostrich — I can’t tell you anything about this sale.

We hit a “book lovers’ sale” — sounds good, right?

When I hear book lover I never think “I love books that you can only buy at grocery stores and Costco!” Sadly, that’s what they meant.

A few things I do remember are an estate sale that was in the smallest one-bedroom basement apartment that was so unpleasant to walk around in. They didn’t have bupkiss. After a few minutes I went outside, since being inside was such a bummer.

After that sale we hit another estate sale — an icky smoker’s sale. When I walked in I said, “Oh, someone smoked!” The guy behind me AND the guy in front of me had this long conversation about how I knew this (oooo) and also how many times they have tried to quit smoking. I never said a word and I am an ex-smoker.

This sale was major record nerdlinger territory. Karl was in his natural element.

I found this sale really boring and even Jenny just parked it on a couch in the rec room reading old Cosmopolitan magazines. Which turned out to be more entertaining than we expected. Check out these centerfolds!

I amused myself by trying on yet another pair of wacky headphones.

I did ask nicely if I could take a photo of these two organs next to each other. Some lady tried to charge me (didn’t that just happen to Jenny?!?!) I just said “good luck getting it.”

As we drive I do keep an eye out for signs (and sometimes see sales that Jenny misses). I saw a sign that I thought said WISPY THRIFT. I mean if you had a thrift store wouldn’t that be a good name? Um, no … the signs said “Where’s Tipsy?”

That’s really about all I can remember. Jenny and I really hardly purchased anything, but Karl picked up enough crap to make the trunk shot look halfway decent.

I have to admit that I have been feeling a little burned out on yard sales after barely missing a Saturday (aside from being out of town) all summer! Plus, trying to have our sale last week got me way more into purge mode than shop mode. I actually tried to make other plans for Saturday morning, but when they ended up falling through I figured I might as well make the rounds. Once fall starts the pickin’s get slimmer, but I was able to put together a list of about 25 sales.

I got to Meghan’s around 8:30 and we went to the bank … then drove around to sales that hadn’t quite started yet. Some days it really isn’t worth leaving the house before 9. As we were cruising around I fished in my purse for a pen so I could cross off the sales as we hit them, and write down any addresses that we saw on signs — standard routine. But I had no pen. I then searched all the spots in Meghan’s car where she usually has a pen or two kicking around. She informed me that over the last few weeks, I’d apparently taken all the pens from her car (presumably sticking ’em in my purse without thinking about it) and now she was completely cleaned out. This sucked. Even before we had hit any sales, the lack of pen was making me antsy. I decided to keep an eye out for a pen at a sale — not really that typical of a sale item, but it could happen.

One of the first sales we found that was actually open sounded pretty bad from the ad — for one thing, they had mentioned “old rocks.” (Which prompted a rather philosophical discussion about whether there were really any new rocks.) There were indeed a few rocks for sale, sitting in a wire basket. They didn’t appear to be particularly special, but hell if I know what’s hot in the rock collector marketplace. Meghan found a cute vintage dress, but it turned out to have mold on it. Yuck! I noticed this peculiar looking book sitting on top of a crusty box of more normal books, and snapped a quick photo.

As an afterthought, I picked it up and started flipping through it. I thought it would be some kind of cheesy psychological manual with overtones that passed for racy back in the day but would be humorously quaint now. Let me tell you: I could not have been more wrong. This is without a doubt the dirtiest book I have ever seen at a yard sale. There were full penetration close-up shots in all kinds of graphic, hairy detail — “fully illustrated” is an understatement. Those of you who were upset that I passed on Super Boobs or the Mister Peter Ice Mold might be happy to learn that I then purchased it for the princely sum of twenty-five cents. However, once the initial shock wore off, I kinda wished I hadn’t. It’s nasty. Meghan suggested that I could leave it at someone else’s sale, or just start tearing out pages and leave them at all the crappy sales we were sure to hit that day as a form of retaliation for their lack of good stuff, but I just threw it into the back seat and tried to mentally scrape some of the images out of my brain. I am sure that somehow I will find an appropriate home for it at some point. Perhaps it could be a bridal shower gift, or I could bring it to a white elephant party at my workplace and then deny that I had anything to do with it. Nah, probably not such a good idea …

The next sale was in an alley. This is always a pain in the ass, and indeed, the sale sucked … but what is this? As we were heading to the car, I spotted a ball-point pen in the driveway! It appeared to have been run over, and was bent into almost a 90-degree angle, but it still worked. My crisis was happily averted.

We moved from one sale to the next pretty quickly, being ruthless about driving past anything that looked bad. There was one that had advertised vintage/antiques which turned out to be a couple who were about to move and were in the process of getting rid of nearly everything they owned. Oddly, none of this actually appeared to be vintage or antiques, but we each bought a few things anyway.

Another sale was huge, with stuff from multiple sellers. Right when I thought I was going to strike out, I saw something I decided I was interested in: a brand new Crock-Pot! Oh yeah … you know you’re jealous. I have sort of wanted one for a while, but never badly enough to deliberately go out and get one. The sellers said it had been a gift and they wanted five bucks for it, which I happily paid.

We then hit a sale was listed as a girly-girl who was moving in with her boyfriend and thus had to get rid of some of her girly furnishings and things. To keep things fair, she was making him pare down too. They were nice and had some decent stuff. I thought these glasses with peeing cartoon characters were pretty funny.

There were a ton of clothes and accessories but at first I didn’t find anything. Then Meghan uncovered two purses from Smoking Lily, a cool independent store in Vancouver/Victoria where we have both purchased things before. We each grabbed one of those. I also picked up a cute pair of stud earrings with luminous blue stones, then found a bunch of sunglasses. After trying a few one I found one pair that looked good on me — by Armani! Most of the clothes weren’t priced and I was a little nervous about how much things would be, but it ended up being reasonable: $4 for the purse, $1 for the earrings, and $10 for the sunglasses (which she said she had spent over $200 on). Meghan also got a really cool huge leather purse for something like $15, and we both left happy.

We headed into a different neighborhood which included a sale with an ad that bewildered me. It sounded pretty normal, but they included this (and only this) photo.

This is the actual photo from the ad, with my very sophisticated addition of blocking the eyes out. We couldn’t figure out what the hell they were thinking. Why the hell did they add this photo? When we got there, it was a really sparse, boring moving sale in front of a newer townhouse. The sellers were a couple and sure enough, that was the guy (but dressed much more casually and with no ornate doors in sight). We left no less baffled than before.

We hit a sale where two twenty-something dudes were cleaning house. They had a great DVD selection, but the guy wanted $5 each — too high. He then told his friend to watch the sale while he went inside for a sec. Meghan asked if we could get a deal if we bought a few DVDs, but the other guy was understandably hesitant, since they weren’t his. After about three minutes we were sick of waiting and decided to move on. I did spring for Lost in Translation and while I was fishing out my five bucks Meghan noticed this bench amidst the rest of their crap.

Yes, that is the “when I am an old woman I shall wear purple” poem. Meghan asked the guy why they had it, since it didn’t exactly go with the rest of their stuff. He said they’d bought it used and claimed they had tried to paint over it several times but it never took. We decided that this was almost certainly a lie.

We then headed to another sale and drove right past it … then backed up to find this sign in front.

We passed on the free Sandra Bernhard photo out front, but Meghan grabbed her collection of about 20 copies of Bitch Magazine and I bought a few cheesy t-shirts.

One of the last sales we hit had titled their ad “What’s Up Yard Sale,” which sounded promising, or at least not boring. We passed one of their signs and it read “Fun Times Yard Sale.” The fun theme continued with this assemblage out front, featuring sidewalk chalk and a star-shaped balloon tied to a beer bottle.

While I was taking this picture Meghan walked up the stairs to their yard and said “I’m here for the fun times yard sale!” The seller waved her hands in the air and went “Wooooo!” We liked their attitude, but I don’t think either of us ended up buying anything.

All in all, it turned out to be a decent day. Aside from that skeevy book, I didn’t get anything that could be considered vintage (those boots in the trunk shot were Meghan’s score), but I was really happy with all the stuff I bought. And for the first time in ages, we ended up crossing every sale off my list. (Good thing I found that bent-up pen!)

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!