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Not What I Thought

Sarah and I have been hitting up estate sales and garages sales pretty regularly.  Finding the time to blog, however, is another story.  We have been active over on Instagram though, so if you haven’t followed us already, please do!  Here’s Sarah at a garage sale describing a butterfly she saw:

A post shared by Dig This Treasure! (@digthistreasure) on Jun 2, 2017 at 10:32pm PDT

She’s still kind of salty about me secretly recording that.

Anyway, to make Sarah feel better, here is a tale of my absolute stupidity...

We visited a sale a few weeks ago that upon entry seemed promising.  Everything seemed old and I figured many treasures awaited us.

And this bird mobile?! Omg so cute!  Why didn’t I buy this? I should have bought it.  The better question is why didn’t Sarah buy this? It looks like something she would totally buy. 

And how come we didn’t buy this beauty of an art piece:

I have lots of questions.  Why is this person wearing like a wig of white hair over top of their regular hair?  Or is that an aura? Or reflective light?  Why is this person wearing a jacket with no shirt underneath? Why does that microphone seem very very small? And who is this? Bonnie Raitt?  I’m not good with music stuff.  I once thought John Popper was the singer of Meatloaf.  Turns out that the singer of Meatloaf is Meatloaf.

It started to become clear that this house was just full of “things.”  Not treasure-type things, just things.  Lots and lots of things that had fallen into the bottom of a closet for years or were stuck in a junk drawer.  I have things like this too, so I don’t mean to judge too harshly.

There were also lots and lots of homeopathic medicines and supplements, which was kind of heartbreaking.

Ok, so where does my stupidity come in?  Since this sale was a bust, we headed to another one.  This time, the house was a little more upscale and organized. They had a lot of art and books.

There were still lots of great vintage items.  Look at this dining room set!  Love it.

Like look at this adorable bathroom! I love this adorable bathroom!  If I could’ve bought it I would have. Except for that filthy rug.  Eff that.

Alright, so here goes...at this sale I found this amazing piece of embroidery art.  I loved it so much.  It brought me joy.  Look closely at it and really take it in:

Now I want you to guess what this is an image of.  Even a general guess will do.  Think hard and lock in your guess before you scroll down...

Got it?

Think you know?

Well let me tell you what I thought this was...

I thought this was a picture of mermaids.  I THOUGHT THOSE WERE TAILS. 

I took the picture over to Sarah and was all, “Look at these mermaids!”  She about died.  Apparently this is some sort of Jewish art.  (I am not Jewish so how should I know.) Apparently this is obvious.  Apparently I should have known this was religious in some way.

I mean, I guess I see it now.  I was just super distracted by those adorable mermaid children to even notice.

I left empty handed. Well, except for shame.  I left with some of that.

-Erin 

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I found this letter a few weeks ago in an estate sale. The envelope is the most interesting part and is so weird! I'm having a hard time reading the actual letter but have included it for anyone interested. -Erin

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Soccer Beaver

Well I really have the sale-ing fever lately, I’ll tell you what. 

Erin and I hit up a crap-ton of garage sales on Thursday (as you may have already seen on our Instagram (follow us!)), and that just made me hungry for more. 

I found a sale in Brighton, which is about 40 minutes away from me. It looked to be jam-packed with holiday decor and other treats, and the person appeared to have good taste. I tried to get Erin to come with me, but she had to do some family activities instead. So I ventured out there alone.  When I arrived, I had a good feeling about things. 

Punnnnkiiiiinnnnns!!!!! 

But then I saw the price tags. 

Some things weren’t THAT bad but... most of them were. It was a real bummer because there was some really cute stuff! They also had swaggy teens stationed in the rooms to prevent you from shoplifting their overpriced wares, which is a real vibe killer at a sale. It always makes me feel like if I spend too long looking around or sorting through things, they’re gonna get suspicious.

Anyway, here are some more pics of the cute things there:   

But again, look at these prices:  

Am I missing something? Should a ziplock bag of tiny vintage trees really be priced that high? As far as I could tell, the trees were not made of solid gold. 

Despite the pricing disappointment, there was some cool stuff to look through. The homeowner was super into Scottie dogs. 

I really loved that table. Anyone have a spare $600? 

That is an ENORMOUS roll of wrapping paper. I really wanted it but it legit weighed like 50 lbs. I could not carry it out along with the other things I wanted, I didn’t have Erin with me to bully into helping (not that she’d be much help because let’s face it--she’s pretty weak), and I was starting to sweat because it was hot and humid inside the house. So it got left behind.  As usual, there were some “things that make you go hmmm” (Erin wasn’t even a fetus when that song came out, I’ll bet) inside the house, so here ya go: 

(I thought that thing in his hand was a gun but now I think it’s... a horn? WTF is it?) 

(That is Matchbox car sized and yes, it says twelve dollars.) 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I did find a few goodies, though: 

Let me give you the rundown: Vera Bradley laptop case, star wars lunchbox ornament, camper ornament (my son is obsessed with all types of vehicles--he’s gonna love this next xmas), a new hand-made vintage tree skirt, embroidered santa ornament, cool book that has a bunch of envelopes inside with things like puzzles and other books, etc., Spaghettios bowl, and a Halloween beanie baby bat. I also got this cool cast iron sheep. 

It wasn’t priced so the swaggy teen at the register charged me a dollar. It was probably originally priced like $20. Score! 

-Sarah 

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Check us out on Instagram! We'll be sharing all of our adventures there until we can get back into full swing here on the blog. Be sure to follow us! Username: digthistreasure

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Today in estate sale sign overkill...

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Lake Michigan

A few weeks ago, Sarah and I vacationed together in South Haven, MI.  It was glorious.  Lake Michigan was not only surprisingly warm, but super clear.  I’m down with being a lake person, but you bet your ass that I wear water shoes.  In Lake Michigan, I didn’t even need to!  It wasn’t gross at all!  Yay nature!

We spent a lot of time swimming and lounging, but also made time to go antiquing.  The go-to strategy among dealers here seemed to be setting up shop on your front lawn.  We saw a lot of antiques just laying in people’s yards, with little explanation to how they survive the elements or if any effort is even made to protect them from rain or theft. 

It looked like American Pickers, where the dudes just drive around and look for people with junk outside.  They call it “freestylin” on the show, but because I am a disgusting and juvenile person, I kept telling Sarah we were “freeballin.”  We just drove around until we found places to stop.

And boy did we find a place...

The place we found was called something like “Junktiques” which was a fair and honest assessment.  It turned out to also be some dude’s life work of creating arguably insane art.  In true Sarah fashion, she told the guy that his sculptures made her laugh, which the guy reacted to with a blank stare. 

TBH, the sculptures were funny and also totally delightful.  I would put one in my backyard in a heartbeat.

All I bought from this bro were some cookie cutters for Everett to use with Play-Dough. I did not buy this life-size wood carving of Sarah.

Also did not buy this hilarious elephant.

And I did not buy this mask, even though I looked great in it.

We also stopped at a nice little shop inside a house, which was clearly geared towards shabby chic moms (me, basically). 

I wanted to buy that big metal ball and put Christmas lights in it, but decided not to because the woman revealed it was from a wholesale gardening place.  I figured I could find one cheaper online since that was the case.

I did end up buying some cool wooden slats that I plan to put in my garden.

And I got this neat old egg carton to put up by my egg scales.  It was so darn cute and only $8!

Zach and Adam went out shopping too, without us.  Zach bought this giant painting of a dude yelling? crying? who knows...

If someone can identify this man, that would be awesome.  I want to know so badly who he is and what he is doing.  He lives in our living room now.

I am lol’ing hard at the amount of bags I have hanging on the dining room chairs.  Apparently I need two purses, a gym bag, and a backpack to exist in life.

And just for a little life update, here are our dudes!  Everett will be 3 in October! Arden will be 2 in November!

Cheers!

-Erin

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This is what my Thursday looked like. You know, just ANOTHER day of being a great friend to Sarah. This little set was at our local antique store/craft mall and was marked Holt Renfrew on the bottom. eBay provided no help on the value of this, but I'm sure Sarah finds it priceless. Anyway, listen to this whale of a tale. Earlier in the day, Everett and I were riding our bike around town and rolled up on an estate sale in the neighborhood. The sale was basically all garbage, EXCEPT inside a glass case at the checkout counter was a tiny box full of old miniatures. One of those miniatures happened to be Mickey Mouse, which, to Everett, is like spotting Lebron James in the wild. [An aside: is Lebron James a good metaphor here? He seems culturally relevant at the moment. He's also polarizing though. Ok, so maybe it was like spotting Santa Claus in the wild. Everyone loves Santa.] So I begin to (not quietly) pronounce to Everett that yes he can hold the Mickey, and yes we can BUY THE MICKEY. Except the Mickey is in this large glass display case, and even though the back side of the case is open, I tell Everett that we cannot just reach our grubby mitts around the back and grab what we want. We have to patiently wait until the woman running the sale can retrieve the item out of the case, because WHY ELSE have it in a case at all! Standing next to me was a woman also browsing the case. Like literally right next to me. Practically touching. I'd guess she was in her 40s and seemed relatively uninteresting other than the fact that she turned out to be the devil. This woman proceeds to reach around the back of the case and pluck tiny Mickey out of his tiny box. All the while my child is TALKING LOUDLY about this tiny Mickey and about buying the mother-effing tiny Mickey. I was stunned. When I turned to look at her shocked, the woman held up the tiny Mickey, giggled, and then exclaimed "Mickey Mouse!" Yes, you idiot, I'm aware who it is. And it's mine, except that you're holding it. I proceed to confusingly explain to the woman that we planned to buy that Mickey and that I was shocked she didn't hear our loud conversation about it. She shrugged her shoulders and said "well sorry." Um, no you are not sorry. It was insane. This was literally like a piece of junk, plastic birthday cake Mickey. Nothing special. But this woman decided she must have it. And she did have it. She paid $1 for it, right in front of us. The good news is that Everett wasn't too devastated. I let him pick out a new item. He chose a digital kitchen timer. It cost 25 cents. He played with it literally all day. -Erin

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We're BAAAACK. Heads up, this video is NSFW. Anyway, stay tuned for lots of new entries in the coming weeks. We've been hitting the estate sale (and garage sale) scene hard again as of late! -Erin and Sarah

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Why is this discounted? I'll pay the full $10. Thanks @organtitus for this find!

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Nobody is going to pay $20 to enter your estate sale. You are a dumbass. Is this Prince's estate? No? Then get out of here with this sh*t.

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If you have a literal shitload of dolls, you might be tempted to just throw them in a giant ass pile. I know I would. But we should all strive for better in this world. We should strive for order among the chaos, exactly like this person did. Don’t be a lazy ass. Instead, you hang up those dolls. It might take every surface of your house, but you HANG THEM THE EFF UP.

-Erin

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Behind Closed Doors Part Two

If you haven’t read part one of this entry, you can do so here.  If you have read it, you know that my weekend of estate sales had started out rather interestingly.  It is always memorable when you enter a particularly horrifying home.  That said, nothing could have prepared me for the house Zach and I visited on Sunday.

The sale was listed as an emergency one day event.  There was not a clear explanation of what the urgency was, but I assumed the house needed to be cleared out quickly so it could go up for sale.  Sorry to say, however, this house won’t be on the market anytime in the near future.

When we walked in, I was astounded.  “Shocking” is an understatement.  This was the worst I had ever seen.

I hate using the phrase, “the pictures don’t even do it justice,” but it is true.  They really do not begin to describe what it was like being in the house.  You could not see the floor in any rooms except the bathroom and kitchen.  It smelled.  It was filthy.  And it was really, really effing sad.  There were TONS of children’s items.

It was just so, so awful.  Zach left as soon as we walked in the house.  I assume most people did. 

My strategy for the sale was to completely ignore everything out in the open.  I would literally skip whole rooms.  My assumption was that most of the things on the floor had already been rummaged through, and if they weren’t, then they were most surely broken from people trampling all over them.

If an area wasn’t already searched or trampled, then it was full of porn that no one wanted.

So instead, I looked for areas of the house that had not been accessed.  There were several crawlspaces upstairs, as well as parts of the basement completely blocked by debris. 

The guy in the photo above could not fit completely into that crawlspace.  When he moved out of the way, I climbed in and started moving boxes out of the way so I could get fully inside. 

This old trunk was empty, which was a huge disappointment for all my effort. 

I did find tons of boxes, however, that had not been touched in decades.  A lot of it was cheap Christmas decorations.  I found some baby shoes from the 1950s still in their original boxes and ended up buying them.  I also found old games, practically new.

There were also old children’s records, which I later sold on ebay for $25.

In the basement, I moved some boxes and climbed under a giant table to access an area previously blocked.

This guy is like WTF are you doing.

My efforts paid off though because I found some neat jackets stored inside sealed garment bags.  This meant that they were not completely filthy like everything else in the house.

Well, this shop jacket IS filthy, but at least not from the house itself.

I also found these old Detroit bank bags and a baseball for my dad.

The downfall in my strategy is that people started to notice, and would then try to follow me into crawlspaces or other tight areas.  This was super stressful because I am claustrophobic and also did not want to share my finds.  There was one lady at the sale who would snap at people who even glanced at her pile of items.  In general, she was just being a loud bully.  When she tried to climb into the crawlspace with me, I informed her that 1. there was no room, and 2. there were already people in line waiting to get in the crawlspace after me.

The bully explained that that’s “their problem” if they want to wait, and that she was “coming in.”  NOPE.  NO YOU ARE NOT, SALE BULLY.  I told her that she needed to “cool her jets” (God, I am such a mom), and that I could tell she was very excited but that no, I was not letting her in with me.  She was pissed but eventually gave up.

I just kept throwing things in bags I had found along the way.  I had old Disney drinking glasses, old hotel barware, old McDonald’s cups, some Christmas garland from the 1950s, a baseball bank from the 70s that will go to Timmy, plus all the stuff you see above. 

I paid $40 for everything, which turned out to be a steal.  Most of the items have already sold on ebay.

So that’s it.  Pretty remarkable if you ask me.  You really never know what is behind closed doors, even in today’s overshare culture.  And while interesting, I am hoping to avoid another sale like this for awhile.

-Erin

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Behind Closed Doors Part One

I had a really epic weekend of estate sales a few weeks back.  My purchases don’t really attest to that, but I FOR SURE visited some of the gnarliest houses ever.  This entry will be split into two parts because I took a million photos.  Keep an eye out for part two soon, in which Zach bolts from a house as soon as we enter it.

The first day of sales began pretty normally.  I visited a house that was full of treasures, lots of vintage military items and nice Christmas items.  I was the first one to the sale, although it was the second day.  I sat in my car for awhile and enjoyed the first snow of the season. 

Damn right I’m listening to Detroit’s Christmas station, WNIC.  Also, I should note, this was pre-Thanksgiving.  GET OUT OF THE WAY THANKSGIVING.

The problem with this sale was that everything was super overpriced.  It was so bad that people were audibly complaining. The guy running the sale finally shouted out, “OK! IGNORE THE PRICE TAGS.  JUST ASK ME AND I’LL TELL YOU THE PRICE.”  This created a new problem, which was a house full of people asking one dude prices for everything.  It was chaos.

This same guy was also straight up yelling at his employees, which was very uncomfortable.  They couldn’t do anything right.  One grandma-looking lady said to me, “All he does is yell at me.”  And I said, “I see that.”  It was a cry for help.  I told her to blink once if she needed me to secretly evacuate her from the property.

I didn’t buy much, although I did want this authentic Purple Heart from WWII.  Turns out though, these are actually fairly easy to come by, and sell for about $100 on ebay.  Also, I just realized how awful that sounds.  These aren’t “fairly easy to come by” for the people receiving them initially, just for terrible people who buy and resell them on ebay.

I did end up buying this book about booby traps.  I paid $5 and later sold it for $40 on ebay.  I know, I know, I JUST mentioned terrible people who resell.  I am one of them, just not when it comes to war medals.

I also bought some utensils from WWI.  I paid $10 for the set and sold them on ebay for $35.

So after this sale, I headed to one in my own neighborhood.  I had heard from other neighbors that the house was a total disaster, but I figured I had already seen worse.

From the outside, things looked pretty normal.

What is so sad about the photos I am about to post is that this house was super super nice underneath all the filth.  The layout was really cool and everything looked retro, but not tacky retro.  It would be a nice home for a vintage-loving family. 

I actually love a good hoarder sale.  Our best sale ever was technically a hoarder sale. The problem here though was that this house was LITERALLY full of garbage.  I do not mean that I personally classified the items inside as useless or meaningless.  What I mean is that nearly everything I saw was meant to be thrown away.  For example, there were tons of empty food containers.  TWICE I found an empty pizza box inside of a garbage bag.

It was so bizarre.  I cannot believe the people running this sale agreed to open up.  I didn’t see anyone buying anything.  It was basically gawkers watching a car crash.

That porn was maybe the one viable purchase in the house.  Still, it sat unclaimed. 

It was so bad that the deemed “garbage” had to be labeled.

There was one gem that came out of this sale, which was the following exchange I overheard:

Neighbor: Didn’t this house have a fire a few years back?

Guy running the sale: Yeah, a big one.  Everything burned up.

Neighbor: Oh really?

Guy running the sale: Yep. All the real good old stuff, it done burned right up.  Nice antiques and stuff.  Burned it all right up.

OH OK COOL.  WHY ARE WE HERE?!  That is what I was screaming in my head.

What I didn’t know at the time of this sale was that things can actually get MUCH MUCH worse.  The next day, Zach and I would visit a sale so horrendous that Zach actually walked out upon seeing the living room.  Stay tuned for part two!

-Erin

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You guys, wtf is this. Seriously WTF.

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Shiny Brite

I am one of those people who is totally cool with listening to Christmas music the day after Halloween.  Don’t get me wrong, I love Thanksgiving, but I see no reason that it cannot be celebrated concurrently with Christmas.  Christmas is basically a season--there’s Spring, Summer, Fall, and Christmas.  Oh, you’re saying that it is technically still Fall and that Thanksgiving happens in the Fall?  OK, let me revise.  There are only three seasons--Spring, Summer, and Christmas.  Halloween marks the end of Summer.

Thankfully, there are many people who agree with my cult of Christmas ideology.  One of them, Rachel Lutz, from the Peacock Room in Detroit, recently held a vintage Christmas ornament sale.  By “recently” I mean the sale was on November 7, smack dab in the Christmas season.

The sale was held in the lobby of the Park Shelton apartments in downtown Detroit.  In case anyone is worried about whether Detroit is actually on its way back, please review that last sentence.  There was a VINTAGE CHRISTMAS ORNAMENT SALE IN DETROIT.  We back baby, we back.

I got there about an hour after the sale started and it was pretty much cleared out.  People were super upset about this.  What do you expect though?  This was the first year for the event and everything was priced reasonably.  Each ornament was 50 cents-1 dollar.  Some were $5.  People snatched up handfuls and handfuls.  There was no way that the organizers could have anticipated the demand.  Anyway, the people whining are not true Christmas lovers, as they were not acting at all in the Christmas spirit.

Some rarer items were priced high, but still reasonable. 

And then there was this monstrosity:

I mean, it is kind of cool.  Just a lot going on.

I ended up buying lots of things, mostly plain ornaments.  Mostly Shiny Brite brand.

This old German garland was my best find.  It is mega old.  At the latest, it is from the 1920s, but perhaps from the turn of the century.  This photo does not do it justice.

I am hoping to get a tiny vintage tinsel tree to display all of these pieces, so hopefully at a sale soon I can find one.  If not, I will buy a repro one from Target or something.  Now that I think of it, that might be the better idea.  Some of those old trees are flammable. 

Some are even “non-inflammable.”  Whatever the hell that means.  Here is one I saw on Craigslist.

Non-inflammable?  So...flammable? 

-Erin

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Wind Up

Sometimes estate sales are a blast not because you find a bunch of great treasures to buy, but just because they are fun to browse through.  I recently went to a sale like this, and even though I only bought a couple things, it was a really nice experience.  The whole house was like a time capsule.

Better yet, it was a time capsule of only adorable things!  That Holt Howard rooster set used to be very collectible, although prices on it have dropped recently.  If the prices were a little lower at this sale, I would have still tried to flip it on ebay.  I hope this found a good home though because it is so cute.

It is hard to tell in the photo but this faux fireplace was pretty big.  It was made of styrofoam and was obviously really cute, but we don’t really have a place to put it.  I hope someone bought it!

Continuing on with the trend of large holiday decorations I do not need, let me present you this Easter tree:

I was kind of obsessed with this.  It was a perfect mix of hideous, intriguing, and adorable.  I should have bought it and left it on Sarah’s porch.  Or saved it for a white elephant gift exchange.  I am not sure what those brown ball things are near the bottom but I assume they are representative of Easter bunny turds.

There were several wind up toys from the 80s and 90s that I thought about buying, but each one was priced around $10-$15.  Had they been $5 I probably would have bought all of them.  Everett would have loved them dearly, although I would be spending the rest of my days constantly winding them up for him.

The Musical Munching Bunny was a steal at $2 but I still didn’t buy him.  I’m being very disciplined with my purchases lately.

I did buy one wind up toy, which was this seal for the bathtub.  Everett is crazy about him and yells, “SEAL! SEAL!” as he swims around.

I also bought this amazing cat poster from the 70s, which I promptly sold on ebay.  It was $1. 

My last purchase turned out to be a lame one, but it was only a $1 investment.  This stuffed bear is supposedly collectible, according to ebay, but so far it hasn’t sold!  I don’t know what the deal is.  He is a Clifford Berryman bear.

I mean, he is definitely cuter than this thing that I left behind at the sale:

-Erin

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Welcome to the estate sale, here is my butt crack. New posts coming this week. Would've posted sooner BUTT I've been busy. Har har har. -Erin