Monday Rambles (LONG)

Everybody run!  It's Monday the 13th!

Discussion in our house yesterday:

HIM:  Do you want to stop by that one thrift after your massage?  It's on the way.

ME:  Which one?

HIM:  That St Vincent dePaul.  Oh, wait.  You went there just a few days ago.

ME:  I was there a week ago!  That's like an eternity in thrift time!

Of course, we stopped.  Of course, it was like an eternity had passed.

Sorry that it's still in Mazda.  That sucker is HEAVY!

This was a fortuitous find.  I sold a bookshelf on Friday and needed a replacement.  I'm down to only one in this size in my storage.  I have never, ever sold as many shelves as I have this year.  I'm going to have to start grabbing every one I can find for ten bucks or less until I build up a little cushion.

Turns out the antique mall I went to last weekend (the one with the 75% off booth) is also on the way.  I had wanted to go back there because I re-read the Craigslist ad and saw that this booth actually takes up four spaces and I had only checked in the first one.

Good thing I went back.

There is also a little wood hammer and a bunch of wooden pegs of different shapes to fit in the holes.  This may be the most awesome thing I have ever found.  Or close to it.  I found something else this weekend that surpasses even this, but you'll have to wait a few days for it.  It's so special that it gets its own post.

True to form, I was pretty tired and cranky for most of the week after my treatment.  It started getting better on Friday, so I was able to get out for a bit.  I was kind of glad to able to do that, since it was a truly beautiful day, weather-wise.  I am having what may be a side effect issue that I'm not quite ready to talk about.  I need to see my doctor first.

We had glorious weather all weekend, in fact.  This week looks pretty good too, except for a chance of storms tomorrow.  Spring is here.  Yay!

I've been reading the most interesting book lately.

I "borrowed" this image from Wikipedia.

It's the story of two brothers surnamed Sisters who are two of the most feared hired guns of the Old West.  Imagine a cross between the Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino and you pretty much have it.  It's got a wry, sly sense of humor, but it's also pretty bloody.  It's also quite good.


Last week's booth sales were really good for a Spring Break week.  A couple days were excellent, in fact.  There was only one day that was a bummer.  I still sold some stuff that day, but very little.

Saturday was one of those yard sale days full of stories and stuff.  The theme for the day was "vendors."  I had a frustrating encounter, some strange encounters, and some wonderful encounters.  It was one of those days that someone really needs to write about.  I was there, so I guess I'll do it.

The first stop was a digger sale.  The woman having the sale was just grabbing the boxes and hauling them out of the garage.  She said that when she got done with the garage, she's start in the house.  She wanted stuff gone and was ready to sell!  Prices were unbelievable.  The yard was crawling with people, some of whom kept grabbing her yard and deck decor and trying to buy it.  It was a little bit funny.

She'd be giving out all these reasonable prices.  "How about a dollar?"  "How about fifty cents?"  Then someone would come up with something from the yard.  "OK. I really wasn't planning to sell that, but I could let it got for 30 bucks."  Back it would go!

I made quite the little pile and got quite the great bargain.  Many of the items that were grabbing your attention in the Mazda shot came from this sale.

A family of plant stands.  (Three have already sold.)  The black rack came from a later sale.  Two of the rails on the bottom shelf were bent out of shape, but I got them fixed pretty easily.

This picnic basket has a lot of minor condition issues, but the inside is clean.  It was only a buck, so I had to get it.

There were two of these primitive little shelves.  I snagged them as soon as she brought them out of the shed.

The bottoms on both of them are pretty warped, probably, I think, from standing in a damp basement or cellar.  I thought they were still worth going for because a suitably industrious person (not me!) could easily replace them.

Plus they have this wonderful dovetailing on the tops.  These have both already sold too.

 
I also got some smalls here.

I had to have that family crest for the "Strange" family.  I picked up several of those butterflies too.  My grandmother had a lot of butterfly decor.  The tea tins, tiny stein, and poker cups came from a different sale.  There were four of the cups.  

The bottles in this photo came from that sale.  I love the Sno Bol bottle.  All of the painted on directions are still there and legible. The green and gold thing is a framed Irish Blessing print from another sale.  It's a nice, quality piece from Abbey Press.

I got a box of vintage Christmas for a buck!  I almost never find Christmas.  There are two of that Santa in the sleigh.  Santa's been twisted in this one so that it looks like he's riding side saddle.  I can't decide whether to fix him or not.  It's kind of cute.  The flocked Santa is a little rough on the back side.  The dinosaur is from one of my favorite Xmas specials, A Stocking for Bronty.  It used to come on right after Rudolph.  It was one of my childhood holiday highlights.

Okay, so I made that up.  But you would have watched it, if it had existed.  C'mon.  You know you would.  Actually I also got a nice box of toy dinos at this sale too.  I sell a ton of dinosaurs.  Any variety.  Any size.  I never pass them up, especially by the boxful.

The real kicker to this sale?  The woman having it is a vendor at a different mall!  She told me that she buys all this stuff at auction, then never gets around to putting it out, so she's getting rid of it.  That's not my preferred business strategy, but I'll buy your stuff.  I'll make sure it gets sold too.

The next sale was also being held by a vendor, but I think this was one who gave it a go, didn't do well, and got out.  (Most likely way too early.)  About half the stuff still had booth tags on it, but it was all reduced.

I got this cow bell at this sale.  It was fifty cents.  They retail for a lot more than that.  It attaches to a drum set.  I was telling a vendor at my mall about it and he offered to buy it from me!  He's a drummer and a guitarist.  I'm going to clean all the duct tape off it before I take it to him.

The books in this pic came from sale number three, which was not on my list, but it's a family not far from the house that always puts out a good yard sale spread every year.  I also got something there that's going to get its own post later in the week.

Across the street was another sale not on my list.

These string balls reminded me of the crafts I used to do with my Vacation Bible School classes.  I had to play the "What do you want to pay?" game to get them.  I hate that, especially when the sellers are really nice, but clueless.  Finally, I kind of sheepishly said "A buck."  They said "For both?" and I thought that would be the end of that.  (That's why I hate this game.)  Instead, they said "How about a dollar each?"  The game doesn't usually end this well.

Keith did his eyeroll and laugh thing at these when I put them in Mazda.  They sold the same day, within thirty minutes of being set out.  That's why I'm the one who buys the stuff.  We went to a community sale in a church parking lot next.  Most of the things I got are in the pics above--the black rack, the Irish Blessing, the poker cups, tea tins and mini stein.  Also the Our Lady of All Graces pics and the paperback books.

We then had to drop off the boxes of smalls at the house, since it was close and we were running out of room in Mazda because of the boxes.  At this point I tried to remind myself that I'm really trying to not buy smalls right now.

At the next sale, the guy quoted ten dollar prices on three items I asked about, so I asked him if he would take 25 for all three.  He said he wouldn't because "that's too much of a bargain."  So I decided that wold be too much of my money to give him.  I would seriously have probably bought those things until he decided to get snarky.

Okay.  I know I'm a huge smart-ass, but I do know when and when not to snark off.  The estate sale we went to next didn't seem to be happening.  The next sale was supposed to be an estate sale, but it was a vendor selling off her wares.  (Back to the theme, then.)  I got the deal of the day there.  It's something so awesome that it simply must have its own post.  Come back tomorrow for that one.

We went to what was advertised as a massive book sale, kind of like what I did recently.  It turned out to be only three table of books, but we were getting close to the end of the sale, so we'll give them the benefit of the doubt.  The prices were good.

 Billy Graham is a sure seller for my religion section.  I used that Documents of the Christian Church book (right hand stack, second book) when I was in seminary.  I may give it a look through before I take it to the booth.  Butler's Lives of the Saints (left hand stack, second book) is a classic of hagiography.  If you are at all interested in the saints, you should have a copy.  I have a really ornate one in my library.  The office supplies came from a very small church sale.  (Yes, I consider a bottle opener to be an office supply, depending on where you work.)

We crossed the river for the last three sales.  We always end up in Indiana anyway, because that's where the Peddlers Mall is, so why not hit some sales.  The two we went to have been advertising on Craigslist for the last several weeks, talking about their "wonderful collections" of "too much stuff" at their "indoor yard sales."

One of them turned out to be a store! There's a big sign in the yard that says "Not your typical yard sale" and you go inside and there's a cash register and display cases all over the place.  It's a secondhand store being run of the front of a house.  The stuff was neat.  Just about everything was vintage.  Prices were okay, just not yard sale prices.  I just feel like I was reeled in by misleading ads.

We pulled up at the second one, and there's a sign that says "Yard Sale Inside.  Come On In."  Okay.  We open the door expecting to see tables of stuff and find ourselves standing in the middle of someone's living room.  We can see people getting their lunches ready in the kitchen.  I said "Keith, I think we just walked into someone's house."  It was odd and uncomfortable.

The people didn't seem to mind.  They just pointed to a door and said "The stuff's downstairs."  Okay.  It was a little digger, but everything was out on tables.  Some stuff was a dollar apiece.  Some was two for a dollar.  Some was three for a dollar.  Some stuff had vendor tags on it, and I recognized the booth number and handwriting.  It's a guy in my Peddlers Mall!  I buy from that booth all the time.  He's running his own little flea market out of his basement.  Some of the stuff was things I looked at in his booth that were a little too much for me.  And here it is, three for a dollar.

I amassed a huge tub of stuff.  He came downstairs at one point to put his laundry in a dryer and handed me an empty plastic tub to put stuff in. I kept trying really hard to remember what came from a two for a dollar table and what came from a dollar table, etc.  Then when I went to pay, he just started grabbing out items three and four at a time and saying "This is a dollar.  This is another dollar."  He didn't really seem to care what table stuff came from.

I need to look those odd coffee cups up.

Purple disco balls!

I know it's too late for Mardi Gras, but I really kind of liked this.

The Lucy DVD is still in the plastic

I'm actually kind of proud of this pic.

That last line up is one of those that kind of sums up who I am as a junker really well.  That makes it a really good place to end this overly long post.

Well, maybe one more.

Can't leave out that fun bank!

Thanks for slogging through hanging with this extensive ramble!  I seem to have lost my ability to self-edit on this one.  I'll try to do better.