Yet More Finds

This one should wrap up my catch up of recent finds.  Whew!  Remind me not to get behind again!  Bad junk blogger!

I still have a post about some keepers for tomorrow.  I also have one or two special things that are already in the booth that need to be shown off a bit.  I should have all of those little bits and pieces out of the way this weekend.

Once again, posted pics with minimal comments.  The colored dots on some items are from the sale where I got them, which used color-coded stickers to price most stuff.  I left them on so I could re-use them to price everything for the booth.

See the original Wiffle bat peeking out there? 

 That Human Fly comic is no great shakes, other than the fact that it was a fun read when I was a kid.  It's in pretty tough shape too.  But, I was making a pile at this sale, and I have sworn to leave no comic behind.  I'll put it in my 50 cent box for the next sidewalk sale.

That lunchbox kind of tickles me.  It would have been cooler if the thermos said "Thermos" on it.  That L&N thing is a stapler I turned on its side to show the monogram.  L&N stuff is pretty popular around these here parts.

Everybody called my dad's father "Pappy" so I had to get that sign.

 

That thing with the black handle is a torque wrench.  (I didn't know either and had to ask someone.)  I got two tubs of those Xmas cookie cutters.  I sell lots of cookie cutters over the holidays.  The menorah came in a box that said "Contemporary Menorah" on it.  I decided that sounded kind of catchy and have been singing it as a jingle all afternoon.  I finally added "She's fab!" to the end of it and the jingle is complete!  Now I just need a sitcom to add it to.

I felt like Shara when I found a whole tub of vintage ornaments for 25 and 50 cents a box!  I stacked that whole tub on top of the two other boxes full of stuff that I was carrying around the sale.  I think I made quite a sight!

 Some sets are older than others.  The first box on the left even has a picture of the ornaments being made!

I asked this guy about his job and he told me that it kinda blows!  (Sorry!)  The box on the far right has this cute Santa on it.

The middle box is a vintage Shiny Brite box, but all the blue ornaments have been mixed up in the boxes.  I'll have to straighten them out before the holidays.

Still More Finds

Here are some of the smaller finds of the past few weeks.  I think I'm going to dump the pics in here with minimal content and let you all pick what you want to talk about in the comments.

All the wooden trains are handcrafted.

Big ducks to eat the big bugs.

I went to the bathroom after I took this pic.  When I came back, someone had bought Mickey!

The older rosary draped over a massive made in China tank is my attempt to be ironic.  Or something.

A big pill to take to help deal with the chaos of big ducks chasing big bugs.

 Stud. Heh!

All of those Bibles were free.  Some are slipcased.

Can't figure out what the red tray is for.  I thought it was silverware are first, but it's too deep and the small compartments are odd.  It's made by Goody. Any thoughts?  Those other things look like lap desks the way I have them propped there, but they are really handmade tabletop stands for large books.

Can't resist a metal box.

More tomorrow!  Soon, I'll be all caught up!  Just in time for the weekend!  It's a never-ending cycle of junk on junk on junk!

Some Finds

I guess I'll start with some of the bigger stuff.  I need to get these items on Craigslist, so maybe putting them here will get me inspired.

We'll start with the bookcases.  Nothing special here.  Just ordinary pressboard shelving.  You know that kind that's everywhere and that you need so much of in a large space like mine.  There were three of them upstairs at an estate sale.  They were loaded with books.  The seller kept dropping the price until it got low enough that it was worth unloading the things, hauling them down the stairs and cramming them in Mazda--which took the tiny seller woman getting inside to help guide them in.  I bought two of them because that's all we had room for.  If the sale hadn't been out in the middle of nowhere, I would have paid for the other one and come back for it.  The price wasn't low enough for that.  I took both of them and added them to my religious item section and moved all the Bibles, hymnals, and other religious books out of my book booth and into this section. 

Then there's this beauty of a cabinet, found in the basement of another estate sale on half-price day, which made it a bargain.  Keith wanted it for our house, but after we wrestled it up and out of the basement (it weighs a TON), he looked at me and said:  "It's yours."

It's got a couple of flaws to it, but is still pretty groovy.  Unfortunately, we majorly eff'd it up getting it into the van.  We've taken one of the seats out of Mazda to have more hauling room, and the metal clamps that hold it in place are exposed.  They scratched the hell out of one side.  I never even thought to check for that and am still kicking myself over it.  Those are some deep-ass scratches, too!

The estate owner had a dog.

Makes me sick every time I see it.

I can't pass up a cheap school desk, especially when it is a nice shade of sky blue.  Awww...

I always used to get sent home with notes about how messy my book cubby was!

I got this vintage kids' library table from my uncle.  It's just crying for someone to pretty it up and put it to use.

I bought a side table at a yard sale where a woman had been looking at it and taking her time about deciding.  I finally had to start making it really obvious that I was interested too.  If she had made a real move on it, I would have backed off, but when she stepped away without saying anything, I waited precisely no seconds before buying it.  She turned around and I was already taking it to the car.  I won't buy something out from under something while they are still looking at it, but I'm not going to wait while they wander the sale and decide either. 

The thing is heavy as hell, too.  While I was struggling across the street with it, the seller called out that she had another one inside for the same price, if I wouldn't mind carrying it out.  I took a look back at the two story house and meekly said:  "It's not upstairs, is it?"

They're stacked to save room in the booth.

Finally, these awesome vintage wooden folding chairs with leather covered seats have already sold while they were waiting for their blog debut.  I couldn't leave them out though.  I have a thing for chairs, especially when they are this awesome!

More to come!  I've got, like, three weeks to catch up on.  Since a lot of it is also going on CL, I'll get double duty out of the pictures!  I think there's one more large item post to come, then at least one of the coolest smalls, followed by my comic treasures for me.  Fun times!

Monday Rambles

"LO!  THERE SHALL BE A BLOG RESURRECTION!"

Yes, I read way too many Marvel comics as a kid.  Why do you ask?

I am waaaaaaaaay overdue for a finds post, so look for at least one, but more likely two or three this week.  The "Mazda" posts from the weekend were just the start of it.  There's stuff inside those boxes too, you know.  I even actually recently bought some things that are just for me to keep!  (They're comics, don't you know!  But, oh what comics!  Aging Nerd Heaven, Baby!)

I might actually end up with extra time to post this week.  Turns out I'm in trouble at work for not completing some online training things.  I was informed Friday that there was to be a meeting to discuss the issue and that "There would be consequences!"  Fortunately, it's not just me.  One of my colleagues is also in the hot seat.

My boss tends toward the dramatic, so I have no way of knowing what's hyperbole and what's not.  Here's what I do know:  Said colleague and I are the most effective staff at our center.  We are well-liked and we get the desired results.  We meet our target goals over and over.  We are also the only two people there who work at multiple economic angles to make ends meet.  She has three regular jobs.  I have tons of little side efforts, plus the booths.  It's not that either one of us is being deliberately petulant about doing trainings.  It's that we both usually forget to do the durn things.

There's a lot about this system that I could gripe about (like the fact that these trainings are important enough for "consequences" but not important enough to pay our full hourly rate to do) but I won't.  I do know that they're not going to be able to have a summer morning session starting tomorrow without my tubby butt.

We'll see.  I guess.

How about some more pleasant thoughts?  I've done this booth thing long enough to know that May is a hard month for sales.  I've gone over that here quite a bit recently, so I'm not going to rehash it again.

Last night, however, my email yielded the wonderful news that:

1.  I had the best May ever in terms of total sales.

Not only that, but:

2.  I had my best month this year (so far) for total sales.

And, if that were not enough:

3.  I had my second-highest monthly total ever!

Due to my recent rent increase, it won't be my largest take home check ever, but I have a feeling that's coming.  My sales really did expand to fill my new expense void, and much more quickly than I ever would have thought possible.  Now I'm sure that the struggle I had last year to grow my sales with my expansion then was largley due to being sick and not able to keep up.

This small furniture groove is really working for me, as is my turn to more items in a higher price range than I've traditionally done.  Now, I just need to keep that momentum up.  Since I'm (hopefully still) only working half days in the June and July, I'll have a lot more time to spend at the Peddlers Mall.  I'm still not as stocked on the shelves as I would like to be, so that is the next big goal.  (Along with reorganizing my storage space and completely restocking my comic books.)

It's an exciting time to be reselling!  Yay!

Best of all, this Saturday is the hands-down largest church sale in town!  And the entire neighborhood surrounding it also has its annual sale.  This is the big ritzy house part of town, where the people have names like "Vandella" and "Davenport" and their house staff actually run the sales while they're off to the club with their kids, who are named "Skip" and Mitzi."

Okay, not really, but it would make a fun play, wouldn't it?

A couple of years ago, we got lost in one part of this neighborhood that had some serious, serious houses in it.  I kept telling Keith that there was undoubtedly some woman inside one of them looking out the window at us and screaming for her husband:

"Davenport!  Come quickly!  There are two strange men in a...a...a...Hyundai full of....USED ITEMS...driving past the house! Call security!" 

As if that weren't enough, junk set out starts again in this area on Friday!  Time to get out and battle the scrappers and the pickers and the cowboy angels!  (Bonus points if you get that last reference.  Here's a hint.)

It's a living, ya know?

And what a living it is!

See ya!

So, what was in Mazda?

Well, here's some pics to show you.  (At least some of the larger items anyway!)

A handmade bench!

A plastic step stool!

A child's play ironing board!

A handmade table!

An office chair!

An adorable ladybug chair!

A doll high chair!

A pair of retro dining chairs!

That were made in Louisville!

I'll have some pics of the smalls later in the week!  It was a good day.  And I only made it to six of the sales on my list!

What's in Mazda?

Yes, we are those original kind of people who tend to name their vehicles after their brand names.  I guess if we had kids they would be called "Boy" and "Girl."  Which could lead to problems if we had more than one of each.  Maybe we could trade the extra one in somewhere for gas points or something?  Anyway, I'm digressing....

I've been wanting to do a full van shot at the end of a Saturday yard sale jaunt for a while now.  I am amazed every Saturday at the amount of stuff we are able to get in there.  Today, I finally remembered to take a few shots from various angles.

So, here we go!  What's in Mazda?

Yes, there is a Christmas tree in amongst all that.  Actually, there's two.  I don't really want to be buying something large to store until December, but the church that usually holds the Xmas bazaar where I get a couple of cheap trees in the fall is no longer having any sales.  It's pretty sad, as they used to hold a basement sale every other weekend throughout the summer.  I'm missing them already.

Without my usual tree source, I've been looking out for a one or two at a reasonable price (is under five bucks).  Today, within a half an hour, I managed to find two!  One more thing to cross off the list!  Yay!

But what else is in Mazda?  I'll provide some pics tomorrow.  In the meantime, feel free to guess...

I am in the land of the living

My dog/house sitting ventures usually take me off the grid for a few days, so I apologize.  I've been house-sitting for various folks for nearly two decades now.  Usually, it's folks who don't like leaving their pets alone and pay for someone to stay with them.  A lot of times their animals needs meds or have special feeding times or need lots of walks or some other special need.  They tend to prefer having their babies at home, rather than in a kennel, because it's less stressful on the pet.

Most of my clients have moved away over the years, so I'm down to this one, and I go over their a couple of times a year.  When I started, she had an aging dog who has since passed on.  Shortly after that, she took in her father's cocker spaniel, who is blind and deaf.  (I stayed at her house for a couple of months a few years ago while her father was in the final stages of cancer.)

It's always fun to stay over there.  It's kind of like a mini-vacation.  I tend to get a lot of relaxing done, because I'm not surrounded by things that need doing around here.  I watch movies and read comics.  And nap.  A lot.

One thing I don't get done is a lot of online things, like blogging.  In the past, I have had little to no wireless access there.  I did discover that the internet access there at the house has been upgraded, but I didn't realize it until my last afternoon there.  I could have been keeping up with things!  Next time, I'll know.

Anyway, that's where I've been this time.  I'll try to get things up to snuff around here over the next week.  After I finish dealing with my own clingy kitties, of course.  They get really needy when I come back after being gone for a while!

Sorrowful Mother

I was going to include this novena booklet based on the Seven Sorrows of Mary in with my Stations od the Cross booklets at Easter time and totally forgot to do it.  I just found it in my drafts again and I think it's too good not to share.  I love the sense of drama evoked by the illustrations!

This is my favorite!

Demons

Oh No!



That old demon caffeine has the Batman in its fiendish grip.

I can relate.

That's my coffee cup.  Takes two refills to get me going each day.

But this kitty knows the score.



What's your caffeine demon like?

A couple of unsung finds

Here are a couple of recent (past couple of months or so) finds that kind of slipped through the blogging cracks, but are too good not to share.  (I told you I was a bad junking blogger.)  I'm still working on a really large catch up post of my recent finds, so I hope this will tide you over until then.

First up is this awesome offering plate:

 

It needs to be cleaned and hit with something to take care of the tarnish, but it is so way cool!  I love it.  It was at this sale where nothing was priced.  The only thing I found with a price sticker on it was the offering plate, which was marked $5.  I took it to the guy running the sale and he took a beat when he saw the price tag.  The look on his face said:  "Oh shit.  I forgot to take that damn thing off."  I already had the five out and in his hand before he could start backtracking on the price.

There's a local church with a Japanese congregation that's part of it.  Every year, they hold a Japanese yard sale.  I usually go, looking for translated manga.  There wasn't any this year, but I did find these guys:

Cool, huh?

Finally, there's this fun train case that I found at the same church where I got the cheap school desk.  The case was only 50 cents and I nearly lost it moving stuff into the mall that day, which is why it's so late showing up here.  I had stuck it into the book cubby of the school desk and forgot about it, so it went unpriced into my booth.  The desk sold in a day or two, so I was afraid that the case had gone out the door with it.

A couple of weeks later, I saw it in a cart of untagged merchandise.  The cashiers won't ring anything up that doesn't have a price tag, so they collect it in a special room.  Vendors are supposed to check for their stuff every so often.  After 30 days, anything that isn't claimed becomes mall property and they tag it and sell it.  So, I was glad to get it back and not have to buy it back.

When I was buying it at the church, it felt like there was something in it.  I opened it and found a bunch of hair curlers.  The woman taking the money said "Oh, those are included at no extra charge."  I kind of grinned at her and then she said:

"Well, you never know!"

That's kind of my saling motto, I think.  You never do know what you're going to find.

Way Long Overdue Whatever Day Rambles!

We interrupt your visit to a formerly lively, but recently very dead, blog with an important announcement!  Though he vanished unexpectedly, the long, lost Eddie-tor has at last been found!  He was discovered in the company of a Yeti and a Sasquatch visiting a thrift store in the fabled lost city of Shangri-La!  The trio was burdened with junk purchases made in locales such as Lemuria, Atlantis, and the Savage Land.  When asked for comment, the ersatz blogger had this to say:  "Can't talk now.  Gotta get back to the UFO.  The aliens just saw on Craigslist that Elvis is having a yard sale inside the hollow core of the Earth!" 

When conveyed this information, friends and loved ones began a plan to spread rumors of a rummage sale at the Bat Cave in hopes of luring the wandering soul back home.  More on this story as it develops.     

I am so sorry to all of you to be out of touch for so long without any kind of notice whatsoever.  To say that things have been crazy is an understatement of maximum proportions.  Between closing booths, opening booths, buying large heavy things, filling the van over and over with stuff, wrapping up the school year, and trying to get a handle on my booth, my storage area, and the junk room at the house, I have been pretty wiped out most of the time.

Here's a summary:

LAST WEEK OF APRIL INTO DERBY

Closed my uncle's booth at the Peddlers Mall on April 30.  He's been having some health issues, but is doing lots better.  I'm glad about that, since he is the last member of any direct generation of my mother's family ahead of me.  I'd kind of like to keep him around for a wile.

He's closing up shop for a while to have some time to continue getting better without the continual scramble to find new stuff to sell.  I've been tending his space for the last several months, so I closed it up for him.  He gave me his leftover stock and his booth walls, which I sold to the mall.  He just outright gave them to me, but I split the money from the sale with him.  I also paid him a little for his stock.  Getting him to take the money was a bit of a struggle, but I told him I had made an "executive decision."

Right after that, I had to move out of the store that closed.  I waited until the day after it closed, so I could do my work in peace.  I'm very glad to be out of there.  I saw and heard some things while I was closing up that didn't sit well with me.  The staff were very rude to a friend of mine who came to help his mother close her booth.  Plus, the management was putting a lot of pressure on vendors to move into a new mall where they had gotten jobs.  When I told them I was staying put at the Peddlers Mall, I got strange looks from them.

However, I did get some good stuff from vendors who marked down their stuff in advance of closing, including a marble top side table for five bucks!

Derby Week was good for me sales wise at the Peddlers Mall.  Honestly better than any Derby Week I've ever had before, even on Parade Day (Thursday).  Friday (Oaks) and Saturday (Derby) were dead, of course, but the rest of the week wasn't bad.

I've been working ever since to get the stuff I moved from the closed store worked into my space.  I'm now carrying more rent than I like, due to the space I had to pick up to accommodate everything.  I'm planning to give that up as soon as I don't need it.  Until then, I'll just do the best I can.  I've been rearranging as I've gone along, so it's been a slow process, complicated by a couple of recent large purchases.  (More on that in another post.)

Derby Saturday wasn't much for the yard sales, of course, but I did go to the one I consider to be the "season opener."  I got some fun small things there, so the day wasn't a total bust.  I also dropped in on a couple of comic shops for Free Comic Book Day and ended up with a good sampling of the available books. 

FIRST WEEK OF MAY (POST-DERBY)

Very slow sales, but I did move some large items.  I spent the week trying to get the booth up to snuff.  I moved closer to that goal, but never hit it exactly.  It will always be a work in progress, I guess.  I'm trying to get it rearranged to the point where I can accommodate a sofa or a dining room set, if the opportunity presents itself.

My brother turned 45 on the 8th.  In true family fashion, I haven't mailed his gift yet.  The card ended up in my storage room at the booth somehow and I keep forgetting to get it.  Oh well.  It's kind of a family tradition that we're late with the birthday acknowledgements, so I know he's not too surprised.

His hitting 45 has me pondering my upcoming 50th.  I think I'd like to have some sort of family get-together with his family, my uncle and his wife and a couple of my cousins.  I'm getting tired of only running into folks at funerals.  We'll see if we can get this together.

On Friday, I taught a class on having a successful yard sale.  Seriously.  Sometimes, I love the things I get paid to do!  There were four people registered, but only one showed.  I think that was due to the weather.

The weekend was rainy and cool, so a lot of the sales did not happen.  Bummer.  That includes the comic shop sidewalk sale that I was so looking forward too.  Double bummer.  I've been selling TONS of comics and am almost out of them!  Really.  Keith says he can't imagine that happening to me, but it's true.  Ack!

We did get to a couple of estate sales and a sale in a nice dry garage, so a van full was forthcoming.  I'm planning a catch up finds post this week, so I'll spill the details then.  Let's just say it involved a lot of huffing, puffing and carrying and further complicated the booth situation.

I also visited my uncle and took him his tables and booth check.  He's planning a yard sale and let me shop early.  He let me have first shot at the furniture and I got some cool pieces!  Plus, a ton of smalls.  He said he was tired of pricing the small stuff, so he let me make a pile and an offer. 

I spent Sunday working the never-ending booth.

LAST WEEK

More of the same.  Work.  Booth.  Work.  Booth.  My night sessions ended until July, which gives me a little more time.  Yay to that!

I started a new class on becoming a reseller, which had a good first session.

We hit a killer estate sale on Saturday and ended up going back for half price day on Saturday.  I don't normally do that, but this one was in the neighborhood and they had awesome stuff.  It was one of the best run estate sales I have ever been to:  well-organized, lots of help, good prices, and every single little thing was priced--down to the smallest thing!  Seriously.  I started picking little shit up just to see if it had a price.  And everything did.  That's a lot of work!  And the staff were super-friendly.  I'll definitely be looking for more of their sales.  An Eclectic Collector.  I recommend them highly.

Saturday night, we went to see Lyle Lovett give an awesome show that I will write more about later.

THIS WEEK

 More of the same.  My day time session ends on Thursday.  Tons of work to do at the booth on Monday and Wednesday.  I start house sitting on Thursday for a week.  Tuesday is an off day, due to the primary.  I kind of need it.  Saturday the Peddlers Mall is having a Sidewalk Sale, so I am also gearing up for that.  I'm taking over a couple of tubs of books from the house, my yard sale leftovers, and am pulling a bunch of booth duds, stuff from my uncle, and other items.  I'm planning to do six tables.  I may be mad.  We'll see.

 Thanks for dropping back by.  I'll try to start being more active again.

We interrupt this broadcast with another update.  Should you see our itinerant Eddie-tor, please do not attempt to subdue him yourself.  We are unsure what frame of mind his recent adventures have left him in.  Under any circumstances, do not attempt to help him with his parcels!  You know how junkers are about their purchases, even under ordinary situations.   Place a call to the local Peddlers Mall with his whereabouts.  They can take it from there.  Trained personnel will lay a trail of Wonder Woman comic books and Emmylou Harris CD's to the nearest Mexican restaurant where they will keep him occupied with chips and salsa, Diet Dr Pepper, and re-runs of Days of Our Lives.

Post Mother's Day Thoughts

Mother's Day wasn't anything special for me this year.  Enough time has passed now since Mom died that I don't dwell on it all day any more.  It's not far from my mind on Mothers Day, but I'm more able to go on throughout the day than I was before.

I got on a buying tear on Saturday (more on that later), so I went to the booth and worked all day.  When I came home, I settled in with an old puzzle book that I found when I was cleaning out the shed.  It's one of the series of books put out by Games Magazine that I bought several years ago.  Somehow, it got lost in the shuffle, so I never completed many of the puzzles in the book.  I found a couple of these in the shed and I have been working through them ever since.  It's a nice way to unwind.  This was the first time I had gotten into this book since I found it.

I started thumbing through it, looking to see what had been completed and what had not been started, and I got a real surprise.  There, interspersed with my unreadable scrawl, was page after page of puzzles done in my mother's neat, even printing.  (I've always kind of marveled that she wrote so clearly and nicely, while neither my brother nor I can produce anything resembling legibility.)

At some point in time, during some of her visits with us, she had gotten her hands in this book and worked a few pages.  I found puzzles that I had started and she had completed.  I found puzzles that I had screwed up and she had corrected.  I found pages that she had whipped through on her own.

I get my love of puzzles from Mom.  When I was a kid, I would get into her puzzle books all the time.  I was always amazed at all the different kinds of puzzles she could do so easily.  Somewhere along the line, she started leaving the easy puzzles for me to do, so I would stop trying to do the hard ones and mess them up before she got to them.

For a while, she would cut the easy puzzles out, glue them to a piece of construction paper, put the solution on the back, and let me take them to school, so I would have something to do when I got finished with my other work.  My favorites as a child were word searches.  Today, I like all kinds of puzzles.  My favorite app on my phone is my crossword app, which I use daily to download and work puzzles.

The other night, I could not sleep, so I got up and got out a puzzle book.  Keith woke up and looked at me and said "Are you really doing word puzzles in the middle of the night?"  I said that I was and he said:  "Of course you are." Then he went back to sleep.

I used to get Mom a new puzzle book every year for Christmas.  I found the last couple in her stuff after she died.  They still had some undone pages, so I took them with me.  Finding books of mine that she had worked on made me think of those books of hers.

Last year for Christmas, I got Keith's mother two books of  Bible-themed word searches.  She had never worked any kind of puzzle before. which was a huge surprise to me.  She loved them!  A few weeks ago, she finished the last of them, so we ordered her some more.  I overheard Keith telling her about me and Mom and our puzzles on the phone the other day.

Looking at those puzzles Sunday night made me smile.  I ended up having Mother's Day thoughts about Mom after all, but they were happy ones.  In a couple of weeks, it'll be the fourth anniversary of her death.  My brother turned 45 last week, which means I'm almost exactly six months away from 50.  Where has the time gone?

I think I'll go to the big flea over Memorial Day weekend, since that's one of the things we used to do together as kind of a late Mother's Day celebration.  She'd be looking for yard and garden stuff.  Sometimes, she would find a puzzle book or two.  Maybe I'll find one this year in her honor.  

Cat Philosophy

Take time out for a good pampering.

What the hell? (Part 2)

Remember this pic from Tuesday?

See that multi-colored thing in the front-center?  It's a homemade bean bag frog with googly eyes.  So, right after I took that pic, I turned it over to see where the best place to put the price might be.

This is what I found:

Really?  I can't decide if it's a velcro patch where a certain anatomical part has been yanked off or an odd representation of another anatomical part.

Either way, all I can say is

Really?