Monday Rambles

Okay.  Saturday was the big fireworks show that kicks off the Derby Festival.  And tonight they're calling for...wait for it.....SNOW!

It shouldn't be much or stick around long, because it's going to be a tad too warm for that.  It's just the general principle of the thing.  Is it not supposed to be spring??  Is there a such thing as Winter PTSD?  If so, I think most of us may have it.

Keith keeps saying that this will be one of those years when there's snow on Derby day.  For the uninitiated, that's the first Saturday in May.  (Which is also Free Comic Book Day!)  I can remember one such Derby in my lifetime, although I can't recall the specific year. It was when Keith and I were living in our old apartment.  There wasn't a lot of snow, but, again, it's the principle of  the thing.

Enough about the weather already.

I'm putting off my yard sale post until tomorrow or Wednesday, because it's going to be a long one and I'm still working on it.  I ended up going to the booth on Sunday with some leftovers, which was unplanned, but became necessary when we realized that, given our schedules for this week, it was the only day available to do it.

I actually had decent booth sales on Saturday.  I nearly met my daily sales target, which is unheard of on Thunder day.  People tend to head straight to the Waterfront and spend the day there.  Unless you're someone like me and you realize that it's a great day to go shopping without the crowds.  (Derby day is like this too.)  Apparently, there were quite a few people like me at the Peddlers Mall yesterday.  I'll take it.

Overall, my April sales have not been as dire as they have been in the past.  I'm still lagging behind where I need to be, saleswise, but I have not had any days with no sales.  I've also had double digit sales every day.  No two or three dollar days, so far.  I've met or nearly met my daily target a couple of days and had one day that was flat out tremendous!  For April, I'm not doing too bad.  Now that Derby madness has started, I'm hoping that will hold.

It's Holy Week, so I'm featuring some vintage booklets on the Stations of the Cross (or Way of the Cross) in separate posts.  I'll double post on some days and let the booklet post stand on other days.  I found a nice batch of Catholic booklets in my stash a few weeks ago and decided to feature them.  I bought them a while back at a sale, but set them aside to read and flip through.  One of the hard parts of having a collector's interest in what you sell is getting them to the booth timely.  I've got a stack of manga that I want to read that proves it.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the booklets.  Some of them are quite charming and the graphics are really cool.  Many of them are quite battered and worn.  These were meant to be used over and over again and they were.  I think that adds to their charm, so I've only done minimal editing to the scans.

You can see the first one right below this post.   Have a good week!

 

Stations of the Cross

I decided to start this series of vintage Stations of the Cross prayer booklets with my very favorite one.  I love the purple color and the images that they use for each station, probably the most vivid black and white images I've ever seen.

I was a little thrown at first by the cover image with the crossed crucified arms, one bare and one clothed.  It finally dawned on me that this is a Franciscan booklet, so the two arms represent Christ (bare) and St. Francis (clothed).  St. Francis is supposed to have been the first person to bear the marks of the stigmata.

From the back cover.

Inside back cover.

By the way, it appears that the St Francis Bookshop is still in business in Cincinnati, but it's moved to a different location.  (This booklet is from the 30's.)

Prep Time!

So this is how I spent my Friday.

The armaments:

Everything needed for an afternoon of cleaning and pricing!

The battlefield:

Patio table big enough to spread things out on!

The stronghold:

My much talked about shed, which really needs repainting!

The mission:

Get this organized into a yard sale!

YES, INDEED!  

IT'S YARD SALE PREP TIME!

(I kind of wish I had a theme song for this kind of thing.!)

Part of a successful yard sale is putting time into preparation and organization.  I had already selected the items to put in the sale, so now is the time to clean everything up and price it and organize it for easy set up.  

I decided to sort a lot of things out by table instead of pricing every individual item, since I have a lot of smalls in this sale.  I'll have a 25 cent table, a 50 cent table and a dollar table.  I wanted to sort it all into boxes for each table.  Plus, there were larger items to price.

I've come to the point in my life where I don't feel the need to have everything that I own.  I'm not changing who I am as a big old nerd dude who reads comics, loves cartoons, and likes cool toys and such.  I simply don't have the completist collector vibe any more.  The thought of moving all this stuff again makes me kind of queasy.  So much of this has not been out of the boxes in so long that I had forgotten I owned half of it.  I felt like I was discovering treasure!

What I've done is made myself pare down things to my absolute most favorite pieces.  I've set those aside (which amounted to about 1/3 of the overall lot).  My goal is to find a way to display the down-sized collection in the house once this is all over.  I'll probably end up paring it all down again before that happened.

I took a bunch of what I culled for the booth, but there was too much to funnel that way, so the rest is in my yard sale.  I figure that whatever doesn't sell can still head to the booth.  This is kind of like an overstock deal.  I'm not so much worried about the money I'll make as I am getting rid of this stuff.  If I can get a hundred bucks or so, I'll be pretty happy.

Some highlights:

Batman will always rock, as far as I'm concerned.

A lot of my anime stuff is Japanese merch.

I'm putting a lot of anime stuff in the sale, mostly Sailor Moon, which was always my favorite.  When I got into anime, I became a huge fan of shoujo stuff, especially magical girls.  I've always kind of liked the sweetness of the genre and its tendency towards campiness and kitsch.  I'm going to craft my Craiglist ad to try and draw in the nerds and hipsters who would be interested in this sort of thing.

There are a few Pokemon items.  The original series came out when I was really getting into anime, but it wasn't really a favorite of mine.  There was too much of a forced completism thing going on for my tastes.  Don't tell me I gotta catch 'em all.  I'll decide that for myself, thank you.  Still, I always thought Pikachu was really cute, and I do have some small Pika stuff, but that is the extent of my Poke-madness.  Well, except for Jigglypuff.

Pikachu, I see you!

I do have some vintage in the sale, like this snowmobile jacket. Yes, I know that spring is the wrong time to try and sell a leather jacket.  I'm an optimist.

I'm also putting this old chest in the sale, too.  I figure it will attract some interest.  We have a cedar chest that Keith's grandfather made in the bedroom, so I have no need for this one that I bought in a yard sale ages ago.  It has a loose hinge on the lid, so I'm selling it "as is."

Ooooo look!  I'm making progress!  Yay!

Organized things!

More organized things!

Priced things!

 I'm also putting a lot of books in the sale, mainly my mother's.  I was going to add some of mine as well, but I have three good sized tubs of Mom's, and I figure that's enough.  I'll save mine and have a book sale later on.  I actually figure I have enough stuff to have two more sales this season, which is the most you can have in one year in Louisville.  I've only cleaned out a third of the shed so far.  The rest of it will give me enough for two sales, a good sized Goodwill donation and enough extra stuff for the booth to keep me rolling on smalls well into fall.

With the small stuff covered like that, I'll be able to specifically hunt for furniture and vintage when I go saling and thrifting.

Finally, we're done!  I know that looks like the first pic, but trust me, it's not.  For one thing the angle is different, silly.  The real difference is on the inside of the tubs and boxes.  It's all sorted and organized, guaranteed to make set up a breeze!

Done!  Yay!

Happy by-product!

Empty boxes for recycling mean downsizing has occurred!  Yay!  It all took a lot less time that I thought.  I was even able to pull a few more items out of the shed for the sale.  By the time you read this, I'll be in throes of running the sale, so wish me luck!

I'll have pics and a report either tomorrow or (more likely) Monday!

By the way, I know those photos make it look like the shed is still packed to the gills, but it's not.  One side of it is nearly empty.  I just put everything back right inside the door to make it easier to get to in the morning,

Cat Philosophy

All you need is love.



Been a while since I've done one of these.  Kosh says I've got to make up for lost time.

Weekend Hunting

I kind of failed as a junk blogger (again) by not taking pics of some of the more interesting things we encountered over the weekend.  Seriously, one sale had more plungers than I've ever seen in one place in my life.  I guess I'm still getting in the groove of things.  Or maybe I'm just a bad junk blogger.  In lieu of those pics, here's the story, plus pics of the finds.

Perhaps the best seen, but not bought, item over the weekend was also at the plunger sale.  There was a white, satiny sash with the word "Bride" on it in glittery letters.  Because, you know, she's often so hard to pick out from the rest of the wedding party.  On the way back to the car, I told Keith that I really should have gotten it to wear at our wedding.  Or at least modeled it for a pic.  Bad junk blogger.

I had a big dilemma early on Saturday:  Go to the estate auction that started at 9 or follow the list of sales?  I've been moaning about needing to get more furniture, so the estate sale seemed like a good bet for that.  There were a bunch of high end large pieces, but also plenty the kinds of stuff I like:  odd dining room chairs, side tables, small shelves, etc.

Inexplicably, the auctioneer started with the flats and boxes of smalls, instead of the larger stuff.  After watching flats of nice, but not that special glassware, go for $30+, I realized that most of the crowd was either newbies driving up the prices or folks looking for stuff for themselves and not really caring what the price got to as long as it was less than regular retail.  Can't compete with that, so we split.

I really do need to hit more auctions, though.  It's just hard when the best ones are happening when I'm working, especially in the evenings.  Hopefully, I'll be able to do more in the summer.

One of the sales billed itself as the "best sale of the year."  Naturally, it was pretty much a bust.  I did buy a chair there, because it was furniture and it was cheap and I'm sure I can sell it.  It's also hideously ugly.  I don't have to like things to sell them.  At one point in time, it was a pretty ordinary chair.  Then someone "upscaled" it by painting it pink.

Or at least "upscaling" was the intent.  It might have happened too, with a better paint job and color choice.  Instead, it's a case in point why I'm leery of this redoing, repainting trend.  For every excellent, truly upscaled piece created by someone with talent who knows what they are doing, there are tons of hideous pink chairs.   Still, like I said, I can sell it, and that's kind of all that matters to me.  I sell lots of things I love and some that I'm not so fond of.  It's part of the job.

Another sale advertised that the person was getting rid of "1/4 of everything" they owned.  I decided that someone might need one of my fraction lessons, because there just wasn't that much stuff in that yard.  Either that or there's a really big house that's already practically empty.

I bought a cool purple trumpet at this sale.  I kept calling it a bugle, even after I asked Keith for sure what it was so I wouldn't embarrass myself and he informed me that bugles don't have buttons.  Yet, right after getting his sagacious clarification, I said this to the seller:

"I'd like to buy the bugle, please."

She responded:  "Oh, do you play the trumpet?"

Me:  "If I did, I wouldn't have just called it a bugle"

Corkboards (with $2 Bag  #2 contents)

I also got several small corkboards from her.  Those sell well for me, and I happen to be out of them.  (I found a couple in the shed Sunday, along with a small whiteboard, that I'm adding to that stash.)  Before leaving that sale, I totally lost my mind, by buying something truly questionable because it was only 50 cents.

It's the epitome of 80's sofa art, right down to the plastic black and gold frame.  And it's HUGE!  What the hell was I thinking?  It might be time for the intervention.  (On the other hand, I sold it last night, so I might be on to something.)

We passed several sales that had not been listed on Craigslist before we set out Saturday morning.  That's a sure sign that we're getting into the season, indeed.  I managed to find items at several of them, too.  In addition to hideous things, the other theme of the day seems to be pink chairs.  I got that one by practicing the time-honored negotiation tactic of walking away.

I asked the price and was told, "I don't know, two-three dollars?"  (Don't do this people!)  There's too much uncertainty in that for me to even want to deal with, so I said I would think about it, browsed a tad longer, thanked them and headed to the car.  "I'll take a dollar for that chair."  BINGO!

Flea Market Finds

I planned our route so that the last sale would be the one closest to the booth, to make an easy drop off.  I avoid backtracking and looping as much as I can.  We ended up driving by the indoor/outdoor weekend flea market on the way and decided to stop.  I'm kind of glad we did that, not because I bought a lot of stuff (although I did find a few things), but because it brought back happy memories for both me and Keith.

He was reminded of the outdoor flea markets we went to in Mexico City, which were a lot of fun.  I spent the time wandering the outdoor rows, remembering my father.  There used to be a ton of these kinds of flea markets in this part of town, and he and I went to all of them when I was a teenager.  He loved them.  I loved them.  It was one thing we had in common during the period right after my parents divorced and my relationship with him was really strained.   Back then, you could still find mid to late Silver Age and early Bronze Age comics for less than a buck at those kind of places.  It was good to remember those days for a little while.

Next to the flea market was a VFW with a flea market in the basement.  They kept trying to sell us bullets, which was kind of creepy.  They said the back room was fill a bag for two bucks, so I filled a couple.  Always glad to oblige when there is bag filling to be done.

$2 Bag #1 contents

The last sale we hit was sponsored by the deaf community.  All of the sellers were deaf.  My sign language is pretty limited:  "Thank you."  "You're welcome."  and "Jesus."  So I bought a Jesus picture and said "thank you" for it.

Also pictured is a pink TV tray.

The picture is lenticular.  This is the second image.

Other purchases from the same sale.

My fave find of the day was this big bag of HUGE plastic bugs.  On the one hand, they're bugs and bugs are creepy.  On the other hand, the scale of these suckers makes them kind of awesome.  They will fly right out of my booth.

This isn't all of them.  Just a representative sample.

When I got to the booth to unload, I showed the manager the trumpet.  She said:  "You know weirdos are going to put their mouths on that."  As long as it sells, I'm kind of okay with that.

Mongoose from trumpet sale.  Bags from VFW backroom.

I gotta run.  I'm supposed to be hitting the road with my mongoose.  He's already packed our bags.  We might take the trumpet and make a tour of it.

Sharing with:  Thrifty Things Friday

Monday Rambles

Back to work!  Oh well.  It was good while it lasted.  I only have a session and a half until the school year ends anyway, so it won't be for too much longer.  I'll have reduced hours in the summer again, so I'll have some income, but I'll have time to junk and do other stuff.  My summer schedule is going to be great.  I'll be done by noon every day, with Fridays off.  Yay!

We had a pretty good weekend for yard sales.  Spring is springing!  I'll do a post with more stories about he hunt and pics of the finds tomorrow.  I have to get some shots of stuff at the booth this afternoon.

I spent most of the day yesterday working in the shed out back. I have so much stuff in there that haven't even thought about for ages.  Much of it has been in there since we moved into the house in 2001.  That can only mean one thing;  TIME TO HAVE A YARD SALE!!

The long range forecast looks good for Saturday.  Even more importantly, it looks good for Friday, so I can get everything priced and cleaned up and ready.   I've wanted to have this sale for a couple of weeks now, but was undermined by either a rainy Friday or rainy Saturday.

I spent the afternoon going through boxes and sorting out stuff.  I went through the last of my mother's stuff (which was mostly her books--all of them are going in the sale).  I threw away three huge trash bags of stuff.  I pulled a van load that's headed towards the booths tomorrow, along with two huge bags of donations.  I set aside a mound of stuff for the sale.  And after all that, I made it through maybe one-third of the shed.  I think I may have to have a couple of sales.  The shed is turning into my major summer project.  Good thing I'll have the time to work on it!

Lots of different periods of my life are going into this sale.  There's comic nerd Eddie.  And anime geek Eddie.  And wanna-be Martha Stewart Eddie (that phase never got very far).  Bookworm Eddie is represented.  So is Packrat Eddie.  And Eddie the writer, Eddie the activist, Eddie the young at heart, Eddie the weirdo, along with Pseudo-hippie Eddie, Religious Eddie, College Student Eddie,  Eddie the traveler, Eddie the tourist, and Eddie the uncategorizable.  Writing this sale up for Craigslist is going to be fun.

I am planning for everything to be gone by the end of the sale.  It's all going to be cheap and get cheaper as the day goes on, with free boxes that are going to increase throughout the day as well.  A few things might yet end up in a booth after the sale, but I'd prefer to see it all go away.  My upcoming 50th birthday is filling me with the urge to purge.  I'll try to remember to take pictures.

Last Thursday, I took a day for myself and went out to lunch and a movie.  At the Asian buffet place, I ran into a friend I had not seen in a few years.  We had a lovely lunch and caught up with each other.  Then I saw The Muppets Most Wanted, which I enjoyed quite a bit.  Several parts were laugh-out-loud funny, and there were several little bits thrown in for the longterm Muppet fan, like me.  There were also a few too many places where you could feel the strain of everyone trying just a bit too hard to be entertaining, which made me miss the days when the Muppets seemed so effortless.  One of the things that made The Muppet Movie such a classic was its simplicity.  It's just a jewel of economy in its storytelling and holds up well even today.  None of the movies that have followed it have ever been able to equal that feeling.  Still, Most Wanted was a great way to pass a rainy afternoon!

For a spring break week, booth sales were not too terrible.  They were definitely off from the prime tax season months that just ended, but not as bad as I was fearing.  I stayed in double digits all week, which made me happy.  Most of the days fell short of my sales targets, but nothing hurts a monthly total like a five dollar day!  I was glad not to have any of those.  I even sold that cool bookcase with the built in shelf.

Spring is springing all over the place, and it's time for me to spring along!     

Someone is shirking all adult responsibility today in favor of lying in bed and messing with the camera phone.

Someone also really needs to wash his hair.  Eww.

Please check back tomorrow.  Okay?

Retro Y'all!

Wednesday Rambles

I'm posting a tad late this week.  Sorry about that.  Time kind of got away from me due to SPRING BREAK FEVER!!!!!!  Yes, it's a semi-vacation week.  I say "semi" because I do have a few hours of work, thank goodness.  The weather cancellations over the winter really hit me hard, so I can use the little bit of owrk.  I also have confirmed hours for the summer as well. which makes me happy.  However, I do not have to work evenings this week and that makes me happy too!  Today is my last shift for the week, so tomorrow and Friday are play (and booth) days.

Since I'll have a bit more time this week, I've got some plans.  I'm going to spend a lot of time working on the booths.  Sales are going to bottom out this week due to Spring Break.  People just don't shop the vendor malls this time of year.  In fact, we're getting ready to head into the low part of the year, as far as sales go.

We'll be coming out of Spring Break next Monday, only to head into the Derby Festival that coming Saturday.  For the rest of the world, it's a horse race.  In Louisville, the Kentucky Derby is an excuse to have a three week party.  A three week party that kills sales, mind you.  At least Louisville is out of the running in the tournament.  Last year, that sucked the life out of things even further.  Sigh!

The Derby takes us into May, where things don't get much better.  People don't shop used for Mother's Day.  Schools start getting out sometime in there (maybe).  Vacations start. The competitions from yard sales start in earnest.  And we're looking at a sales lull that will last into at least mid-June, when it gets too hot for casual yard sale shoppers and they head back indoors.  Double Sigh!

So this is the time of year for cleaning, rearranging, restocking, organizing your storage space, etc.  My plan for the week has been to take care of my storage, which has admittedly gotten out of control.  I'll put out a few Easter things I picked up last Friday and restock my comic books, which are getting low.  I'm not going to put out much more new stuff than that, since Spring Break also means more crowds of unsupervised teenagers roaming the mall, which means an uptick in shoplifting, sad to say.  Also in mess, damage and chaos.  I love the vendor malls, but they bring their own breed of issues.

I have an idea for shifting some merch around if I have time to get to it.  I'd also like to rework the physical layout of my space a little, just to shake things up a bit.  We'll see.  I still need to do some thrifting, track down some more furniture, and get a haircut. I also want to see the new Muppet movie and try the new Taco Bell breakfast.

So many things to do!  I'd better get to it!  See ya!

PS HAPPY BIRTHDAY EMMYLOU HARRIS!!!!!

Fun Finds: Bible Lotto!

I love me some religious items, as you know.  I especially love vintage Sunday School/Church School stuff that teaches Bible stories and the like. The older illustrations and graphics are always so cool to me.  So I was really excited to find this vintage Bible Picture Lotto game at a church sale!  (Can you play Lotto in church?  Isn't that like gambling?)

There's a bit of some schmutzy stuff on the box that I'm afraid will mar the lid if I try to remove it.

The game has six large cards--one for each Bible story--plus six little cards that go on each bug card.  Small kids can match the pictures, while older kids can tell the story using the pictures.

Moses changed clothes from the box top.  Diva.

The sheaves bowing like that look really funny to me.

The golden figure looks kind of like an Oscar!

The loaves and fishes kid looks like Joseph!

Love the Star of David on the crown!

Sadly, there are two of the cards missing.  I think the game will still sell without them.

After I scanned the big cards, I got to playing around with some of the smaller ones and made these scanner collages with my favorites. Enjoy!

Did anyone else notice that David's lion looks different from Daniel's?

Changes in Perspective

Used to be, when I saw this video,



I'd think about what an awesome song it is and how cool the video is.

Now, when I see it, I think about all the junk lying all around that house and how I'd like to back the car up to it and scoop it all up and take it to a booth!

But, it is still a cool song.

Retro Y'all!

Stuck in my head

I came out of the shower the other day with this stuck in my head:



If you're around my age and you watched Saturday morning cartoons as a kid, you probably remember the great Schoolhouse Rock shorts.  Usually, I get hung up on the math (naturally) or history shorts, but grammar is what invaded my head the other day.  I think it's because I've been encouraging my classes to write within the context of out math classes.

Another imminently hummable, irresistibly catchy one:



Hey!  That's not fair!  Giving a guy a shot down there!  Gotta love it.  I think the girl with the rainbow "Wow" would look awesome on a retro style t-shirt.

I love this one for the names alone:



The next time I get on the bus, I'm going to holler out:  "Who let that rhinoceros on this bus?"  That piano line is really pretty.

And, finally, nouns:



I love how the pop culture references were already a little dated when this one first aired in the early 70's.  I have a sneaky suspicion that you can sing this one to this tune (and vice versa).  I haven't tried it all the way through, but parts of it seem to work in my head.

Your Vintage Religious Booklet Cover of the Day

I love the bold design, colors, and retro font on this one:

As a bonus, it's got a chart!  I love fundamentalist Bible charts!  I  grew up with them, especially the ones about the end times!  I loved the graphics and the fonts and following all the arrows and lines.  I gotta admit, though, that the one in this book is one of the most confusing and unclear ones I have ever seen:

Even with the explanatory text below, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me.  But it is kind of interesting to look at!

This is the last of the booklets, by the way.  I hope you enjoyed this little mini-series.  I'll be on the look out for more to share!

Junking Humor

Protect yourself from annoying fluid spills and discharges!