Expectations Low

The weekend before Easter had arrived. Our prospects for saling next week will probably be slim. Holiday weekends always seem to be like this. The tag sale companies know that foot traffic will probably be lighter and, of course, they would also like a break. The time and effort involved in running a garage sale when so many holiday preparations are still in order will likely keep them to a minimum as well. 

So our hopes were for a great day of saling this week. In putting the list together of potential stops, we were pretty discouraged. Nothing stood out at all. In fact, very few even showed much hope of finding anything that we might like. We composed a list of eight stops that had a chance for us to find something. Only four made our final cut. One sale advertised hundreds of vintage salt and pepper shakers and that looked great but that was only in one of their ads. The other two listed only new items and all pictures associated with their sale pointed to the fact that they were professional garage salers who were selling overstock products from wherever they get overstock items. Once this sale was ruled out, we crossed off another that would just be too far away. Another one that missed the cut was a sale that advertised "114 years of stuff". No pictures. Hmmm...why does this seem suspicious? The last reject, upon second glance, just seemed unlikely to appeal to us at all. So we had four sales to conquer. Expectations low but we would hope for the best

The first sale was about 15 minutes from our house and we only chose to come here because we like the people who run this tag sale company. Maybe we would find something? The ad said "lots of Christmas" but the few holiday items in the pictures were all newer items...and that is what we found...new Christmas items. There was only one floor to search and there was nothing there for us. The lady who runs this company does know what we like and she told us that the sale she has next Saturday has lots of the Christmas stuff we like! That was great news considering we didn't know if we would do any saling next Saturday. With our wallets unopened, we made our way to our second stop.

This next house was one of the biggest houses we have ever visited. As large as it appeared from the outside, it was even larger inside with three gigantic floors, countless rooms, an attic that is larger than most people's entire houses and twists and turns that confused us often. The house was advertised as having a "lifetime of treasures" but they must have all been gone. Almost every room in the house had one or two pieces of furniture (or none) but nothing else. Even the attic, as large as it was, had almost nothing to search. There were about ten boxes of newer stuff. Although there was nothing to bring home at all, we did have great fun in this house simply imagining what we would do with it if it were ours, even if it isn't exactly our style! We looked up the asking price on this house later on. Surprisingly, it is listed for only $1.2 million dollars, a little less than we would have expected.

So, with a car just as empty as when we left the house and only two more stops to go, we decided to get some breakfast and refuel for the remaining two stops. They were each about 30 minutes away but they were in the same town

We arrived at stop #3  hopeful that the "loaded basement and garage" would find us uncovering hidden treasures. As we approached the house, we could see the garage and it was...almost empty. Maybe the basement would be better...

 ...and it was!  Monica found lots of boxes to search

Look at this great vintage entertainment unit! A television, a radio AND a phonograph! 

There was a basement bar with lots of records and lots of stirrers to occupy Rob's time. He poked his head above the bar just long enough for a quick picture. We spent over an hour inside this house and, finally, we found things we wanted! We came home with records, some great Christmas and other holiday items, cocktail stirrers and a few other assorted items and a really good price!

We arrived at stop #4 hoping to find a few more things. This sale was run by an estate sale company with whom we have had success. The description of the sale included "some vintage holiday", "cookbooks" and "vintage kitchenware" and, although the pictures spoke of a house that was not our style, we figured it was worth a shot.

There were three floors to search and the basement had a pencil sharpener...always a good sign! Some of the rooms were searched very quickly being immediately identified as not our style but the attic and basement each had a few things of interest. We did not find any vintage cookbooks or kitchenware that interested us but we did find some more great Christmas items and they came home with us!

Here are some of the things we added to our home this week:

Some records

A few more records

And...a few more records

Some books

Some vintage metal wall hangings 

New Year's Eve noisemakers

Christmas blow molds

Santa candle climbers with holders in their original box. Dated 1957 from Napco

Miscellaneous Christmas items

Christmas carolers. All marked Japan

Lots of Mica houses. The one in the back left has roof damage. We will try to repair it

More miscellaneous Christmas items. The two holiday spirit cardboard hangings have plastic mistletoe on the bottom 

A St. Patrick's Day banner

An Easter egg tree, some plastic doilies and a honeycomb pumpkin

Some vintage Tupperware for Monica with all of its lids

A large plastic Indian dated 1964 (which Rob will repair), a bar caddy and some old Talc containers

A vintage package of sewing needles, Holiday Inn and Howard Johnson's ashtrays, a Shell gas station coin from their coin game and a deck of playing cards

Lots of old cocktail stirrers

Despite a day of low expectations, we found some great things and, as always, had lots of fun together. Sunday was spent running errands, doing some work around the house and doing some pre-planting work in our garden. If the weather holds up, we might even be able to start planting next weekend but not until we do some saling first. Who knows? If it really gets nice out, we may be able to visit our lake. The ducks will be happy to see us.