Our Adventures Amongst The Ducks: Greetings From Garage Sale Land

This post is for the weekend of August 22nd through August 23rd. We are almost completely caught up!

With another workweek behind us, we turned our attention towards the best part of the week...the weekend. We compiled our list of potential sales during the course of the week and compared notes on Friday night. The most intriguing one was just one town away and was a garage sale at a house that Monica remembers from many, many years ago when she stumbled upon it back then. It was a collector who, occasionally, feels the need to get rid of what she no longer loves and she does so at very low garage sale prices. It would be Rob's first visit here. We chose to make this one our starting point.

Our first sale began at 9am but, as so many garage sales do, opened for business a bit early...and we were there early in case it did. Everything for sale was outdoors and we wasted no time in looking at everything for sale. We struck up a conversation with the lady having the sale and we did recognize each other from sales in the area (and Monica knew the house from long ago). Our collecting interest were similar so she took us inside the house for a brief tour.

Her kitchen table was this amazing red one. We have seen similar ones at other sales but never in this condition. It was not for sale as this is her everyday table. We would not have bought it anyway. We have our own yellow one.

The kitchen floor was this great speckled one that we both liked very much. There were so many cool things in her house but we did not spend long inside. She had a sale to run and we had some shopping to do.

We picked some things we wanted and she gave us an amazing price! We walked away with lots of vintage greeting cards, a cool radio, lots of vintage glasses a pair of ceramic turkey candleholders and a few other things. It was a great first stop!

From here, we had no real clear cut plan other than to wind up as close to Monica's hometown as we could so we could visit her dad. Since there were a cluster of sales about thirty minutes to the north, we decided to head in that direction and see what we would find.

Sale #2 was run by one of our favorite tag sale companies and it was described as "cleanout - vintage" and it did mention Halloween and Christmas. Unfortunately, it was a quick stop with not much to see, We were told that the family decided, at the last minute, not to sell some of the things that were originally for sale. We walked away with one plastic deer.

At this point, we stopped to get some breakfast before making a decision on what stop#3 would be. We figured a full stomach would help us make a better decision. Rob ties in logic with breakfast a lot. In reality, it's just an excuse to get breakfast. After breakfast, with a stomach filled with "logic", we made our plans. Stop number three had been decided.

Along the way, we passed this horse. He was safe. We had already eaten breakfast. Rob was no longer "so hungry that he could eat a horse"

Our third stop was at a sale advertised as "contents of home". From the pictures in the ad, we knew that it was an old home though we did not see any pictures of anything that we particularly liked. We would hope for the best.

It was an old house set back from the road and we hoped that our uphill climb on the driveway would be worth our efforts!

Our first vision inside the house was this great old oven built into the wall. That was a good sign!

The kitchen was filled with old wooden cabinets that surrounded the sink and yellow countertop that was...

...BOOMERANG!

The bathroom was the original one to the house. Unspoiled and pink!

The classic pink bathroom floor!

This stop was a good one because we not only enjoyed seeing the insides of this house but also found some great things to bring home. Our bag contained some Christmas Gurley candles, a yellow Lustro Ware canister, some Tupperware, some old records and more.

Stop #4 was simply a concession to Rob. It was a sale run by a tag sale company that is very active though we don't make too many of their sales. There was nothing in the ad that appealed to Monica but it caught Rob's eye. In one of the pictures were a large number of 1968 Topps baseball cards. Rob has over 120,000 baseball cards but hasn't collected them in years and will eventually find a better home for them except for the 1957, 1968 and 1970 cards. These are his three favorites. He does not have anywhere near a full set of 1968 Topps and the cards in the pictures were in hard sleeves and were in great condition. The sale started on Friday and, by Saturday, the chance of them being there were very slim and, if they were, it would only be because they were overpriced (in which case we would not get them anyway). We made the stop in case we were lucky enough to find them there and the price greatly reduced midway through the second and last sale day. We arrived to find no sign of them ever existing and little else that was of interest to either of us. We did buy three newer baseball books filled with old baseball pictures. Rob loves old baseball pictures.

At this point, we could have gone to another sale in the area but it was getting later and we had plans to get closer to Monica's dad's house during the afternoon. We decided to point the car in that general direction.

Sale #5 was thirty minutes away but only ten minutes from where we wanted to land at the end of the day. The description of the sale was "three generations" and it was on its second day. We arrived to find a simple garage sale with very little to offer us. We found one book for 25 cents.

Our last sale was in Monica's hometown and described as having vintage "stuff". It was an estate sale run by the family and there was a garage to search and two floors. It was very tidy and digging skills would not be necessary. It would up being a pretty good last stop as we found lots of cool records and a few vintage pins for Monica.

Our saling day was finished just in time to spend a couple of hours visiting Monica's dad, to go home and eat and then go to the local carnival in town.

The Ferris Wheel was beautiful when lit up and we, typically, like to take a ride on them together but we passed on it this time. At $6.50 per person for a two minute ride, we both felt that it was too expensive.

We did walk around for an hour, taking in the sights and walking around hand in hand. We saw the "Starship Graviton" which has been around forever. Rob thinks that the last time he was on one was back in high school. In fact, he thinks that it must be the exact one that he last rode in high school because it was still playing "Shout It Out Loud" by Kiss.

One ride has a painting of a tiki god and another painting of people at a tiki bar. We felt right at home! We spent the remainder of the night relaxing at home, winding down after a long, adventurous day.

Here are the things we found on Saturday: