Eastward Again!

The third weekend in September would mark a return to Uncle Bobby's house where the cleaning continues. We hadn't been out there for a few weeks and there is much work that still needs to be done. The timetable for its completion is more blurred than ever. The original goal had been to have it all cleaned out by October, run a couple of estate sales and then wait for the property to be sold. There now seems to be, amongst the group of heirs, that the push to sell the house may not be made until 2018 and that at least one estate sale might be delayed until next year. Whatever the timetable becomes, the house still needs to be cleaned out. We would move a little closer to that goal On Saturday.

Since we wouldn't start the drive out there until noon, we had some time for a couple of sales. We narrowed our list to three. All were sales of potential rather than sure things. We make our lists separately and then compare notes on Friday night. There was only one sale that made both of our lists and that seemed like the logical starting point and that is exactly where we would start.

Sale #1 was a "loaded" sale with "collectibles" and "antiques". There were no pictures to support the sale but we both had a feeling about this sale...and we were right. Our first order of business was to search through some things in the driveway and garage. We knew this sale would be a good one at this point. 

When we went inside, we saw the guy, Ted, who was running the sale and we were happy to see him. He had been part of another company but went off on his own to run some occasional sales. Almost all of them have been really good. We never which sales are his because he doesn't have a company name so we cannot identify his sales. He took our email address and will notify us of all of his sales in the future.

Ted was the only thing we were happy to see when we walked in the house. We were also happy to see lots of Christmas things! 

The basement was packed and this was only one side of it! We spent a considerable amount of time down here, making sure that we didn't miss anything. By the time we were done, an hour and a half had passed and we had walked away with lots of records, books and Christmas things and one old New Year's Eve noisemaker. 

This was our only stop of the day. There would be no time for another and, even more importantly, Monica was feeling a little light-headed from giving blood the day before. Getting her some food was our priority and we made a quick stop for breakfast before moving forward with the remainder of our day. 

Although we didn't have time to look at our saling finds until the end of our day, this is what we saw when we did:

Sesame Street records

More records

Some more records

A few more records

Some books

A New Year's Eve noisemaker with clowns! 

An old souvenir sign from Santa's Workshop at North Pole, NY. 

Two Christmas trays. Both are marked Japan.

Lots of Christmas things. The Santa and Mrs. Claus on the right (with its box) is marked Hong Kong. Everything else is marked Japan.

The second part of our day centered around our trip to Uncle Bobby's house. The second house, the one behind the main house, is where Uncle Bobby lived and that is where we have spent most of our eastern summer journeys.

We had arrived. Unfortunately, for the first time this year, we did not see any wildlife. There is a church on the property next to this property and they had a Saturday event that kept their parking lot packed and the wildlife in hiding.

Creepy doll alert in Uncle Bobby's kitchen! 

We only spent about three hours here on Saturday before all of us (Monica's sister, Monica's brother-in-law, Monica's niece and nephew and Monica's dad and the two of us) made the trip home, stopping for dinner along the way). We were mildly productive and sorted more things out for the future sales. Of course, we managed to thin out the sale items a bit by, once again, taking a few things home for us. Now, in our home are the following things:

 A Flintstones glass from 1963, a vintage aluminum tumbler (we have a full set of these already) and an old set of TWA playing cards.

A vintage Christmas cake topper, a 3-D hula girl toy and an upside-down cocktail stirrer.

A souvenir pen from the 1943 World Series which has a few ink stains but can be cleaned up.

A souvenir coin from the 1939 New York World's Fair. This is the front.

The reverse side of the coin.

Our favorite find of the day...a vintage Camp Cooler! 

Saturday was a very long and adventurous day. Sunday was a day of rest. We did what we had to do and did not do much of anything else. That's okay. We all need days like this sometimes and now we are ready to take on the long workweek!