Alright, this was pretty promising. We found the yard sale map for the Johnsonville Neighborhood sale and it had 200 sales!
This is another suburban sale, so we expected a lot of toys, kids clothes and tacky stuff. But wherever there is this many sales concentrated in one place, there has to be gems. Has to be.
I asked Dude if he'd like to come, but it was a sunny day. He'd have probably gotten trampled anyway.
Stay on the balcony while we're gone, okay?
Once more we folded up Janie's power wheelchair. It takes about 2 minutes to break it down and put it in the trunk. Very slick.
And we were off.
Find of the Day
German "Monkey" wine bottle
price - $1
sold
These gewurtztraminer bottles from the 60s have their own cult following among bottle collectors. The monkeys are great, and there are ones with cats also. They sell for about $20 now.
Least interesting thing
r2-d2 pop cooler
price - didn't ask
no sale
I suppose it could hold beer also, but I don't think anyone who keeps this around is old enough.
Other things we did or did not buy:
It was actually last Sunday that we got a big bag of books in French for $5.
sold
Unfortunately the used book stores aren't selling as much French as they used to, so we just got our money back out of them. I also think we got a bad buyer this time around.
Brass fire poker handle
From a free box
sold
It weighed a pound and a half, so it goes in my scrap stash.
Pre-school truth tutorial
price - $1
no sale
I get the truth thing, so I left it for someone else. Say folks, let's hear it. Who do you think should watch this video?
Sour candy bank
price - $1
no sale
I had to take a picture though. The top lifts right off too, for easy access in case you're not really into saving.
Coveralls
price - $2
no sale
Yes, I do recognize them, and I hope I never ever have to get that dirty again. As bad as they look, they're coveralls. They don't need to look good. They're for nasty, brutish work - something I've done my fair share of. It's best if they don't look good; then you won't feel bad about getting them dirty.
'73 Mustang
price - $6,000
no sale
Please? Can't I have it? I have no place to park it, and I'm not going to park it on the street. Not downtown.
Ugly brass items
price - 25 cents each
no sale
I would have bought them all for scrap, but they probably would have wanted to know about why I wanted them. See truth video above. I wouldn't want to hurt their feelings. The profit wouldn't have been that much anyway.
Big beanbag frog
price - $5
no sale
That's a human-size chair he's sitting in. He really was enormous.
Modest furniture in excellent condition
price - $5
no sale
I don't have room for it. Yes, it's basically made from plywood, but it was professionally constructed, and beats the formica over particle-board fashion that followed about a decade later.
Toy - swat team tank
price - didn't ask
no sale
Am I naive, or are there really swat teams that would keep and use a tank? If not, are we preparing our kids for a world where tanks roll down our streets or what?
Big RV
price - $3,000
I couldn't get it in the parking garage. It was a bit rough, but these things are expensive new. Expensive to fill up also.
Homemade trailer
price - $50
no sale
Someone already bought it of course. If I was back in Colorado, I'd have bought this and hauled wood with it until it busted. What a deal.
[Speaking of wood]
Gas wood splitter
price - $175
no sale
These things are a joke. Gimme a hand maul any day.
Steer skull
price - $20
no sale
Janie was at another sale when I snapped this picture. "Why didn't you buy it?" she asked. Why indeed. It should have been the find of the day, but I wasn't paying attention. We have a couple Georgia O'Keefe prints it would have looked nice next to.
Warm shirts
price - 25 cents to $1.50 ($4.50 for 5)
sold
We did okay for shirts today. There were some incredible shirts at some of these sales, including heavy, old Woolrich ones, but they were mediums. Mediums don't sell.
Walnut lazy susan
Found in the dumpster after I returned home
Sold
It is heavy-duty, and now it holds six 2-quart ball jars full of beans, rice, pasta, etc. Just what I needed on the kitchen counter.
Enamel teapot
price -$2
sold
I had a standing order for two teapots, and I've been really picky. This is stout. It has a chip in the enamel by the spout. We'll see what my customer thinks. I wouldn't care, and she said anything will do. This is a bit better than just anything.
6 pounds of sheet aluminum scrap
price - $1
sold
The scale came from the dumpster a couple years ago. It works perfectly for these sorts of tasks, and it's an antique to boot.
Cabela cargo pants
price - $2
sold
Just my size, and it new condition. One of my goals is to get enough cargo pants to last me for the rest of my days. I love cargo pants; all the convenience of carrying a purse without having to carry a purse.
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The one thing that struck me most about his neighborhood was that so many of the sales didn't have a single thing that was old. It was all new, as though they had no history or ancestors and had just recently landed naked on the shores and bought everything they owned at Target last week. There were exceptions of course; blessed be the exceptions.
Would You Buy This or Not is a weekly feature published every Sunday morning around 7 a.m. Central. I'm greatly encouraged by your feedback. Janie and I truly enjoy being able to take you all along, especially since we've taken out the back seat of our car for additional payload and thus can't take anyone along with us physically.
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Comments: 24
About the log splitter.... If it had been the one we have built, you'd have jumped at it. It will walk through green cotton wood stumps. We've had to reinforce the 12" I-beam to keep it from bowing. This one is worth the money we spent to build it. Of course you can't buy this on the market. It's way over engineered.
Ron, the most interesting thing to me was something free. The lazy susan. I'd have used it for exactly what you did.
Not a bad week though??
Thank you Mark. I learned the truth thing by trial and error. Lies just require too much maintenance, while the truth you can say and just forget about it. If someone asks me again, I just say the truth and it's the same thing I said before.
I know people swear by power splitters, but I don't like the noise the smoke or having to lift the wood over and over to get it up on the splitter. I also want to steer clear of anything that builds up enough pressure to bend a steel I-beam.
Sue, bottles and me go way back. When I move to Minnesota and looked up a local bottle club they heard me talking about bottles, they looked at one another and knew I'd fit in. Or, in their words, "Yup, he's sick."
Esther, if I had a shop to sell them in, I would have picked up the coveralls. My mom will only sell bottles and shirts in her gift shop, so I needed to leave the coveralls behind. There was a time when I packed firewood to the road through butt-deep snow, and they would have come in handy for that, but that's not on my agenda these days.
My experience is that honesty is something learned. I was told a lot not to lie as a kid, and I ignored them. Consequences set me straight.
Mark, we'll be getting an extended cab, but there's probably some way we can bring you safely. Crew cabs are just to much like station wagons on steriods.