Janie was able to come along on the yard sale run last Saturday. We managed 3 stops on a semi-wintery spring day, and had some luck and a few yuks.
Find of the day
Saw and unused blades
price - $17.50
sold
I usually don't pay more than $5 for an old saw, but it ran great and I want my own yardsale to have multiple vintage power tools, so I swallowed hard and did it. When I got home I noticed the pack of saw blades had 5 blades in it. Well, that paid for the saw, so I'm not feeling so philanthropic after all.
Thing we least wanted to buy
Wreaths
price - $5
no sale
Nothing fancy. The cheapest green plastic money can buy woven into a wreath. Just hideous.
Other things we did or did not buy
Our first stop was a sale at an Edina highrise. It was a mixed bag, but we did pretty good.
Pins
price - $1 for all
sold
Janie needed more decoration for the vest she wears to work at the Children's Museum. These worked.
Bell Christmas ornament
price - 25 cents
sold
Sounds awful, but it's going to compliment the other bells on our Christmas vine, including one I dug up in the ghost town of Sneffles, Colorado.
Jug
price - $3
sold
Is it old? I'm not so sure, but the price was right. Old or not, it's handmade. We'll sell it in my mom's gift shop.
-------------
We then went to an indoor sale by Lake Calhoun. A lot of classical records on vinyl. Not much else. It seemed like a fundraiser for the orchestra. It left me cold, so we made our way over to an estate sale on Crocus Hill (this is where we found the saw).
Speakers
price - free
no sale
If'n I hook any more speakers up to my stereo, I'll be causing a brownout.
-----------------
So, that was it for the sales. When we got home, I checked the Department Store (what we call the dumpsters in our highrise). There was a set of shelves, with giveaways on it).
Tall hi-ball glasses
price - free
sold
We just picked up some vanilla vodka and lemon-rind liqueur, and these will work just fine. At first I was a little worried about the finish, but we put them through the washer and they sparkle.
Big box of cassette tapes
price - free
sold
This went into four stacks:
one for my mom, like Lawrence Welk and a few of the better classical ones,
one for our yard sale, mostly mood-tapes of rainforest and Canadian Rockies,
one for me - swing or country compilations from the 30s and 40s, *
one for the junk store - everything else.
And then there was this one:
v
Conduct Your Way to Greater Health and Happiness!
price - free
sold
To our own yard sale it goes.
-----------------
So, that's it for this week before the craziness starts. If you'd like to read a post from the height of the yard saling season, check the "you might also like" selections to the right.
-----------------
* I'll index the songs on the compilation tapes, so as I'm going through old music books looking for songs I might want to learn, I may discover I have it on an old tape or record. I already have thousands of songs indexed that way, for all the records and tapes and CDs I've bought over the years. Okay, I'm a little behind, but I have a really long list to work with already.
rate
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 26
Rob, the weather here is pretty bad too. We'll probably drive 40 miles today to hit 7 sales. It's horrible, I know, but if we don't cover this breaking story, who will?
I so enjoy vicariously going to sales with you and Janie.
happy garage sailing.
We're always happy to have you along, EM and Tina.
Lori, we go to a lot of sales, so even though not all have free signs, we've gotten some pretty good things for free. In some neighborhoods they don't have sales, but they just stack things out front on garbage day and everyone makes the rounds and takes what they want.
Thank you, Karen!
I wonder if anyone bought the speakers........some creative person, I'm sure, could recreate something with them.
One man's junk is another man's treasure.
The jug was my favorite and the saw would've probably been Marks, though he'd have hurt himself or someone else if he'd tried to use it! We, at one time in the good past, lived in a good-sized apartment complex that encompasses about 47 acres, with over 300 apartments - there's still plenty of land there, so it's spread out a bit.
Being poor enough to look in the as you call it, free places and having had permission from Management to do so, we used to find (nightly) tons of bottles and cans to cash in, it paid fo a lot and then there'd be those times when either people got evicted or simply moved out and would leave a lot of their furniture, glass and bakeware and dishes and such, even full bags of brand new (tags still on them) children's and other clothing.
That's the place that we made out very well at. What we couldn't use ourselves, we brought to our Human Services, which we at the time, volunteered at (free-stuff rooms) and someone that came there, could always use the items. I miss living there...
Marilyn