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Great Sounding Sale But I Was Too Late

Picks from an August estate sale

Two weekends ago, there was a great sounding estate sale advertised about 45 miles from here. I’ve gotten out of the habit of making that trip, but the pictures of this sale were rather irresistible. Tables full of Christmas plus the words, “60 years of accumulation” will get me every time. It looked like some of the sales Tiffany and I get to do. TONS of stuff. And I know how our sales are. There’s something for everyone and at the end, when we can literally pack it all up in 10 boxes, there are still things I can get and resell. So why wouldn’t this sale be the same? The few prices I could see in their pictures looked similar to our prices as well – meaning pretty cheap. So I went.

Got a bit of a late start and got caught in traffic causing me to be about 45 minutes late. Okay, so maybe I’m using traffic as an excuse. Yeah, I just couldn’t get my lazy self out the door in time. It’s usually a bad sign when you can get an up close parking spot when you arrive in the first hour. If there are other vehicles parked further down the road, that means someone came and left within 45 minutes. With that much stuff, something could be wrong. 

As usual, I headed for the basement first where my nose was assaulted by the stale smell of 60 years of cigarette smoke. Groan. Maybe that’s why there were empty parking places. But for me it meant I was pickier with what I…. uh… picked. There were still a billion items to choose from, but all those Christmas decorations I saw in the pictures? New. Or what I saw was new. 

Christmas table at an estate sale

(Um, yeah. That’s my thumb on the left and someone’s feet on the right.) This was one table of Christmas items. Another couple of tables behind me, more to the left side……

I picked up a few things here and there, not Christmas, but it was all very disappointing to me. As I walked through the house, I kept overhearing a girl talking to her friend. Apparently this girl had come early, shopped them out then came back with her friend. From the things she was saying, she must have grabbed everything I would have been interested in. She must have been ruthless! At the checkout, they said in a stunned, rather amazed, voice that she, “Bought a lot of stuff.” As much as I preach you can still get good stuff at the end of a sale, this might have been an exception. At least for the things I like to buy. 

I took one more picture in the linens room:

Linens table at an estate sale

As I look at that picture, I wonder if I missed anything? What was that green and white on the end? And that small print fabric in the middle? Could I have repurposed them? Was I just in a bad mood from the smell and the fact that there were none of the unusual things I look for by that time? I see the hooked rug on the floor. There was a time I bought every one of them I ran across. Annnddd… I still have them. Can’t put them on the floor to sell them in the booth. They present a tripping hazard and I haven’t figured out a way to hang them up yet. 

So, what did I buy?

Picks from an August estate sale

Looks like a bunch of $6-10 items to me. Except for the white with pink insides, Rumrill planter, and although it’s pretty, it’s not a terribly expensive item. 

In the picture:

  1. Brass basset hound
  2. Pink, aluminum, ice cream scoop. Buy: From the blog or Etsy
  3. Blue graniteware dipper and strainer
  4. Pink and blue, aluminum, star, jello molds
  5. The Rumrill planter
  6. And this ruffled, shelf edging that I’m only adding an extra picture of because you can’t tell what it is in the group picture.  Buy:  From the blog or Etsy
    Vintage Con-tact shelf edging

All of this will barely pay for my trip, so I hit one of my favorite thrift stores to do some clothes shopping for me. I got some jeans and a few tops, including an Odille top for the fall. Odille is an Anthropologie brand so I was pretty pleased with that $3.99 expenditure. So, I guess, all in all, it was a good trip.

But you really must read a different take on the same sale. Florence at Vintage Southern Picks went an hour or two later than me, was quite pleased with her finds and the smell didn’t bother her as much. I must be a smell snob. Some of the things she bought I passed up (probably my mood) and some I just plain ol’ didn’t see! Click here to be taken to her blog post about the same sale.

 

3 thoughts on “Great Sounding Sale But I Was Too Late

  1. I would be pretty happy with your finds Wanda! Especially like that enamel ware and the planter. I think I like the shelf edging too…just can’t see it too well. Yeah, you know why the smell didn’t bother me? Cause my smeller is defective! Ha! Doesn’t it make you wonder, though, what that other person got that “bought so much”?

  2. See, and here I was thinking Florence got there BEFORE you! I think the first few minutes of a sale make or break it for me. If I walk in the door and trip over a throw rug and then pinch my hand in the door frame it’s all downhill after that. I bet it was the smoke that got you! I do like that white and pink planter though!

  3. Wanda, I really like your blog. Sorry about your bummer sales day. Some sales just go like that.

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