So, I sent her a message to see if she had any desire to hit up sales and a plan was made to meet around 8:30. My day started off crappy when I was unable to get gas at two different gas stations using two different cards – what is going on here!?!?!

Amazingly enough there were two sales right on Hayla’s block. She purchased a small child’s chair that we sort of half tossed in the trunk, then I swung around into the alley to drive back to her house. You can tell it’s going to be a fun day when you are both laughing at the thought of a broken chair falling out of your trunk.

Trying to give you a blow by blow of all the sales we hit would be almost impossible. There were around 200 people taking part in the sale and I think we probably hit around 60 sales, maybe more. I was surprised to find out that it’s $12 to be in the sale. One lady told me that she thought it was worth it, saying that there are maps and it’s promoted. I never even thought about folks having to pay. $2,400 seems like a pretty tidy profit.

These records are all polka and when I made a comment about it the woman was very defensive about her four boxes of records.

This is a pretty impressive amount of snow globes in one place.

You asked someone to bring them back for you for many years. Now they are going to end up sitting in the sun for most of the day. It didn’t even look like a dent had been made.

We hit a different area than Jenny and I usually start with. Not sure why, but they whole day felt a little backwards because of it.

I made Hayla take a photo of this blow-up doll (with huge boobs) in a Wonder Woman costume, which I hadn’t even noticed the whole time we had been at the sale.

At another sale we saw this amazing item.

Hayla also spotted a little one-hitter and a mushroom lighter. Hot! When she said she was going to buy it I told her that she needed to ask if they would take $8. I mean I don’t even dicker that much, but on a weed pipe? You have to! They seemed pleased to take $8 and when Hayla wanted to hit another sale I told her that I needed to find a bathroom before I did anything more. Thy guy having the sale let me come into their home and use the toilet. Classy! I guess the family had purchased the pipe for a family member that had cancer. Downer.

There are so many sales that things start to blend together, but we both didn’t feel that the trunk was getting filled fast enough.

I am not sure if you can tell how large this vegetable thing is, but it’s like five feet long.

I really liked it, but good sense prevailed (for once). The same sale also had this set of Danish Modern cookware.

Now, before you post about how I should have purchased this, he wanted $80 for the set. The sale had some amazing stuff, but priced like someone that used to have a vintage space at the antique mall.

We hit one estate sale and the view was amazing –- the house was too, but the sale was picked clean or maybe they didn’t have anything to begin with.

There was a woman at the sale that Hayla said was dressed like a Mormon meets a Mennonite. We think she had been part of the house, since she was outside getting really upset about a man that she thought had stolen a book from the sale. The dude was acting so chill that I can only guess he paid for the item inside and he seemed to be ignoring her or just didn’t understand why she was acting so odd.

One of our last sales had this sign.

I love the idea, but the ladies both had name tags on and that came across a little strange.

After a bit we just needed to eat. Hayla had mentioned Meander’s and it was yummy. Highly recommended.

All in all it was a great day with wonderful weather, company and food.

I guess when you go to enough sales, there is going to be a darker side to sales in general. I remember going to a sale in 2005 where the woman had purchased rooms and rooms of clothing, all of it duplicates in different colors. She would get one shirt and buy it in 30 colors. It was super strange and sort of made me feel uncomfortable.

I called Jenny after hitting a compulsive shopper sale last Sunday, and she said something about there being a difference between hoarding and when you can’t stop shopping. True, but sometimes it ends up looking pretty much the same.

So, the sale you ask? My husband and I just ended up there randomly last Sunday because we drove by a sign. I am sorry that the photos don’t really do it justice, since I wasn’t planning on hitting a sale and I didn’t have my phone or camera. I borrowed my husband’s iPhone to take some pictures, but it was making that clicking sound that screams “HELLO I AM TAKING A PHOTO” (that I was too stupid to turn off). The folks running the sale seemed very nice, but did wonder what I was doing.

This is a very small sampling of what was in the backyard.

Maybe you can’t tell, but that is a van with stuff on it. Oddly enough, there was also stuff for sale in it.

After I opened a box filled with old lady purses that looked like they came from the 1985 Fingerhut catalog, I made a comment about how someone had been a shopper. The woman running the sale explained that the old woman who owned the house had been a huge shopper. She then led me into the house (which reeked of something unpleasant) and was filled with her shopping. Nightgowns un-opened, but tons of them. Shoes never worn? A mountain of them. She took me upstairs and showed me the Christmas room and that was when I knew I need to leave.

She did explain that the woman couldn’t stop shopping to the tune of a quarter of a million dollars and lost her house because of it. They had been clearing her house out since it has sold weekend before last. Ouch!

I did not take home one of her more amazing items: the Fiber Optic Swan Rain Fountain Set, made by The Glass Blower.

It looked like it jumped right out of Spencer Gifts in the 1970s.

Both of the quality LPs below are on the GROSS RECORDS label.

This one Karl pointed out, saying it’s one of his most hated record covers, all because of the dog’s mouth. At first I thought he was crazy, but after staring at it for a while, I started to see what he means.

“You Figure It Out!” Okay …

We had a comment on our flickr page that I think just might’ve: “drag kings.”

Now, this one is just … baffling.

There is something unsettling about the intensity on his face. (The guy, not the moose.)

We’ve had several encounters with aerobics-meistress Joannie Greggain. She seems to change her look every so often, but never loses her legwarmers.

Apparently this next one is actually quite the rarity. (Some guy had just purchased it when we got to this sale, but he let us take a picture.)

This one is also apparently worth bucks, but I just took a picture and left it behind. Oh well, you can’t win ‘em all.

Karl purchased this gem some time ago and was going to guest-blog about it. (I don’t think that is ever going to happen.)

Dig that crazy lipstick!

This one is a CD, but I think it still needs to be in this post …

And finally, a record I purchased (in exactly this condition) at some thrift store in California back in the ’90s.

I will probably never listen to this, but I don’t think I will ever part with it.

Honestly I knew that I wouldn’t be out that long, but I wanted to hit this sale down the street from me that we hit last year. Maybe you remember it’s when I purchased two ’50s Mexican circle skirts.

Their sale (that they called the Designer Sale this year) didn’t start until 9:00, so I found a couple of sales starting in the 8:00 / 8:30 time frame and headed out.

The first one was huge. It might not look huge, but they continued to bring stuff out over the course of the next 45 minutes that I was at the sale. I made two separate purchases, just so I could take stuff to my car and get back for the next round of items coming out.

I liked the sign, since it looks more like “Yard Sate.”

The first thing I saw was this huge collection of dolls.

I don’t know a ton about dolls, but it was just 8:00 AM and all the dolls had been sold. I can only guess that the person that purchased these ended up getting a great deal.

This sale had a weird combination of items. I am not 100% sure how all of this came together. A mother and her 3 sons – I think?!?

1. Gay interest books, movies and magazines
2. Unicorn, D&D, role playing and gamer items
3. Architecture and landscape design books
4. Mom stuff

I took an amazing photo of some of the D & D items, but it didn’t come out -– I was sad about this, since it was pretty impressive. This Fantasies and Other Realities book might give you an idea.

I picked up this amazing unused ’70sStar Wars paint-by-numbers.

After feeling like I had spent way too much time at this sale, I headed to an 8:30 sale that was filled with little kid and baby stuff, but I did like how they had their sign placed.

OK, that was a total bust, so fingers crossed I could get over to the Designer Sale.

It didn’t look as large as last year and I had to stand around with Jewelry Guy for 10 minutes. This felt like a lifetime, but he did tell the woman next to him a great story. She mentioned to him that she remembers him scoring some great jewelry at the sale last year. He then launched into this story about how someone had been asking him to move his car. I remembered this happening as soon as he said it (we even wrote about it). Another woman had parked really badly and the ladies putting the sale on thought it was him. He went to move his car and set the bag of jewelry on the trunk of his car. He then drove away and lost all of it. After telling this story he then started trying to talk to me and I just didn’t know how to deal.

In the end I made a few purchases – love the huge calculator they were using to ring folks up.

I was home by 9:30. Sorry, I don’t style the trunk like Jenny can …

Maybe this is the couple that the letters that Jenny mentioned are about. We will never know.

When hunting and camping was all the rage and you needed to have your hair “set” each week, so you better keep it in a scarf. Long before Cabin Chic. It’s a wonder how they just got by with a nice wool jacket instead of the fancy base layers, digital equipment and camouflage.

I am amazed they didn’t take a photo of the deer strapped onto their truck.

Or maybe they did and I was just unable to find it while digging into piles of clothing mixed with mouse traps.

Today, 4/27, I came across a yard sale that was not advertised. It is being run by an elderly lady who does not know computers and didn’t put up signs. Great stuff, very cheap, mostly vintage kitchen, glassware, dolls, etc. Lots of size 10 women’s shoes. I don’t know the exact address …

Sounds possibly good, right? The only thing was, it was the same block where this woman has a sale on a regular basis with nothing but overpriced antiques. She is not some kind of clueless sale newbie — she even has a full-on signboard that she puts on the corner that sucked us in many a time before we finally wised up. But this couldn’t be her … right? WRONG. I don’t know if this was her own scammy attempt at luring people in, or if someone really thought she needed the help. Either way, we sped away, off to a nearby sale in an alleyway. This cute sign greeted us as we walked in.

I would not say it quite lived up to that, but it was decent — lots of good new-ish books, priced at a quarter each. We each bought a few, and headed off to the next sale.

This one was at another familiar spot, but a good one — they used to have sales pretty regularly, and I think it’s been a few years now since we’ve hit one, but they usually have a nice selection of vintage furniture and household stuff. Plus, Meghan bought one of her all-time favorite lamps here (way back in the pre-blog era), so it has a special place in her heart.

This time we didn’t buy anything, although we were both sort of captivated by this rubber stamp wheel.

We then hit a sale that was still getting set up, but they let us take a peek. Meghan instantly spotted this item since she had once owned one. It’s a Car-Snac!

You know, to hang over the back seat and keep your car snacks handy. Pretty amazing, but not something I need to own. Neither was this gathering of little animals.

Meghan picked up this crazy plastic dog — it had blinky eyes, but they kept getting stuck with one up, one down. The woman kept saying how she knew she was going to regret selling it. Between that and the sticky eyes (probably combined with the existential question of whether one actually needs to own this, cute though it may be), Meghan decided to just walk away.

We drove over to the digger sale, which still had a big line despite having been open for over an hour! We decided to go get a snack and then circle back. On the way to the coffee shop, I got a text from Karl about the estate sale he was at, across town in a ritzy neighborhood. He said it was insane and we should get over there, so that’s exactly what we did. The house kind of looked like a castle.

We walked in, didn’t see Karl anywhere, and decided to head upstairs. Here’s the view from inside that turret-looking thing.

It seemed like there must have been a doctor or nurse in the family. We spotted this box filled with oodles of pens and pencils, many of them promotional items from pharmaceutical companies.

Then Meghan found this big pile of blood pressure cuffs.

But it wasn’t seeming that great — we wondered if it had really been worth it to drive across town. We headed back downstairs and found Karl. He was laughing about something with another shopper. It turned out to be … this.

I know we have said it before, but even after all these years of hitting hundreds of sales … there is always something we have never, I mean NEVER seen at a sale before. Speculite? The disposable light for vaginal illumination? WOW.

And possibly even more wow: this tie-tack, shaped like a Paragard IUD.

If you’re figuring there was a gynecologist in the house, I think you’re right. In the basement were a ton of books (most of them in fairly crustified condition), and a good amount of them dealt with sex. Mostly from a medical perspective, but there were a few other items, like these.

And by the way? It’s for real.

This item was also in the basement.

Back upstairs, I found Meghan excitely gathering a huge pile of Folio Society books. They were immaculate (some were still sealed) and were priced at $2 each — a steal! I helped her hunt around and we gathered up a few more. I also spotted this Milky Way box that had somehow manage to survive all these years. (The candy was long gone.)

Meghan had called her husband from the sale to see if he wanted some old license plates. I think he passed, possibly because he had apparently just purchased a fog machine at some other yard sale. (I can’t wait for their next barbecue.) From what he said we figured there might be more cool stuff there, and since it was on the way back to the digger sale we decided to check it out. On the way over I looked up their ad and noticed they’d listed several other items, including “Sleep apnea machine (barely used).” This is definitely an item that I really don’t think should be purchased at a yard sale.

When we got there, I didn’t see a sleep apnea machine. But I did see this “Image Maker Special Effects Projection Box.” (Maybe they were just really into small single-purpose machines?)

They also had a box of combs. But overall it was pretty boring.

On the way back to the digger sale we spotted this amazing sign! We turned.

In front of the sale there were three girls having a little picnic with bowls of pho. This did seem kind of awesome.

Meghan grabbed some bath salts and a couple of items from their free pile, including some kind of liquid vitamin supplement — sealed, but still possibly sketchy if you ask me. As we left we spotted their sign on the other end of the block. I’m not sure how they came up with this, but we laughed.

We pulled up to the digger sale well after eleven. There was still a line!

We only had to wait about ten minutes before going inside. The main floor was a little crusty, but didn’t really seem that bad. We quickly figured out that one of the former occupants must have been a painter.

Upstairs was a room that had been used as an art studio.

There were piles of stuff …

… and lots more paintings.

It was pretty disheveled. This doll in a cradle was all tucked in with an empty Grand Marnier box.

Back downstairs I stayed away from this crime scene room … I think they were just using the tape as a “keep out,” but after having been to a few sales in houses where bad things happened, you honestly never know.

We decided to take our chances with the basement. Despite all the warnings, the stairs were honestly not that bad.

But we nearly shrieked when we spotted a shelf full of jars of ancient jam … or something? They were only sealed with Saran Wrap and one of them was labeled “1986.”

Let me reiterate: improperly-sealed homemade preserves from 1986.

Now that might have been a crime scene waiting to happen.

The rest of the basement was crusty, but we’ve definitely seen much worse. Meghan found some vintage men’s shirts, most of which were shredded into ribbons, but she picked out a few that were more or less intact. She also grabbed some great old photos that’ll make their way into a separate blog post soon, and I found a stack of letters. I opened one of them and read something like: Dear (name), I honestly don’t know what to say to you. About us, I mean. It went on about the couple’s separation and what the problem was and whether they could work it out. Sometimes it can be fascinating to get a glimpse into someone’s personal life from long ago, but this just made me feel a little sad … I put it back in its envelope and left the stack. And moved onward to scope out the rest of the basement.

Then I dug into one box and found some grungy old tighty-whities. I decided it was time to stop digging.

We decided to call it a day … but close to home we spotted some signs for a sale we didn’t know about. They had a bunch of stuff out in the yard. Including an entire bed.

And some Twilight posters. C’mon, I’ll fight you for ‘em!

Inside, I laughed at this Dancin’ Grannies videotape (especially placed next to Doin’ It Country Style).

I thought it seemed familiar — sure enough, we’ve spotted another Dancin’ Grannies tape in the wild before. (The other one’s cover is even better.)

And then I had a momentary freakout when I discovered two vintage paper dresses!

Now, before anyone gets too excited, see that brownish area up in the top left part of the black and white one? It was moldy rot that had started to eat through all the places where where they had been folded (and then stored for the last forty-some-odd years). There was a lot more of it than you can really see in the picture … they were both trashed well beyond wearable or even displayable condition. Even so, it was a bit hard to leave them behind.

But on a brighter note, we hit quite a few sales and had a good day of it … it feels like yard sale season is really kicking in. Yeah!

In good news, it was nice out and there were more than four sales listed. I don’t sleep in as a rule, but I would rather stay in PJ’s and drink coffee than head out in the rain for four sales.

Our first stop turned out to be a shabby-chic-I-owned-an-antique-space-that-failed sale.

I know that this style is sort of out, but it really wasn’t my thing even at the height of its popularity.

We did spot this cool portrait, but basically this sale was a giant bust.

Going in the completely opposite direction was our next sale. This was a combination of “guy sale” mixed with “hoarder sale.” There was a sign out front, but you couldn’t tell where the sale was. Is it in the house, or out back, or did you decide this morning to not have it…? We weren’t sure, but down the driveway we finally found it.

It was piles of stuff all over the place.

Then I spotted this awful stack of crap on his back porch.

That was enough for us to high-tail it out of there and then burst into laughter at how awkward the dude having the sale was. Jenny was making fun of me for saying that sale was “Bad News Bears” — my new go-to curse at work.

OK, palate cleansing — STAT!

Jenny told me the next sale was on Aurora. I am not sure if we have really talked much about this area, but it was the old highway and many motels popped up for the 1962 World’s Fair. Some parts are pretty run down and there are a few houses, but mostly older businesses and the motels are a bit more derelict. Here is a little spoof on the prostitution on Aurora Ave. a bit closer to downtown.

This guy had lived here for a long time.

Maybe alone, based on this sign leading into the basement.

When I started to head to the basement the woman running the sale called down, “We have a huge crowd coming down!” I replied back “Three doesn’t really make a crowd.” Once I was downstairs, it made a bit more sense. It was very crowded with tools.

The guy working the sale wanted to know if I wanted a white kitchen garbage bag for my purchases. “Um, no thanks.” This is when he showed me a pencil and said “If you see any of these pencils they are made with real lead.”

I saw a few choice items in the basement to make fun of.

I pulled down this amazing picture of a monkey wearing ice skates and flipping the bird. She gave that to me for free.

During this time Jenny was having some odd conversation about if a CD was for sale or not. I wanted to say “don’t listen to that guy, he is mentally challenged” but didn’t get an opportunity.

Jenny thought we should hit a sale claiming to have over 1,000 vintage sun glasses.

And he did, but it all seemed like hipster junk.

He did have this gem: the K-Tel Record Selector!

When I made some comment about it the 25-year old guy was like “Hey, bet you haven’t seen one of those before!” Um, yes I have, on TV when I was a kid. How old do you think I am?!?! They also made one for 8-tracks!

So, what did I buy? Fireworks! My husband was stoked when I arrived home that afternoon. Seattle doesn’t allow the sale of any real fireworks. You can purchase snakes or sparklers and that ends the items you can purchase.

A friend of my husband’s was there and told us to hit up a sale close by with tons of great vintage clothing. It didn’t have much of interest and what she did have was way overpriced. I am not sure what he thinks vintage is, but this isn’t it. Total bust!

The next sale had this really great flyer.

But when we went into the back yard it was like a demolishment sale. I am here for your yard sale, not to purchase your crappy old kitchen cabinets. For god’s sake go to the dump!

At this point we needed to pick a new area of town. Shake off this bad sale BS. But no such luck at our next sale. The house was extremely crusty. We were glad the sale was in the front yard and not inside. And all he really had was train collectables.

The guy kept saying “Ladies, you are going to come back. I don’t have anything out that you are going to want to buy yet.”

He did have this odd collection of religious items. The one that baffled me the most was the holy bible eraser. What sort of sick person gives that as a party favor? I mean when you use it you are erasing the bible!

Jenny also spotted this carefully preserved copy of the Globe.

In the car I had been asking Jenny how she picked out the blender she has. I want a new one, but not a crappy one and not one of the insane $300 blenders. I don’t need to blend that much.

At our next sale the woman had tons of stuff from Anthropologie, but she wanted the same price you could get when it hit the sale rack. She kept saying that she hadn’t worn this or that item. She said it so many times that I finally said “If it doesn’t have a tag on it, I am assuming you wore it.” All of a sudden Jenny says “Look, it’s my blender!” There it was, for a whopping $5 — SOLD. She told me she had never used that either, but it was kind of sticky.

Our next sale was a church rummage sale listed as Books, Items from Kenya, and Quilting. This sign led us to the sale.

I mean how complicated is it create a sale sign?? What this turned out to be was a sale that just had quilting items. The books? All about quilting. There was this dude scanning all the quilting books. So, we just did what Karl usually does and really loudly went “BOOP” and “BEEP” at him.

(Now, a side note to book scanners who occasionally like to stop by: I am sure there are a few highly valuable quilting books out there, but that isn’t an invitation for you to post about how great you are, because you use a scanner, K? Start your own blog. Thanks!)

We hit a few more sales. One of them had these raccoons.

Another had this awful-looking book.

The very last one we hit ended up being my allergist’s sale. This was just sort of odd, since I didn’t know who he was until he spoke to me. I only see him once a year and it was so out of context. I bored him about my allergies for about five minutes (which I am sure he loved) and he introduced me to his wife.

And at that point it was time to go home. We each purchased a couple of things, but not enough to even bother with a trunk shot.

Many heartfelt thanks to all our readers, old and new. Maybe you’d like to celebrate our blogaversary by watching our video?

Yard Sale Bloodbath – “Food of the Damned” on Vimeo.

Or maybe you’d like to take a gander at our staggering collection of junk-in-my-trunk photos. There are well over 100, which is sort of frightening, especially when you see them all in one place.

Then maybe you’d like to ask us what we do with all that stuff … eh, don’t do that, just read this instead.

Or just stay with us as we continue boldly onward in this bloggy adventure. Here’s to heaps of good scores for everyone! And plenty of crazy stuff to blog about. Based on the last five years, we feel pretty confident that there’s no shortage of that out there.

It really was that small and it does say “hello, stiffy” – yes, that is Aussie slang for “hey, everyone look” but it still means a male erection when you get right down to it.

It says nothing over $50, and if you know what the dollar is like there now -– that is still pretty high. My husband and I went into major monetary sticker shock the first few days.

This flyer is so small that I lost it in my wallet for about three months after I arrived back home. Still pretty funny.

As we walked in the woman at the door told us there was a suggested $3 donation and also tried to strong-arm us into coming back for “ABBA Night.”

True to what I had feared, the sale was mostly individual tables with higher-priced items for sale.

Meghan spotted these bottles that one woman had, including one marked “Lady Killer” — kind of awesome, but not $35 awesome.

I laughed at this license plate. Out of all the possible things to put there, someone chose “NETSRFR”? How did that ever seem like a good idea …

Even their baked goods were overpriced, so it was pretty much a bust. So we headed off to our next stop, an estate sale advertised as “weird and wonderful.” This can always just be hype, but one of the things they listed was a Lynda Barry “Poodle with a Mohawk” poster — I didn’t need to buy this, having purchased one of my own a few years ago at an estate sale that was definitely weird and wonderful (and HUGE), but I figured it was a good sign. When we got there, the poster had already been sold (the seller said it was also pretty beat-up). We looked around for a bit and each picked up a few books.

There really wasn’t much else going on unless we wanted to drive around town, and neither of us really did. We decided to hit an estate sale in our neighborhood that had started Friday, but seemed like it might be decent. On the way we spotted a sign for an unlisted sale! We detoured over and found a small open garage — mostly tools, plus a stack of 7″s, all mainstream hits of the early ’80s, like one brief window where someone got into buying records. I went inside and found this adorable Booze Hound.

I didn’t need to own him, but Meghan did! I was glad he found a good home. I did however purchase a baton for $1, based purely on the fact that Meghan and I had been reminiscing in the car just an hour before about both of us having taken baton twirling lessons when we were young. (Turns out I still have the moves! Well, a few of them.)

We saw signs for another sale … got there and saw a couple of signs in front, directing us to the basement.

I followed Meghan around the house to a cute little back yard and … no sign of a sale. Not at all. There was a door that possibly went to a basement, but it was closed and the place just seemed deserted. We didn’t quite have the nerve to knock. Later I checked the listing and realized it was a sale I’d deliberately passed over anyway — “retired electrician, lots of tools” — so maybe it was for the best.

And that last estate sale — there is not much to report. It might have been okay on Friday, but I doubt they had anything amazing. It was not even 10:30 when we decided to call it a day.

Tune in next time to see if we finally have a decent weekend …