They Called It a Dirty Dig.

Anyone can have a garage sale. Just nail a few neon posterboard signs to some telephone polls and haul your unwanted and gently used belongings onto the sidewalk. This was evidenced by the bumper crop of used air conditioners, J. Crew sweaters, Rubbermaid containers and Foreman Grills up for sale this morning. Useful to some they may be, but they don't exactly make for riveting copy. These are the wares of your average household, with the occasional bobble-head Jesus, AC/DC poster or boyequin thrown in for good measure. (That's right, boyequin. Son of mannequin. I saw one today at a garage sale for $10 but the woman selling it seemed very protective of it, so I was scared to take a picture. Hopefully this stock boyequin photo will suffice for illustration.)



These items are here to show us that every typical American family has some skeletons in the closet, from Aunt Agnes's hideous shell art sculpture to the actual $100 anatomical human skeleton I saw in a basement in Lincoln Square. But I mean one per household, and it's sitting next to a nearly-new HP printer and a dresser from Ikea.

It takes a special kind of household to "host" an estate sale. I put "host" in quotes because many times, as people seem to fear, an estate sale only happens once the occupants have died. Some people dislike attending estate sales for this reason; they feel they're picking over the bones of someone's former life. But I consider it a rare and fascinating look into the way a certain breed of people live. Because if an estate liquidator bothers planning an executing a conducted house sale after you die (or downsize, or suffer an illness, or mysteriously disappear so your landlord suddenly owns all your property), you either have to have some really nice, expensive items... or just a lot, and I mean a LOT, of old junk.

If you go to a few estate sales in the suburbs, you'll find they're mostly clients of the former category: elderly with children who live out of town, moving into a nursing home and looking to get rid of an elegant dining set, some Lalique crystal stemware and a Samsung flat screen television. In houses like these, it should take you just a few minutes to browse the sparse, but "shabby chic" upstairs bedrooms, picking out book on Monet or a nice table lamp here and there.

But then there are those sales, most of them in deteriorating two-and-three flats within the city limits, that force gasps from even the most seasoned dealer. "Oh my God," and "How do people live like this," people whisper to their tag sale companions as they wander through labyrinthian hordes of ephemera from past decades, while whoever's running the sale drags from a Pall Mall on the side porch. So these sales aren't pretty, but anyone who's ever unearthed a 545-dollar Bakelite bracelet from the basement of one of these babies can tell you, it may be worth your time to hang out for a while.

So between all the yoga DVDs, cat carriers and and Pier 1 picture frames, Ed and I found ourselvs at one such sale this weekend, and I for one, found it worth my time to stick around a while.



They called it a Dirty Dig in the ad, and on your first step through the cramped door frame you realized they weren't lying. The walls were decorated in that vintage reflective gold wallpaper with the faux velvet accents, which darkened all the rooms considerably. And each room of this two-flat-plus-basement was packed to the gills with collectible plates, framed photos of drag queens, dirty cartoon figurines and ashtrays from the 1970's, old greeting cards, a complete set of Pabst Blue Ribbon pilsner glasses, old wallpaper, ceiling lamps, musical instruments, 45's and movie memorabilia.





It wasn't so unusual. I mean, I've seen packed houses before. But then I stumbled into this front bedroom, which was wallpapered with VHS tapes. Each wall had a bookshelf which spanned its entire width, floor to ceiling, stacked with VHS tapes two deep. This is the kind of room that makes doing this worthwhile.

Here Ed is browsing for VHS movies, his preferred medium.



A true House of VHS.



Believe it or not, there are still many people who use a VCR exclusively to view films. And many of them, like whoever owned this large collection, are real movie buffs who'll pay top dollar to watch a film on VHS, especially when it hasn't yet been released on DVD. These tapes can fetch a pretty penny on Amazon and eBay, so I took out my phone and stared plugging in UPC numbers. The walls were packed so thickly with dense plastic and magnetic tape, however, my scouting tool was rendered useless, so I was forced to type in 10 UPC numbers at a time, then step out onto the porch for a wireless signal to look them up. Even at that slow pace, I found several tapes right away that I could turn around an sell for over $20. In all, I purchased 31 VHS tapes for two bucks each. They have a resale of more than 500 dollars.

But more than just walking away with a fistful of cash, we often leave such sales with a sense of bewilderment, not just at our own luck, but at just who could have lived there, and just what their life could have been like.

Curious?

Thrift Store Wonderland on a Wednesday

I've been a little lazy lately, relying too much on garage sales and house calls for the bulk of my inventory. You get quality stuff from yard sales, but they only occur once a week, and since I'll be out of town this Saturday, I had to fill out the corners by visiting some thrift stores this afternoon.

Oh, I know what some of you are thinking: thrift stores! How fun! And it was, once. When I first started scouting I got the bulk of my "merchandise" from thrift stores, paying 25-40 cents per paperback and then unloading them directly to area bookstores for 1-2 dollars each. But in order to make a living or at least supplement one doing this, I had to spend four or five hours a week in the same corners of the same stores with the same staff in white lab coats filling the shelves and the same familiar pickers looking over my shoulder, taking books from under me or hoarding cartloads of mass market paperbacks while I scanned for more unique titles, often leaving empty-handed.

When you're scouting at garage sales, one or two good hits and you could be in it for hundreds, even thousands of dollars of merchandise for pennies on the dollar. At thrift stores, you'll be lucky to find ten books or CDs worth more than five bucks on Amazon. But then again, you could always walk away with some odd-looking book or CD with no barcode that every other picker has passed up and end up selling it the same night online for 80 bucks.

Which is why, no matter how highfalutin, no matter the quality of my other sources... I'll always return to that old standby: the thrift store.





Once you've been doing this for a while you get into a routine. Whether you're on foot, go by bike or by car, you make certain rounds with your favorite thrift stores. Most pickers are notoriously unforthcoming about their sources, meaning they'll never actually reveal their route, but they'll definitely admit to having one, and having favorite stores within it. There are stores we all frequent, big chain thrift stores like Unique Thrift or the Village Discount Outlet, but then there are those that are hidden in church basements, back corners of libraries and in odd six-corner storefronts with no signs and bars on the windows. I've found fifty dollar books in those quite regularly, and you'll have to ship me to a U.S. protectorate and poke me with electric prods to get me to name their hours and locations.

But today I started with the Salvation Army on Clark and Bryn Mawr. I don't feel bad giving away this source as it will be closing in three days, I learned. That's bad news. While I've never exactly walked out of the Clark/Mawr 'Army with a handful of saleable merchandise, I find at least something interesting each time I go in, like this flashback of a CD single:



And only 75 cents! You can now visit the item here.

See? I told you. I'm going to miss that little store.

Next I took a short walk down Clark Street to another favorite thrift haunt of mine, the Andersonville Brown Elephant. Some people complain that the B.E. is overpriced, but their selection is enormous and I never walk out of there with fewer than five books, unless I spot a competing book scout scanning the shelves, which I did today.


But Darryl isn't exactly competition. He used to sell books weekly to the used bookstore where I worked, so whenever I see him I'll say hello. The great thing about Darryl is that if he arrives and you're already busy scanning the shelves, he'll say hello, then scamper off to wherever his next destination is (I told you, everyone's secretive). But if I get there after he's gone though a few shelves, I'll leave him to his thing and won't jump in. He's the only other scout I mutually respect, I think.

Luckily this afternoon I didn't run into any more scouts, at least none that looked like scouts, but there was a guy at this particular thrift store which shall go unnamed:



who was taking a particular interest in my scouting tool. Oh well, let him look.

I know there are some pickers and book scouts out there who loathe those of us who use scouting devices in full view of thrift store employees and other patrons. But I don't care. I know a lot of the young folks who work at the not-for-profit thrift stores I frequent, and they don't give a rat's ass that someone is coming in looking up book prices on Amazon. Neither they nor anyone else at the store is going to raise prices because people are selling them elsewhere, because any smart thrift store knows resellers are a good percentage of their customers. So scout public and scout proud, I say. We all have to make a living. Or supplement one.




On to another standby, where I run into my first annoying customer of the day. A woman at the counter is arguing about the price of dishware to the poor employee who has no control over it. After going through each individual dish in a cart full of kitchen appliances and Tupperware, asking the cashier why the price is so high and then dramatically announcing that she will not purchase the dish and instead find a similar one at the dollar store, this woman purchases a 90 cent lapel pin in the shape of a tiger, then leaves, allowing me to finally make my own 90 cent purchase, a CD which I will now hawk on Amazon for a slightly higher price.




Then on to the most comprehensive, organized and reasonably priced thrift store of them all: Unique. Unfortunately this particular Unique (there are about 10 in the Chicago area) doesn't have the best book selection, but they have a great selection of clothes. I try not to get distracted looking at skirts, but as I make my way up to the counter with Doug Hannon's Big Bass Magic, two young girls pass me in the skirt aisle, snake my position in line, and then proceed to annoy me with their unseasoned thrifting skills. To begin with, the first girl wanted to pay with a credit card, when Unique was, is, and forever will be cash only. The second girl continued to offend by not removing the hangers from the t-shirts she was purchasing before approaching the counter.



Needless to say I wasn't having the best day, what with my bass fishing book and exploitive 4-year-old early-90's French popstar CD, so I decided to make one last stop.



I started with CDs since, now with my special scouting software aiding my keen eye and curiosity I can check going values for music as well as books. However, the only CD at the counter that really caught my eye was one that didn't have a barcode and was therefore un-look-upable. So I relied on my old fall back software: mommy.

So I had mom look the CD up on Amazon while I had her on the phone, and come to find out it was unlisted. But there were several others by the same artist, so I decided I would buy it and sell it on eBay. Thanks, mom!

After scouring the bookshelves in back for a few minutes I found two best sellers with Amazon sales ranks under 10,000 (which means they'll sell in a few days if priced to move -- if a sales rank is under 5,000 the book will usually sell in a matter of hours), and then as I was about to leave I spotted these totally old school New Kids on the Block poster books with this Tiffany concert ticket stub inside -- the opening act? NKOTB!!!

So I know they're not really worth that much, since anyone who's buying them is going to be buying them for ironic nostalgic reasons, but for some reason I get really excited when I find intact, near mind NKOTB memorabilia in thrift stores. One time I found two handmade NKOTB knit sweaters in a St. Vincent DePaul thrift shop in Ironwood Michigan. I finally sold them on eBay for about 5 bucks each, but personally, I thought they were worth more, even ironically.

Ah, but that's the way it goes in thrift land, I guess.

Books are Only Half the Fun: Amazing Garage Sale Finds

The first yard sale of the day didn't start off well, as this family was still stacking boxes on the front porch, so Ed and I started heading back in the direction of more sales when we saw a bright neon YARD SALE sign advertising an otherwise unlisted sale. As we pulled up to the yard in front of the brick three-flat, the goods looked promising: wooden furniture, vintage lamps, boxes of books and cookware... and this.



I see these huge acrylic on canvas wall hangings in the window of nearly every modern antique mall, hanging above minimalist couches and shag area rugs. I've spent many a jaunt down Broadway in Edgewater drooling over the large boldness of these modern marvels, wanting one of my own but unwilling to pay the 300 dollar price tag. Who knew what this lady, who was still unearthing things from her foyer, was going to ask for it?

Five dollars. Just five dollars! It was such a great price that, contrary to the purpose of this blog, I had to buy it. So now it's hanging above my couch and my shag area rug. I just couldn't help it.

Buying things isn't really the point of this blog, even though it is a side effect and part of the fun. So I'm sorry things started out that way. The reason I wanted to start Garage Sale Reporter is, well, one, I was supposed to be a reporter (my degree is in print journalism), and two, I find so much inspiring, laughable, tacky, horrid, useful and / or weird stuff at the garage sales I go to every Saturday that sometimes I felt compelled to buy them even though I have no purpose or space for them. Sometimes I find stuff I can sell on eBay, but who wants to cram a 2-foot-tall bust of Elvis in their one-bedroom apartment for three weeks until said item is auctioned off? (And you better believe I saw a 24" Elvis bust at a yard sale two weeks ago -- damn that I didn't have my camera!).

My boyfriend Jem's grandma, another garage sale enthusiast who refers to the Salvation Army as her "favorite department store," has entire rooms in her house filled with the good bargains she got on unopened boxes of stuff she doesn't even need. So, to keep myself from dragging home every ironic painting, every odd kitchen utensil or awesome deal on a mid-century dining set, I'm just going to document it and share it here. And who knows, if I can get these postings up by Saturday night, you may still be able to run over there Sunday morning to get it for half price.

And during the off-season, you can be sure this site will be filled with thrift store wonder.

But back to the bargain hunting. I found this lovely Jesus mirror at a sale in Lincoln Square for a dollar, but didn't buy it. But I thought some of you might like a little Godly reflection, so I snapped this:



A dollar! I just searched for "Jesus Mirror" on eBay and couldn't come up with anything quite like it. Maybe I could have turned a profit?

Next was a sale any bowler would have appreciated. Aside from this awesome retro lamp and lampshade and the adjacent bowling pin lamp (also pictured), this woman had lots of retro bowling towels, plates, ashtrays, and, of course, trophies.




I didn't ask her for a price on the lamp, since she wanted eight dollars for a fairly common Bjork book, so who knows what she'd want for that awesome retro lamp shade.

I'd never seen these stickers before until today. Unfortunately, I think they'll get used more often by people who think your "offer" should be six dollars for a Foreman Grill.




This one just happened to be on a poster of New York City with the Trade Towers still intact. Quite a collector's item! (See what I mean?)

And speaking of that great unfortunateness, check out these awesome action figures:





And another action figure from a series that, I'm guessing, just didn't quite take off.





I just checked and this particular guy is currently available on eBay for 4.99 GPB.


Perhaps my favorite find from the whole day was this antique folding bench which came from an Independent Order of Odd Fellows lodge. You can see it says IOOF right there on the side. The guy selling it was also selling old glass medicine bottles for a quarter each, one of which I purchased (can't beat the price), and for this lovely folding bench he wanted just fifty dollars.





What a steal! I was almost going to give him the Item of the Week Award, but then I came across THIS:




In case it's hard to tell by the super-saturated photograph (and the well-manicured lawn), this is a picture of a small (2' x 4') tiger-themed area rug on a sunny patch of grass. This unique item would fit perfectly in a bathroom, kitchen or bedroom -- the perfect accessory for any level of irony, from "Child's Room" to "Hipster Rec Room." And the price for this fantastic weaving? Just ten dollars. Hey, if you're willing to get up at seven in the morning on a Saturday, it could have been yours.

But not just the rug. I probably should have purchased this awesome 1970's framed psychedelic poster for $15, but I didn't have the room in my car after purchasing the other retro painting, although I probably could have turned this around on eBay for a solid profit:



Did you know cat urine glows under black light?

This guy's front yard made me wish I had a warehouse in Wisconsin to house odd treasures. I've never seen bottles like these before, and perhaps I never will again:



And in case we hadn't already seen enough awesome retro lamps, Tiger Rug Man had this one for sale for five dollars:



But the most interesting thing at his sale was tucked behind the black light poster on the stairs to the front porch. Can anyone tell me exactly what this is? A gypsy head? Believe me, if anyone I knew was starting a fortune tellin business, I would have bought this for them in a heartbeat. Tiger Rug Man's price? Fifteen dollars.



This guy had such a fountain of amazing and assorted fancies that I actually found the same clock radio I've had since 1987 that still works -- The Sony Dream Machine. I've had the same alarm clock for my entire life, and I've actually feared having to ever switch to another one. So imagine my relief when I actually found the same exact 1987 Sony Dream Machine (in working order, of course) for just a dollar on his front lawn. All my fears assuaged!

Sometimes, in addition to great finds, I find great impromptu retail merchandising at yard and garage sales. This week was no exception. The first in a series of awards I'll hand out to Great Impromptu Retail Merchandising goes to the man on Damen and Greenleaf who organized this in his garage: