A couple of estate sales popped up in Linda's part of town which is kind of unusual. Because she lives 'sort of' in the country or as she sometimes says 'the boonies', the houses are farther apart and we usually want to make sure the sale is worth hunting down. Today turned out to be a 1-1 with the 2 sales we hit. Sale number one was supposed to start at 7am. Well, Linda, Duane and I have discovered that it's rarely worth losing the extra hour of sleep to get to a sale that early. We tend to meet up somewhere in the general vicinity of the sale(s) and then proceed in one car. (Often the parking around an estate sale can be scarce.) The street name for this sale was Tobacco Road -- for real. Nice house set back behind a gated entrance. Unfortunately, even though we didn't arrive until after 8am, the owner was nowhere near ready to have his sale. He had managed to pull some furniture out onto his long and rather wide driveway along with tables holding musical instruments and amplifiers. There was also a set of chairs that had definitely come from a beauty salon -- one still had a hair dryer attached to it. I have no idea what this man does for a living but his three car vaulted ceiling garage was literally stuffed with boxes and shelves of items. The owner was very nice and said just to ask about anything we were interested in because he probably had it. Hmmm... Linda and I began making our way through the narrow aisle in part of the garage but you could barely move. The packed boxes were so close together that it was almost impossible to see what he had although we did notice that he wasn't kidding about the variety. Everything from toys to household goods to garden items (many of these items were brand new and still in their original boxes/wrappers) from what we could actually see. At one point, I pulled out a small box and several items came tumbling down on top of me. Oh well, at least Linda knew where I was. Poor Duane had tried going into the other 'aisle' and was overcome by something that caused her to suddenly cough almost to the point of hurling. I had a bottle of water with me which I gave to her but, even then, it took awhile before she could catch her breath. There wasn't any type of smell or anything, just something that caused some type of allergic reaction. After that, Duane was afraid to venture back in.
None of us bought anything at this sale because it was just too difficult to get to the items. The owner was selling water and soft drinks so I bought another bottle of water. It's too bad because it looked like he probably had some great stuff but there's no way that he was ready at 7am for his sale. He really needed help to get the items out of the garage so that people could see them. Whoa. Too much work for us.
The next sale was much better. It was at another house on a couple of acres but several families were holding the sale. They had everything out on long tables and most of the items were priced. They really had a nice variety of items but heavy on jewelry, fishing items and pet items. I did find a Lenox Christmas ornament (new in the box), and a sterling silver necklace by Dogeared (also new in the box). Linda and I got a group of vintage knitting needles. What we don't keep for ourselves will be donated to The Humble Stitch for others to use to make items for the homeless. Only Duane left empty-handed. Not always a bad thing. :)
Afterwards, we hit Starbucks for a snack and a long chat. Too bad that first sale was such a bust. Who knows what may have been in those boxes and bags in the three car garage...
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