front porch trash

front porch trash

Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Colorful yard sale

 I always start my yard sale search on Friday. I look in my town, the one down the road, the one up the road. Sometimes there are more than I could possibly catch and sometime there are only one or two. I always look for the clean out the house yard sales. People will get rid of some gooooood stuff and never blink an eye at $1.

I had a very limited amount of time . We were doing our Father's Day thing on Saturday because my son in law had family with graduation parties and his own day on Sunday.

There was one sale in my town last Saturday that advertised itself as a clean out the house by noon and everything that is left is one price. Perfect!! I knew the address because it was just down the road from the post office, I knew it was a small house and I knew a man lived there. I would often see him on the handicap ramp smoking. I thought that he smoked out there because his wife couldn't tolerate the smoke.

What I found out on Saturday was that she had passed many years ago and he was 93 and had died in his yard. How sad and how wonderful all at the same time. To be able to make it to 93 and then just go quickly.

Someone had purchased the house and wanted to clean out everything to get it ready to rent. Great someone with no attachment to anything in the house. My kind of sale.

I got there at 8am even though the ad said 8:30. I was the second person there. They were still hauling stuff out. I started looking through this couple's life. No high end cookware, no fancy doo dads. Just basic stuff from a long life. Some things still in boxes and lots of junk that the house buyer just wanted to get rid of.

There were 5-6 people bringing stuff out as fast as they could and lining it up on the front yard. Aluminum pots and pans, sewing and craft supplies, vintage radios, canning jars, 8 track tapes, cassette tapes (Merle Haggard was their favorite). I casually asked if there were any old eyeglasses, jewelry or perfume. That netted 5 pair of vtg 50's eyeglasses.
 Not too shabby. No perfume but I did find an old gold filled service pin, tie bar thing.Does anyone know what company used this logo
That little guy in the black diamond shape.
looks familiar but I can't place him.

All total I loaded up two big IKEA blue bags with overflowing stuff for $20. In those bags I was able to stuff two pair of bib overalls, a vtg pair of denim coveralls, Shadowline NIB pajama set, the eyeglasses, a bunch of quilt squares not sewn together, a box of 160+ DMC wound on plastic cards, a service pin, several pairs of scissors, a crock from a crock pot, a storage tote, a metal grabber for picking things up, a red satin Budweiser jacket and some sewing notions.
166 cards of DMC and I haven't checked for duplicates.

After spending only $20 for everything I estimated that everything was about 63 cents each. That is 63c for 166 colors of DMC, 63c for each pair of glasses, overalls, etc. Somehow I think I will make a very good profit for 45 minutes of scavenging.

And we still had time to get to our Father's Day lunch with time to spare and a wonderful time was had by all.

2 comments:

  1. Do you use or resell the DMC? How do you price it?
    Thanks!
    ~Nandry

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    1. I haven't had time to cross stitch in years, so its not for me. I have looked online and will probably price in the range that I find on ebay. Some lots this big go for around $40. Since some of these are less than a skein I will probably go for between $30-35. Haven't decided yet. I have another lot that I picked up at a TS that is only 125 or so, but it came in a Plano tackle box. So I will sell the tackle box in one listing and the floss in another.

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