At long last . . . . TAG SALES HAVE BEGUN!

[Vinca]

There were only a couple yesterday, but I had a great time and found some neat stuff for the $30 I spent. My favorite thing was a large Andrew Berends raku vase for $12. I also found a first edition of the Moosewood Cookbook for $1. It was self-published and more like a cookbooklet and only 1,000 were printed. I found about a dozen records for resale - Wings, Beach Boys, old Temptations and an album of a young B.B. King singing spirituals. A little glass bear for $1 turned out to be Waterford and I bought a cute, but nonworking, Swiss alarm clock. I usually don't buy broken stuff, but it was tiny and in a sweet, little, red leather case. There's a man who sells clocks at the group shop and he might be interested in it. Anyhow, I had the best time! One of the sales is a regular event and I usually don't go because there are so many other sales. The people buy storage lockers and 99.9% of the goods are crap, but it's unsorted and the excitement of the new boxes being opened kept me there for more than an hour. The icing on the cake was the beautiful day. Here's a link to Berends pottery. My pot is similar to the blue jar on the left in row 3.
http://www.gnsgrafton.com/andrew_berends.htm

[grasswire]

1. wheeee!

I think it's so cool that you look at every kind of thing and end up with such variety. Did you look up the Moosewood Cookbook yet? Tell us how you fare with all these things!

[Vinca]

2. I guess the cookbook is nothing to get too excited about.

Someone on ebay is asking about $400 for 2 copies of it, but then I found another copy in really rough shape for about $8 with no bids. For some reason I thought it would be more valuable (famous last words). I do look at everything and I've been known to come home with frilly vintage underwear as well as old car parts! The only things I stay away from are mounted animals, old animal traps and that sort of thing. I know some can be quite valuable, but I can't bear the thought of some poor, stuffed, dead creature in the back of my car.

[Paper Roses]

3. Only two in town but the thrill was there. Didn't find much.

I was excited to find a very old--late 1800's cast iron mitre box. The apparatus is large, all kinds of swinging arms, horizontal and vertical parts that adjust. Also, still sitting in position within the box is one of the largest hand saws I have ever seen.

The blade, rusty here and there, is about 30" long, squared butt end, beautifully shaped handle.
There are remnants of a paper label on the underside but too far gone to read. Teeth still sharp as anything. My neighbor saw me cleaning it outside yesterday and commented "no wonder you can never seem to be able to clean out your attic". She is right. What do I need a mitre box for? It was too beautiful to leave there.

I left this sale, drove about half a mile, decided to go back to look at some chairs I saw. Yup, gone already! Someday I'll learn.

It is necessary for me to watch what I spend and if I have another sale to go to, I'll hold back on what I know is a good buy. Someday I'll learn. There is always an ATM machine not far away.

[grasswire]

4. I'm laughing.

That's what the Kovels say: you only regret what you didn't buy. The list of my similar regrets is long and pathetic. And one of them is a set of six chairs.

:-)

[Vinca]

5. One of the funniest things I ever bought at a tag sale were 2 molded hand chairs.

They filled up the back of the Rav and I drove around town with them for all to see going to other sales. One was red and the other was black and they sold the second I put them on the floor at the group shop. They were like the one on this site. https://id3487.securedata.net/sitinthehand/orderfe.html

[Vinca]

6. That's really funny . . . a mitre box. Sometimes the stuff just calls to you.

I'm really pinching pennies at the moment, too, so it's a good thing I didn't run across any more than I did. I also dragged home some stuff from the dump (my favorite place to shop). I got an entire box filled with books about Native American art and a neat pottery trinket box with a hand painted design. What I really need is a barn to keep it all in.

[Paper Roses]

7. I'll split the rent. We could have a tag sale once a summer.

Advertise in the "BEE" and hopefully make a dollar or two.

I really have trouble trying to 'not buy' stuff that I know is worth a lot more than the asking price. So many years in the biz makes you so aware of a bargain. In my case, what the heck do I do with it?

[Vinca]

8. LOL - I've decided it must be a disease, because once you're hooked

you're a goner for life. It must be related to hoarding, only stuff that actually has value.

[eleny]

9. "What I really need is a barn to keep it all in"

And then these two guys in a van with Iowa plates will show up...

[Vinca]

10. LOL - I don't think I have the rusty stuff that gets them all excited.

But I can imagine myself having a big barn filled to the rafters. If I'm not careful I'll turn into one of the people who "live in trails." I went to an old dealer's house once to sell him some postcards. He had been a pretty well off businessman and has a nice house, but now he and his wife have accumulated so much stuff there's barely a place to sit in the living room. They have boxes from auctions stacked 8 feet high and I could see through a door toward the dining room and the table was covered in a pile about 3 feet high. It's a disease . . . I swear.