Sometimes the Contents are Not What's Expected....

The estate sale ad intrigued me so I ventured  way out of my comfort zone and normal stomping grounds this morning. The Dear Departed once worked for Cactus Records, Houston’s legendary independent record store. 

The neighborhood was very gloomy – a down at the heels subdivision  firmly on the downhill slide. 3 bedroom brick starter homes built in the mid 1970s. The neighborhood is now mostly  poor and  Hispanic, lots of rentals and foreclosures and gang signs spray painted on the fences. It was not the kind of house you’d associate with anyone who worked at Cactus Records. I saw some pictures of The Dear Departed  and she was about my age. I suspect she lived there with someone else- maybe an aged parent. When I think Cactus Records I conjure up an eclectic house in Houston’s eclectic neighborhood with artsy furnishings and funky art, not a soulless tract house in the wrong part of town.


The estate dealer – I’ll call him Joe is not known for his pleasant demeanor and he was in rare form today.


To start with he left the E for east that belonged on the address. Another would be attendee and I meet up at the wrong address. We called and got the correct address and somehow the other attendee managed to get us in the door early. He was from New Jersey and he was pissed and he let Joe know it. I got included because I was the one with the phone number & the GPS.  He was a record dealer and I'm not so I was no threat. 


I think the Dear Departed had a home business making and selling bootleg DVDs. There were way more mailers in that house than the average person keeps. There were boxes of DVDs in those multi colored cases you can get at Office Max. All looked just a little “off” and it was very apparent they were copies. I left those but came away with an 5 foot high stack of original box sets – all new and sealed which the Dear Departed hadn’t gotten around to copying yet.


There were indeed lots of books, most worthless –many books published Dover.. Shelves of books on ancient Egypt but all by popular presses. I am pretty sure 2 someones lived in the house since the book subjects were very diverse. Far left wing crystal reading and far right Obama is Satan books on the same shelf. One of the someones liked genealogy and I found some  local New England history books that I’ve sold before. I had first crack at the books for about half the shelves and then the guy who buys for Brazos Books  appeared. He turned his nose up at my scanner but decided maybe I did know something when I picked this from a shelf he’d already gone through:


Iver Johnson's Arms and Firearms was such a good find that 3 people tried to buy it from me while I was standing in line to pay.


Nothing was priced and nobody could price anything but Joe . Joe had 2 different check out stations – one manned by his mother (old and clueless) and another by an ageing queen (fussy and clueless) Everyone and everything had to wait for Joe and  everyone was grumpy, especially Joe. Joe was running around cursing everyone and being as rude as possible to the buyers and assorted Hispanic men he’d hired to do the hauling and the translating. 


 The buyers were pretty clueless too – they managed to block a number of driveways along the street and tow trucks were summoned. You can only imagine how blue the air turned once wreckers showed up.


It took forever to pay – in fact I think I could of easily walked out with my haul, it was such a disorganized mess. I went into the “polite, sympathetic and understanding” mode I use with another dealer and it worked. He looked at my stack and said “$125”. The gun book will more than cover that so I paid and ran.


There were several cases of jewelry on the lawn (the house was so tiny) and I couldn’t get near it. It also wasn’t priced and the folks around were in a feeding frenzy. No records at all, though the ad promised records. Joe locked them in his truck because he didn’t want anyone to look at them unless he stood over them to guard them. Which he couldn’t do because nothing was priced. The record buyer folks were angry – can’t say that I blame them. It was a long drive and they went away empty handed.




My grand total ? $2,228.00. Not bad for 3 hours of work! 


 I’m very glad I got up early on a Saturday and that I took chance in an unfamiliar part of town.

First You Have to Kiss Some Frogs.....

The toys and games I unearthed at The House O' Stuff are selling briskly.  Someone just paid  $249 for a Disney / Mickey Mouse Roller Coaster set.  I keep wondering just where this recession is that folks keep talking about.

Speaking of talking about, people often comment on how "lucky" I am to come across all this junk that I turn into treasure and manage to resell at a profit.

I always hear "I never find anything at thrift shops"

Me: "How often do  you shop at one?"

Answer:  "It's been 3 or 4 months". 

Me " I troll the thrift shops 3 or 4 times a week". 

There is some luck involved - maybe 10% but the rest is just plain hard work. 

When it came to The House O' Stuff, the 10% was living in the same city as the toy hoarder.

The 90% was hard work was: 

• ·        Going to every estate sale I could and getting my name on the-mail lists
• ·        Scouring their e-mails and pictures looking for a likely candidates.
• ·         Attending a great many Frog estate sales
• ·         Making nice to the estate sale dealers so that they will make nice to me. Th
• ·         In regards to the House O’ Stuff making the time to park my carcass in line for an hour and an hour a half the day before so that I’d get in the door in the first group
• ·         Showing up on time the day of the sale (believe it or not, some folks were late and lost their hard won place on the list)
• ·         Spending at least 3 hours at the sale for 2 consecutive Saturdays in a row
• ·         Busting my backside to get all the STUFF listed, packed, photographed etc. so that it would sell.  Doesn’t matter how much it is worth – I’m not going to make any money if it’s stacked on the pool table!

Everything was either at Amazon or E-bay ready within a week of purchase.

So, yes there is some luck involved but there is a great deal of very hard work as well. 

Return to The House O' Stuff

There was so much stuff in The House O' Stuff that the estate sale dealer opened the place up for another weekend sale.  The ad gleefully burbled  that they'd found 3 hidden rooms and the pictures showed another toy store's worth of toys including Legos.

I learned last week (as folks tried to buy them as I stood in line to pay for them) that Legos are well worth buying.  Once again the dealer (Heaven bless her) used a sign up sheet with strictly enforced sign up times.

Said list was slated to make its first appearance at 5pm the Friday with the sale opening at 8am on Saturday.   At 3:30 my lawn chair, my Kindle & I joined the line where a quick count showed I was number 9.  Whoo Hoo!   I'd be the first group in the door.

I showed up at 7:45 the following morning to find a line of over 100 people and quickly slipped into my spot.  At exactly 8am, not 7:50 and not 8:01 they started calling out names. Once inside I scurried up the stairs looking for Legos.  Luckily for me everyone else was looking for Star Wars and luckily for them Star Wars are not my forte. We co-existed beautifully.  I struck gold, or rather Legos in the second room and quickly assembled  a stack higher than my head.  Sets in sealed boxes, sets in open boxes, boxes of mixed sets  - it was all there.

The dealer cleverly stationed minions (easily identifiable by their red shirts) in each room.  Their job was to keep the peace and carry your purchases downstairs and put them on the sold tables. Very wise strategy since not only did it keep the buyers in house where they were guaranteed to buy still more stuff, it also kept the pilfering at a minimum.  2 minions proceeded to carry out my selections while I stood guard over the rapidly diminishing pile.

Once the Legos were safely stowed I set my sights on the games.  There were stacks everywhere and I quickly gave up trying to research them and grabbed titles that had "sell appeal".  I gathered up all Space and strategy games in sight and also found some Puzz 3D puzzles.  Every time the stack outgrew my arms a minon appeared and carried my purchases downstairs.

I took a final pass around one of the rooms and idly opened an amoire which chock full of  untouched videos and DVDs.  The advent of DVD made most of the videos worthless (lots of musicals, because the former owner was a Queen) but there were still a few cult gems hidden among the songs and dances.

By some odd coincidence I'd also worn a red shirt and that, coupled with my scanner convinced many of the buyers that I too was a minon.  As the morning wore on I started getting queries.

Buyer "Where are the Legos ?"

Me "Sorry they are already sold."

Buyer: "Did you see any manual typewriters?"

Me  : "No, but if I do I'll come find you."

Buyer: Where are the kaleidoscopes?"
Me : "In the room over there"

Buyer:  "Which room has the Stars Wars toys?"

Me: "The room around the corner."

Buyer:  Are you sure there aren't any more Legos?"

Me :"I don't think so"

Buyer:  "But the pictures showed Legos!"
Me:  "Yes, but they went first thing this morning".  
I just didn't tell them who took them "first thing this morning!".

After 3 hours my eyes and sinuses called calf rope so I went downstairs to survey my pile.  It was a very LARGE pile.  So large they'd run tape around it to keep it intact.  The dealer took a look at it, rolled her eyes and said $300.

Sold!  I paid and commenced to loading it into my car.  By this time the line extended around the block and the folks waiting looked on hungrily as I crammed boxes of games, Legos and puzzles into my Cube. Much to every one's amazement it all fit.

I then spent the rest of the week sorting, pricing and packing the  spoils.  I found out that The Dear Departed shopped garage sales and thrift stores - I recognized the red grease pencil that Family Thrift uses to price their items. Odd things came out from under the Lego boxes including  some Lincoln Logs and a framed print.  Pictures of the house had made their way onto the Internet and I discovered that some folks on my thrift list knew about the house and were most curious that I'd gotten inside.

The Dear Departed was a hoarder of stuff. Games, toys, books, records, music, cell phones, videos, you name it, he had in duplicate and triplicate and God knows how many icate.  It was actually rather sad to think of him, living alone with all his toys, shuffling his way among the paths
he'd made among the boxes.  The estate sale had so much stuff but nothing to indicate what kind of a person the former owner was - other than someone obsessed with piles of things.

The House O' Stuff

One of my favorite sources of inventory is Estate Sales.  Remember how your mother always told you it was rude to snoop in other folks closets and cupboards?  Well, at an estate sale you're encouraged to disobey your mother!

Today's sale was one for the record books. The sign up sheet went up the day before & I stood in line for hour in hopes of getting in on the first wave.  It  paid off - I got in on the first pass at 8am.  I  called uncle at 11 when my eyes couldn't take it any longer. By then the line was  up to  person 180 and the folks still standing in line were facing an average wait of 2 hours. 

The home was a large, run down mansion in a very expensive part of town.  It was chock a block full of stuff.  The former owner was a hoarder, but not just any old hoarder, he was a hoarder with money.  Lots  and lots and lots of money but unfortunately he was not the most discriminating of buyers - at least when it came to books.  He bought many, many, many books but the bulk of them came from Half Price Books.  Still I managed to unearth a treasure or two among the flotsam and the jettison. 

His real passion was Hispanic Art,  toys , toy cars, models, cameras, vinyl records  & clocks.   Every room was packed to the rafters with toys, models both assembled and unassembled and every available surface was covered with clocks and cute pop culture kitsch.  Those areas aren't my forte so I pretty much left it to the myriad of toy collectors and resellers.  I did manage to score 2 big Harry Potter Lego sets. 

He loved Star Wars, The Wizard of Oz, Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings and had just about every tie in ever made.  Nobody could figure out where he he slept or ate or "lived".  There was not one easy chair, bed, reading lamp  or kitchen table in the place.  Even the bathrooms were so full of stuff that they couldn't be used for their original purpose.  Maybe he didn't live in the house - perhaps he just used it to store the stuff! 

Normally at an Estate Sale it's pretty easy to get a picture of "the dear departed" based on what they leave behind.  That wasn't the case at this one.  I knew he was a "he" and I'm pretty he was gay and suspect he was in his 60s.  It was actually a very sad sale - all those piles and stacks of "things" lovingly collected over a lifetime were left behind to be pawed over by strangers.

Thursday Thirteen - 13 Things That Always Appear at Estate Sales

Estate Sales in Houston are mostly Thursday / Friday affairs so I can only shop them in the summer time.  Some are Princesses and many  are Frogs but most all of them contain the following:

1. Chicken Soup books.  Never has so much money been made pedaling banalities. 
2. Christmas Decorations - they  often occupy an entire room
3. A Readers Digest Condensed Book or two.  Or Three. Or Four.  Or maybe more.
4. A couple of community cookbooks
5. A fur something or another.  That always baffles me - it doesn't get cold enough in Houston  to wear fur in very often
6. Artificial Flowers - the dusty, plastic type
7. An angel figurine or two. Or Three. Or Four. Or maybe more. 
8. Dusters and Mumus.  There seems to be a law that everyone over the age of 60 must have own at least 1 duster.  I hope I don't receive any when I turn 60!
9. Cassette tapes.  Often the cassette tape player is missing but there is always a stack of cassettes.
10. China figurines.  Dollar store variety at a low end sale, British bone at a high end. 
11. A textbook dating back to their college days.  Doesn't matter how long ago it was, there is always at least one textbook.
12. A collection of calculators (some of which do nicely on E-bay)
13. Bath sets.  Never opened. 

It's always interesting (and sometimes very sad) to see what possessions people decide to hold on to. 

The Thursday Thirteen

Scene: A garage sale (where else would I be on a Saturday morning?)

I amble over to the wife with 3 books in hand.

“How much ?” .

“Books are $1 each” . She takes a second look at the titles

“Honey, are you sure you want to sell these books?” she calls out

“These books” were 3 Engineering texts with good ranks and selling prices of $100 each.

“Nah, I don’t want them anymore” replys Honey

“Are you sure? “

“Nope , don’t want them”

“I think….and she's distracted by another customer.

I quickly shove $3 into Honey’s hand and make a bee line for my car.

Hit the gas and hit the road. Hope nobody thinks to write down my license plate number.

The weather was tolerable till 9:30, so maybe one of these days it will be fall again. Best garage sale haul I have had in a VERY long time.

My Strangest Garage Sale Buy Ever...

I spend almost every Saturday trolling the Heights garage sales for books to sell. Along the way I pick up other treasures, many of which find their way into my library. I’ve the only library in the district with 10 Lava Lamps and a complete zoo of puppets and stuffed animals.

Saturday I came across a Book Cart. A brand new, metal, retails for almost $400 Bretford Book Cart. How it arrived at a modest Heights rent house is beyond me but there it was.

“How much” I asked the seller, expecting a quote for $25 to $50.

“Ah, I guess $5” he said.

Sold!

I think every librarian turned bookseller needs her personal book cart.


P.S. It was a day for a strange buys – another sale turned up the contents of a newly closed gourmet grocery store. $10 bought $50 worth of fancy salad dressings.

Water, Water Everywhere

Or rather garage sales, garage sales everywhere but not a book to be found.
It was gorgeous day – sunny, no humidity, not a cloud to mar that beautiful Texas Blue Sky.
Craigslist was full of enticing ads and garage sale signs sprouted on the telephone poles like mushrooms after the rain.

And I found not one book worth buying.

In fact were it not for a Lava Lamp for school and a kitty condo for the cats I’d of come away empty handed.

Some days are like that…..even in Australia….or Houston.

Reasons for the Long Silence

Last Thursday
Get to work at 7, teach till 2:30, teach after school Primary Gifted & Talented class till 3:45. Take 3 of the Primary Gifted and Talented to kids to daycare (pacifying them with my GPS). Go to post office. Go to thrift store next to post office (find a $40 & $30 book, a Halloween flag and 2 books to donate to my school library). Pick up Spring Rolls at the Vietnamese place for dinner, 5:30, open library for Family Library Night. 8pm. Remove 77 people from library by turning off the computers. Go home. Answer e-mails, list the 2 books, pack books. Go to bed.

Last Friday
Get to work at 6:45 (have to put library back together again after Family Library Night), work till 2:30 (check out 400 books and teach 6 classes + lunch in library for 30+ kids). Rush home, meet a friend who drove in from MacGregor. We , drive to Galveston for the annual Friends of the Library Sale.. Arrive at sale at 4:30. Doors open at 5. Shop the sale till they kick us at 7:30 (awesome sale – they weeded the art books-spend $110, and have a $400 book in the lot). Have dinner, drive back to Houston, We kill half of a big bottle of wine, go to bed.

Last Saturday
Get up at 6:30, arrive at the Heights Friends of the Library sale by by 7:30. Buy books (spend $120) , Go to Zen center sale, buy more books (spend $30) . Go to brunch with 2 other book sellers and talk shop for 2 hours.. Go to Half Price Books. Buy more books (spend $40)- including 10 Betsy Tacy books . Come home Do laundry, clean up kitchen, clean up after cats (one has a new habit of pucking). Drink rest of the wine while listing books (that might not have been the brightest of moves) .

6:30pm The Universe calls (via Lou): Spiritual Man has more books .
Guess what I’m did last Sunday at 2pm?

It’s beginning to look like the Soccer’s Apprentice has switched from buckets of water to boxes of books

Houston, We Have Found the Motherlobe

It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad garage sale day till the last sale – which was not advertised and we almost didn’t go to – my friend was hot and my friend was tired.

“Let’s just do this one, it’s only a few blocks away. I said. Then we can call it a day”.

It’s almost noon. Old house in the “arty part” of Houston. Sale was in the back, in a garage apartment occupied by a self proclaimed ‘natural healer & herbiest”. We walk up and there are 2 big tables piled with books. Big, thick fat books. Books without dust jackets and shiny picture covers. Books published by Gulf, Mosby, Wiley & Academic Press. I scan the first 3 and suddenly have $600 worth of inventory in my hand. We each fill up 2 boxes.

“Folks just give me books” says the guy, “ I need to clear them out, in fact just threw some away, go look”. I lift the lid of the trash can and pull out the first book - $250. Gives new meaning to the phrase “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”.

“Got more inside – you want to go look? “. Is the Pope Catholic?

2 hours later my friend calls her husband to come and pick her up – there isn’t enough room in my car for all the books.

I have 12 boxes of academic, technical and medical books, all of which I scanned. Most rank in 2,000,000 and up but for those prices they can sit and wait for a buyer

I paid: $100!

My friend has the same. And paid the same.

The “Profits” screen of my Axim read $10,000+ when we’d finished.

On my way home I stopped at a sandwich shop next to Half Price Books to grab a bite to eat.

For some odd reason I had no desire at all to go inside and check out the Clearance Shelf.

I wonder why?

P.S. We went back twice during the week and bought still more books.