Estate Sale Finds

After a recent dry spell, we had several estate sales in one weekend. Here are a few of my favorite things we found.

My mother found this book in amongst a bunch of others stuffed into a closet. I hadn't gotten there yet when she found it or I'd have probably spotted it first. It's a portion of a correspondence course on home appliance repair ca. 1970.


The book is full of diagrams and instructions featuring common brands of household appliances such as this one for servicing and repairing a Mixmaster. The diagram they use shows a Model 10. My mixer is a Model 12 and still similar enough to use their diagrams for servicing.

After finding that, my father decided to go online and order the complete course. The NRI (National Radio Institute) doesn't exist anymore but we were able to order the full course for about $15.00. Now he has service and repair instructions for vintage toasters, coffee pots, washing machines, blenders, mixers, etc.


I love children's books and fairy tales so bedtime story books are always a favorite for me. This is a vintage copy of Uncle Arthur's Bedtime Stories with the latest copyright of 1941. Arthur S. Maxwell was a spokesman for the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Britain, but in America he is well known for his volumes of Bedtime Stories and Bible Stories. His stories all teach a morality point related to scripture.

Interestingly enough, although there are a few drawings, most of his "illustrations" are photographs from recent events or copies of biblical paintings.



My mother loves vintage board games, especially with fun, bright graphics.

She found this one that she'd never even heard of. It's ca. 1970 and has the colors to show.


At one sale my mother found an entire shoebox full of stir-sticks. Vintage ones - we're guessing most are from the 1960s. They did their traveling mostly in Seattle and Tacoma Washington, with trips to Hawaii, Reno/Lake Tahoe, and Vegas. She knows I love barware so she felt compelled to bring them home.

These are some of my favorite ones for styling, color, etc.

My mother has always wanted a souvenir pillow cover. She loves the ones from Hawaii especially and never thought she'd be able to afford any. We refrain from purchasing many things on Ebay and the only time we've ever seen one at an estate sale it was far too expensive.

We found two of them at one sale and waited until half price day to buy them for $1.50 each, a little bit surprised that they didn't sell.



I love aluminum tumblers and am always looking for them. I found these for $0.50 each. Don't they look lovely with my pitcher?

Lots and lots of apothecary jars for storing lots and lots of things. We paid anywhere from nothing to $1.00 each for several, even more than are pictured.

This is the best deal we made all weekend: A Bogen 3001 Tripod for my camera! (Picture borrowed from ebay; ours is very similar) My mother has been looking for a tripod for months now and hasn't found a thrifted one that was any good (usually the legs won't lock properly). This tripod was only $12.00, but Mom wasn't sure it would work with our camera. The woman running the sale very generously told us that we could take it home for the day and try it out and, if it didn't work right with our camera, bring it back the next day.

We brought it home, it worked perfectly, and we did the research and found out that it's a very popular tripod, very high quality, made of aluminum and sells on Ebay for around $60.00. Needless to say, my mother is glad she didn't find a functioning plastic tripod sooner.

I hope you found as many wonderful sales as we did!

I'm linking up to these parties:

Click on the links and join the fun.

The Big And The Small Of It

Today I thought I'd show the largest thing I've ever thrifted, and the smallest.

The largest was found a few weeks ago at The Salvation Army during a 50% off sale. It was just under $30 - children not included. It's powder-coated tubular steel; very strong. A new one sells for over $200, so we were very happy to have it.

The smallest thing was found at the Goodwill Outlet, commonly referred to as "the Bins." The Bins is a giant store where they send all the "clearance" items. When the store shelves get too full, they send a bunch of stuff to The Bins, and it gets sold by the pound. It's all dumped into these giant bins, kind of like tables with short sides, on wheels. Customers dig through the bins, looking for bargains. Things get tossed about, and if there are board games, parts get dumped, so I like to look in the bottom of the bins for tiny items.

Here are some of the tiny things I've found. There's a purple wooden mouse, a wooden Professor Plum token, a Barbie telephone, a tiny die, a figure of "Jacque" from Cinderella, a bingo number, a Monopoly top hat, a Clue revolver, some magnetic checkers, a chess piece, a metal figure of the Virgin Mary and a teeny dog. Some of them will be used for altered art, some for dollhouses, some as replacement parts for board games; who knows. Everything in the picture cost about 10c. I also found an entire set of vintage scrabble tiles (with very smooth edges) to make into charms.

Lately I've been ignoring a particular Goodwill in our area, so yesterday I decided to go in and have a look around. And what did I find but lovely Pyrex?! I saw this Desert Dawn oblong baking dish and was immediately interested, so I called my mother to ask if we wanted it. I love oblong bakers, even if we already own two. They have so many possible uses: holding cards, carrying things, making peppermint bark, etc.

This baking dish is a size 232, 2qt. It's smaller than the 3 qt oblong pans that I own in the Daisy and Butterfly Gold patterns. Desert Dawn oblong bakers came in size 231 (1.5 qt) and size 232 (2 qt). I don't know how they compare to one another lookswise but I'd guess that the 231 is probably about the size of a space saver but just as shallow as the 232.

While on the phone with Mom, I spotted this:

An aqua snowflake patterned space saver just like one we saw at an antique store recently for $18.00. My mother loves space savers and aqua Pyrex and was drooling over the one at the antique store. As I picked it up, the conversation went something like this:

Me: I found something but I can't tell you what it is.
Mom: Okay but I'm not sure we need it.
Me: How can you say that? It's Pyrex.
Mom: Unless it's aqua we don't need it.
Me: Only aqua you say? Interesting. What about pink?
Mom: Okay. Aqua or pink.
Me: What about patterns like Daisy?
Mom: I'm really only looking for a space saver.
Me: Okay, Mom. I won't bring anything home unless it's aqua or pink or matches any of our patterns or I really, really like it.
Mom: Wait a minute...
Me: I have to go. Bye!

Needless to say, when I brought it home, she was thrilled, though she'd kind of already guessed it was aqua.

I'm linking up to these parties :





Click on the links and join the fun.

A Purple Vinyl Sofa

Two weeks ago, after having little luck at the thrift stores and with no estate sales in sight, Mom announced she needed a vintage fix and invited me on a trip to the Big City close by. She had heard of a new-to-us store that specialized in mid-century furnishings, and that was known to have a good selection of Pyrex at decent prices. So it was over the river and through the neighborhoods we went.

The entire store was full of beautiful mid-century furnishings, especially the lamps.

I've never before seen so many lamps that I loved in one place. I more often see horrible lamp after horrible lamp at Goodwills everywhere. I even like to play a game where I look at all the lamps in the store and decide what the ugliest one is, have my mother do the same, and compare choices. No chance of playing that game here.

I'm particularly fond of swirly drum lampshades.

I must apologize for the quality of the photographs in today's post. I tried, but I'm afraid my intentions were better than the outcome.

They also had swag lamps and pole lamps.

Hawaii was a popular mid-century theme, from lamps

to sofas,

to barware. They had quite a large selection of Tiki mugs.
My favorite is holding a cheeseburger. It's from the Cheeseburger in Paradise restaurant in Waikiki, Hawaii.

This is what we saw when we walked into the store -

a purple vinyl sofa with a fold-down center cushion that hides a table and a radio console. I'm sorry the picture isn't better. Those are champagne flutes on the fold-down table. And if you look at the coffee table in front of the sofa, you'll see a pull-out drawer with a stereo inside.
Very cool.

They had plenty of art, including a large string-art on velour sailboat . I guess we have something similar that Grandpa did in the '70s packed away. Mom says it's staying packed. It seems it's an acquired taste.

And she hasn't acquired it.

We saw a few toys,


and all sorts of fun housewares,


including this lovely blue bar set (tons of other barware too),

a Figgjo skillet in the Tor Viking pattern,

and then there was Pyrex.


Apparently the Pyrex in this particular shop is made of GOLD or something. They wanted so much money for things that I couldn't even afford to touch most of it for fear of dropping and having to pay for it. In case you can't tell from my lousy picture, that's $69 for a primary color fridge set.

(Disclaimer: I am cheap on my Pyrex prices. Super duper cheap.)

But they DID have Pink Gooseberry.

And some VERY pretty blue Snowflake pieces,

including this space saver Mom was drooling over.

Everything was in excellent condition,

including this Spring Blossom bake serve store set which appeared to be brand new. So it was a lot of fun to look at, although we didn't buy anything.

They did have some little ceramic planters that weren't very expensive, and when the clerk asked us if we were looking for anything in particular, Mom mentioned baby planters. (I know, "No More Baby Planters," but she asked.) The clerk said that she had a box of them packed away in the back because nobody was ever interested in them. I don't know if that means nobody else likes them or just that people who like mid-century modern don't like them.

There was another store that we wanted to check out. It had seemed quite promising

considering its name.
and when we got to it, a look through the windows showed a trove of treasures. But we had spent so much time looking at all the cool mid-century stuff, that by the time we got to Really Good Stuff , it had closed. We'd like to go back some day, but we're not quite sure what the hours are.

I replaced the earlier picture of this sign with a better one. It says that on Monday he's open from "always late" until "whatever" and on Tuesday he closes "when the wife calls." On Thursday he's open from "sometime early" until "sometime late."

Even though the store was closed, we didn't leave empty handed. They was a box of free vinyl records out in front and I selected a few children's records to bring home,

such as this one.

A trip to The Big City isn't complete without a stop at a real thrift store, so we went to the nearest Goodwill and found an assortment of things, including

the Mary Engelbreit plaque I showed you last month,

Brigitte, the French poodle,

and even a coconut bra (as a gag gift for a friend).

While at the cashier, I noticed a flyer advertising a new Goodwill in a trendy neighborhood full of vintage boutiques. We still had an hour before closing time so Mom and I decided to go check it out, fully expecting that all the good stuff would have found it's way there.

When we got there, boy, were we right. All the good stuff had been picked out and taken straight to this Goodwill, marked up, and displayed quite beautifully.


Complete with hardwood floors and lovely displays, this location is set up to imitate the best of the boutique stores in the area and the items are priced to match. (And why not? A lot of the merchandise in the vintage boutiques comes from the Goodwill, anyway. They might as well try to make the money.)

I saw a lot of designer shoes and leather jackets and some nice vintage clothing.

Although vintage and nice don't ALWAYS go hand in hand.

Here's something we really liked. Aqua laminate and chrome bar cart - $55.
I would have snapped this up if I had been lucky enough to find it at the regular non-boutique price of $10-$12.

I hope you enjoyed our trip to The Big City, and I apologize again for the crappy pictures.

I'm linking up to these parties :





Thrift Share Monday

Click on the links and join the fun.