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a nice return from a G sale.....

I found this old flute from a neighborhood garagae sale last week. I made an offer and bought it for $50. I was thinking of Lindsey taking flute lessons this summer.... but she cringed and wasn't interested in playing flute.  I wanted her to be in band....and told her all about the fun band tours and band concerts.  "Mom, band is for nerds!" she shot me down.  Oh, this child was making me mad. I took the garage sale Gemeinhardt M2 flute to the local music store that day.   They said that I could consign it.  They offered to sell it for only $250.  I was quite shocked at the profit that I could make.  I remained quiet.  It didn't feel right to sell it fofr $250 when I bought it for $50.  I dediced to consign it.  Who knows, it may not get sold at that price anyways.  They said that they would take 25% off the sale price IF it gets sold.  One week later, I received this check:

Estate sale Friday...

This sale was very interesting because the house was built in 1908 in the heart of SE Portland neighborhood of Mt. Tabor.  I was really impressed with this massive mansion with more than 1/2 acre land and 8500 sq. feet of living space!  It was a beautiful mansion that was fully restored inside and beautifully maintained outside.  I did call Sonia and left her a message...I was on my way to the Korean market on her side of town...

I guessed the owner was a big sports memorabilia collector.  There were signed basketballs, baseballs, team posters with player's signatures and so on...

One room was just filled with these jersey's on all sides of the wall.  They were all nicely framed....But the price of these equally same jerseys were priced quite unequally. 

Joey Harrington:  Big local hero but did not do so well in the NFL:  $100. 

Jerry Rice and Steve Young of SF 49ers: $250 each. 

The big ticket item was Brett Favre's jersey: $475. I was tempted to call our friends Robin and Rinah....but I passed.

If you want it bad enough, you buy it at the listed price.  But there is a bid box where you can submit your bid at whatever price you want...  If you're the highest bidder on the last day of sale, you are called.

What did I get?  Couple of Leap Pad books. But the house was gorgeous!

Estate sale Friday...

I went to a nice estate sale in Lake Oswego this morning.  (Beautiful multi-million dollar home with an amazing view...)  The house was packed with really nice stuff. 

Designer clothes, garage full of tools and sporting goods. Bats, gloves, lacross sticks, tennis rackets were all $2-$3! But there were some really expensive art pieces and paintings too that were thousands of dollars!

But I bought mainly books for the kids: All the books were $1 each!  Things that I picked up: What your 3rd grader needs to know, what your 4th grader needs to know, what your 5th graders need to know, Punctuation Power, Building your Vocabulary, Checking Your Grammar, Writing with Style, Dictionary of Synonyms, Antonyms and Homonyms, Book on Imponderables, English work book for 4-6th grades, Super maze book, The Borrowers by Mary Norton, 4th Grade Brain Quest,10 Calligraphy pen set with instruction book and papers for $2 and a brand new 150 Magnetixs toy for $3! 

Estate sale Friday...

Today's sale was a clean sale:  meaning, it wasn't an old house with grandma furnishings or vintage anything!  They had newer, cleaner home accessories.  But this seemed like a divorce forced estate sale.  All the household furnitures were put away, except the bedroom set in the master bedroom!  Sad but true.

Today's find: I paid $25 for a box of Legos.  I usually don't spend more than $10 at a sale but I wanted to pick this box up because I know how expensive Legos are out there.  This seemed like an older Lego set from 1992, with various Lego settings.  One collection is of a pool setting with a cabana, the other set is of a ranch with several horses, and another system was of an outdoor cafe with cars and lots of extra Lego people.  Randy and Allison loved it!  They said this was better than playing with their DS this afternoon! (see the white DS on the floor?)  I just check on Ebay and found just one set that I have:  It's called Legotown Paradisa.  It's listed for $164...and I have four of these sets!  Who would pay this much anyway? 

Estate sale Friday...

Books books everywhere!  2 Fridays ago, I picked up 10 inspirational/devotional books by renowned Christian authors, 1 DSM IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder...not the latest edition but DSM IV-TR is around $75!), 1 Study Bible. 12 books for $12! 

The whole house was filled with books.  I only picked 12 but there were thousands of books...it was like a book store!  This was an estate sale of a "pack rat" book collector!  Her children said that their mother was a mental health professional.  One room of her small house was filled with counseling and assessments books...but I'm not in the field anymore...so I just passed.  Her children did not know what to do with them all!  They were just selling them for a buck each! 

Threw me back 25 years!

I went to an estate sale today.  It was a home of a renowned Portland area music/piano teacher.  The house was filled with music history books, theory books and other vintage stuff to rummage through.  All of the piano books as well as her entire household was for sale.... even her lovely Kawai piano. (sold for $850)   

There were so many piano books...I really didn't know what I was looking for.  I rummaged through Chopin, Mozart, Preludes, Sonatas...pieces that I use to play, I just had fun reading through dusty piano books.   I picked up brand new piano books for the kids, something they can play now and something they might enjoy later. They were all 50 cents so I picked up a Hannon exercise book (Lindsey just gave me a big stare...), a Czerny and a Bach's Inventions book...But my biggest find as I was digging through today was a book of my favorite 80's songs.. not only the songs I liked to listen to, but actual sheet musics that I had when I was a teenager!   I was never able to purchase these big thick book of sheet musics from the music store (we were poor, I never even asked my parents).   So my friend Helen Song and I would make copies and share with each other! I wish I still have my collection of songs...  I use to love Lionel Richie's songs and I would tape the copied pages all together and play them over and over again.  Sam and Josh would probably remember the songs...."Three times a lady", "Still" or "I honestly love you" by Olivia Newton-John and other crazy love songs. Oh, how I loved Jeffrey Osborne's "On the wings of love" ... Well, today I found an entire BOOK of these songs!  I was sitting and playing the piano this afternoon..."Nadia's Theme", "Up where We Belong", "Theme from Tootsie", and even singing "Faithfully" like Steve Perry...just reminiscing the days gone by...man, I am old and yes, I'm a nerd!!  

Was this picture taken in 1955?

No.......... someone actually lived here in 2007!  This house is packed with vintage furnishings and decorations from the 50's.  All these items will be up for sale this weekend!  Imagine walking into this living room in 2007 and seeing everything the way it was when this grandma was young and stylish.... I'm NOT interested in the lovely floral sofa set...however, i like the yellow banana colored telephone on the side...whimsical isn't it for the kids' room?  But no, I'm so busy these days.  PUC camp meeting is in one week and I have things to finalize and work on... 

Mother of all garage sales...

My friends in Happy Valley had their garage sales today.  There were signs everywhere in HV...142 registered garage sales but I'm sure there were more... there were cars outside early in the morning, way before the official starting hour of 9 a.m.  I was there for couple of hours, just hanging with the girls and mending our 9 kids or so...maybe more...I'm not sure.  Sonia and Kevin didn't make thousands but they did alright, Soom and Yoom sold lots of little things and made couple of hundred each...At the end, things were going for a quarter then a nickle!  I didn't sell anything but I'm pooped from all this action!  No pictures today.  I forgot to take it to HV! 

Estate sale Friday...

I have not gone to an estate sale since the one ENK made me go see that vintage Jag...when was that?  But I do look into my estatesale-finder website to see the photos of all the sales in the area.  I always see so many collection of things...older folks sure love to collect!  If you can start your own collection...what would it be? Bells like this grandma? How sad would it be to give up what you have loved all your life...and see it all go?  As much as I love estatesales for the things from the past...I always have these moments of..."gee, that's too bad..."   

Estate Sale Friday...

No, I'm just looking at the website today.  Someone asked where I picked up my pretty tea cups.  I can almost guarantee that I'll find a vintage tea set somewhere at an estate sale in Portland area every single week of the year.  I saw a beautiful store in Victoria, BC next to the Empress Hotel when I visited there last summer.  They sold great tea sets but the prices were ridiculously high.   At an estate sale, they range from $5 to $20 and half price the next day.