To which I would respond that, aside from 2 weekends I spent in airports, and 1 weekend of rain, I actually *have* been out every weekend. The problem is that the hunting has not been exactly stellar. Often I returned home empty handed, or nearly so. There's not much entertainment value in posting about finding a set of in-and-out boxes and a single beanie baby that my ladyfriend Morrie wanted.
This week, however, things picked up:
Pretty good, amirite?
This weekend was possibly the hardest I've "worked" since starting this hobby. I was out the door by 10:30 (no small miracle on a Saturday morning) and didn't stop until 4:55 when the last three sales I hit had been in the process of packing up, leaving me to pick through other sailers' leavings.
One thing I really wanted to find this weekend was a nice lamp, to replace the one I got last year. The once which, in fact, is the very first item I got on my very first Garage Sailing odyssey. It was always one of my more dubious purchases, due to the fact that the top light didn't work. But, as I noticed later, the threading connecting the top segment of the light to the rest of it was pretty thoroughly stripped, meaning that for the last 6 months I've had it duct taped to an old fencing sword blade just to keep it from falling over.
No luck on that, but as you can see, I got a nice assortment of other things.
These book ends are going to be exceptionally useful, as Morrie and I just finished installing a number of book shelves a couple weekends back, and have been unable to get the books (which in some cases are quite large and heavy) to stay up effectively. Amusingly, these are apparently surplus from my old Elementary school, so there's a decent chance I read a book that one of these were holding up twenty-some odd years ago.
The sale where we got this also had a classic style classroom roll-down world map. I was damned tempted, but decided against it due to lack of space.
Morrie has been growing a few different kinds of plants on our window sill. I've been a little wary of allowing my old enemy, The Sun, even that much ingress into my dwelling. However, the sage she grew is nummy, so we picked up some pots and such as we found them. I then proceeded to annoy her by excitedly pointing out pots every time we found any.
We found a lot.
Jenga doubles as both a fun game, and as blocks for building castles!
Batball.
I actually really like this style of ball. I'm always tempted to buy one just to play with when I see them at the store, but have to remind myself that I'm a grownup.
When I found this, I remembered I don't care about being a grownup.
==BORING ALERT==
Yeah, I know. But these are an expensive type of lightbulb which is really white, and good for certain kinds of mapmaking work that I do, and cost about 4 bucks in the store. So I thought "...eh, sure."
A pan. It's nice and deep, so I could cook a casserole in it. I actually didn't have a pan like this before. I bought it from a sale at a retirement community which, amusingly, was mostly baby-stuff. (Baby-stuff is the bane of my life. A good 10-15% of sales are set up for the sole purpose of getting rid of baby stuff.)
It never hurts to have a spare whisk, I've needed a meat tenderizer for some time, and all of the knives I currently have are from a cheap "your first kitchen" set thing that my Mom got me when I was 20 and planning to move to Montana. They've served me well, but I often find them frustrating.
This is the last thing we picked up. The sale in question was mostly packed up, and the people putting it on essentially told us to take anything we wanted free of charge. I've been eying hacksaws in stores lately, as I lack one. So a free one is welcome. (though I'm not sure if this style qualifies as a "hacksaw." Damned if I know. That's man-stuff.)
Another bulliten board. Because my others get too filled up >.>
==END BORING STUFF==
SMILING SPOON!
As I believe I mentioned in my last post, Morrie is on the lookout for toys she loved as a child but no longer has. To that end, we picked up these three stuffed toys. Personally, I'm terrified of rainbow cat. His eyes follow me, and anytime he turns his head, there's this really loud creaking noise which I make with my mouth. Terrifying.
The bugs is actually a fun story. It was a particularly treasured toy of Morrie's. Enough so that she still has it. Try to guess which one she's kept with her for most of her life:
...yeah.
I'm not sure if I've mentioned on this blog before what a fan of Magazines I am. They're what websites would be like if the Internet was only able to be updated once a month. It saddens me that the more niche-based magazines are starting to fade out. Big name magazines like TIME or People will continue to chug along, of course. But I nearly cried when the dual magazines Dungeon, and Dragon announced they would no longer be published. Online content just isn't the same.
Ramble aside, I was pretty happy to find a nice little collection of good ol' Star Wars Insider, a staple from my youth. Many of these contain unique fiction, and other goodies which you won't find elsewhere.
The issue of TIME pictured at the top is, of course, just a nifty collectible.
Despite being damaged, this box was completely unopened. Since taking this picture it has become significantly more opened, and the pieces inside a great deal more assembled.
Lego will never stop being worth my time.
The woman I purchased these books from was a delight to chat with. Something I love about Garage Sales is that you often get to see a side of people you might not expect. And I certainly didn't expect a middle aged mother in suburbia to have a massive collection of D&D based literature. We spent maybe 20-25 minutes talking about fantasy books, tabletop games, card games, and other nerdy goodies.
I usually skip over clothes. I have extremely narrow tastes when it comes to what I wear, meaning most people don't have anything I want. And on top of that, there's something about wearing a stranger's shirt or pants that just seems kinda gross to me.
Morrie found this great Pacific Trail coat, though, which is very similar to her current Pacific Trail coat. The only differences being that her current one is red, has a hood she likes more, and is in significantly worse shape. Not sure what the specific coat costs, but if it's anything like most coats of its type, that's at least a good $40-50 saved.
A nice antique traveling chest we got for $5. Its got some damage to the lock, and the leather carrying strap is busted, but it's a very nice size. You can get a better idea of the scale in the group-photo at the top of this post.
Not a whole lot to say about this other than what Morrie said when she bought it: "It'll look nicer than the cardboard boxes I've got stuff sitting in now."
This was a huge find for me. As anyone who knows me is well aware, I'm obsessed with Dungeons & Dragons, and other pen and paper RPGs. Coming from the fire-and-brimstone Catholic upbringing I do, however, I wasn't able to get into the hobby until shortly after the release of D&D 3.5, so I completely missed the heyday of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, which is always remembered so fondly by those who played it.
I so rarely see role playing stuff at Garage Sales. In fact, this may well be the first thing I've ever actually found. It's not in mint condition. The pages are water damaged, and the back cover is set to fall off after a few more too-rough handlings. But the book is in very good hands now, and all the pages are intact.
The sale I got this from actually looked awful as we drove past it. The house looked run down, there was (for lack of a better term) junk all over the yard. It was the kind of look that nine times out of ten means that the best thing you're going to find is a Partridge Brothers 8-track that smells of cat urine. As it turned out, however, the woman running the sale was pro. She had made a living buying and selling storage units.
This was also the sale where I found the absolute best thing I found all day long:
To talk about the two less notable finds briefly: Wizardry is a very fun game that I didn't actually intend to buy, but the woman couldn't break my $5 bill, so she had me grab something extra and I very happily did. Dragon Warrior was also a pretty huge find for me. That game was a very big part of my childhood, and the development of my imagination. Owning a copy of it nearly 15 years after my original copy was stolen has made me very happy. I'm actually very motivated now to find an NES so I can relive some of those good times.
And with those (slightly) less notable finds out of the way, lets talk about the big one.
Legend of Zelda. Gold Cartridge. Intact, near-mint manual. And, best of all, an intact map.
Holy shit.
The map has a little bit of writing on it, but still...holy shit!
I've never even been lucky enough to see an intact map before. Or a manual, for that matter. And despite owning a grey-cart copy, it's just not the same without that brilliant reflective gold that made the game immediately obvious among the pile of cartridges next to the NES. I was so happy to find this that once Morrie and I were alone I was bouncing around and singing a little song about "gold-cart Zelda with manual and map."
Actually that's pretty much the whole song right there. Over and over.
Yeah...I'm a nerd.
