Garage Sailing was good to me today. Morrie and I ventured off in a new direction, and enjoyed some very pleasant scenery. I spend so much time in town that I sometimes forget that much of Washington is beautiful woodlands. We wandered around so much, actually, that we got completely lost and didn't care. I spent maybe 4 to 5 hours today with no idea of how to get home, and I just kept driving around at random. In the end it wasn't even that hard to find a road I recognized and follow it home. So meh.Aside from having a generally pleasant time together, we both found some really amazing treasures. And one of the sales we visited may have been the second best sale I've been to in three years of doing this.
But enough of that, lets get to it:
As always, there is boring stuff. We have a lot of Pasta, so Morrie thought the colander might be useful if we can fit it inside one of our larger pots. Also, one of the pots Morrie brought with her when she moved in is on its last leg and will probably need to be thrown out soon. I've been keeping an eye out for a replacement, and this copper-bottom pot is really nice.
Morrie likes to grow things, and she likes these pots. Growing stuff in our apartment hasn't worked out well in the past, since we get no real sunlight in here. But she might be planning to make another attempt at it, I'm not sure. Which might be why she later picked up these:
A box set of books from the '70s about growing plants in your home. In particular I think she's interested in "Growing Plants Under Light" and "House Plants To Grow If You Have No Sun." She's primarily interested in seeing if we can grow any food here, so hopefully there are some edible plants that will work with these techniques.
Almost every Garage Sale has a few DVDs out, and most weeks I come back with one or maybe two. Unfortunately, I run into two problems when buying DVDs: many people have tastes which do not even slightly parallel my own, and many people price DVDs at $3-$5 each. That's not a bad price, but it is a prohibitive price. I'm not going to spend $30 on a handful of DVDs.
Today, though, we found a place that wanted only a single dollar per DVD, and had a number of movies I was interested in.
Taxi driver is a landmark film which I've been wanting to see for years now. Jurassic Park can be a bit campy, but it's still a mid-'90s classic, and one I've really wanted to see again. The Brotherhood of the Wolf comes highly recommended from my uncle, and the Pianist comes highly recommended from just about everyone.
All three Spiderman films were available there, but I already picked up the 2nd movie two years ago. So these will round out that trilogy.
This set of historical texts was hidden amongst a bunch of college textbooks. They're all filled with artwork and photographs of artifacts from the cultures they detail. The writing is very compelling from what I've been able to read so far, and I'm excited to expand my knowledge a bit on each of these cultures.
This novel was from the same pile I got the above history books from. It just looks fascinating to me. As best I can tell, it is a fantasy novel about three princesses, written by three women. Each of the three is on a separate quest to save their kingdoms.
Aside from being a cool concept, I'm drawn to the book because it stands alone. Most fantasy books I find at garage sales are part of a series. A series which is almost never sold in its entirety. There came a point a few years ago when I realized I had a lot of second hand fantasy books, and most of them were in the middle of a series which I didn't own the rest of.
That's annoying.
Edit: God damnit. There are four sequels to Black Trillium. >.>
Boots and a bag! These are things Morrie needed for working and for school. It's always nice to find the necessities on the cheap at garage sales.
Finding this was an absolute shock to me. I was floored. I almost never find anything this specific to my interests. I mean, I know that I'm not exactly the only Final Fantasy fan out there. But there are not many fans who go so far as to buy the CDs.
Now, by the time I got my hands on Final Fantasy IX, I was past the point where I could easily sink weeks into an RPG. I never did finish the game, though I did get pretty far in it. But even if I had never played it at all, Nobuo Uematsu's music is unmatched. The man knows how to write compelling music, and this CD is a special arrangement which he ostensibly set up himself!
Everything else today all came from the same sale--the really great one I mentioned earlier. As I mentioned both to Morrie and to the guy running the sale, it seems as though his interests were adjacent to my own. It didn't seem like we were quite on the same wavelength, but there was a bit of overlap.
To be frank, I'm thankful we didn't have more in common. I spent $25 at that sale. And if all the cool stuff he was selling had been more relevant to my interests, I probably would have spent $100 or more.
The above is a really nice metal storage space for documents. Being a half-assed writer, I've got a lot of notes, binders, folders, and other such things cluttering up my work space. I did pick up something like this at an office supply store awhile ago, but it's cheap plastic junk. This is much nicer.
These are a little goofy, but I actually got them free because I was buying a bunch of expensive stuff. At the bottom of the picture is my new deck of Star Trek playing cards. I've never even watched The Original Series, it's far too campy in my opinion. But Star Trek playing cards are cooler than the playing cards you pick up at a grocery store.
Above them is a little stack of art cards. These are just small reproductions of art done by a guy named Christos Achilleos. There's some really cool art in here, which I tried to display in the photograph. Not sure how well that worked, though.
As mentioned last year, I think Steins are awesome. I'm not a fan of decorative, collectible steins, though. I prefer functional steins, which are appropriately sized to actually use.
This was clearly intended to be a display piece. The staff held by the pewter wizard isn't very strong and bends quite easily. I still intend to drink soda out of it during D&D games though. Because that's how I roll.
So, surely everybody knows I'm a tabletop RPG nerd. It's kinda my schtick. Well, in order to help visualize battles, tabletop players traditionally use miniatures made of lead or pewter. I've never been a huge fan of them, because I feel they limit the imagination potential of the game. None the less, they can be really cool looking, and if handled correctly, can greatly enhance the gameplay experience.
This unassembled dragon miniature is almost 30 years old. Aside from missing its horns, it appears to be entirely complete. Plus it comes with a topless lady. The box art lies. The figurine has nipples.
Now I just need an excuse to make my players face a black dragon.
While I wouldn't call this my favorite find of the day, it is certainly the most unexpectedly valuable. Being a huge Star Wars fan, I merely thought the idea of a nice weighty statue depicting a scene from my favorite of the films would be fun. Personally I think Jabba the Hutt is a little over represented in Star Wars merchandise (probably because of Slave Leia), but none the less it was cool.
After spending $10 on it, I noticed that it had a certificate of authenticity attached to it. I also noticed that it was a numbered piece from a collection of 5000. And, as it turns out, sells fro about $100 online.
I'm not going to sell it. I wouldn't have paid $100 for it, but I like it all the same. I just count myself lucky to have picked up something cool for a very reasonable price.
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