We’re Just Not Yard Sell People

There are a handful of certain people who somehow feel magnetized to drive to yard sales – some spend their entire weekends exploring through junk and treasures and actually driving from yard sale to yard sale – not me. 

Oh, sure.  When I was a kid it was different.  I felt so grown up walking away with treasures from various neighbors’ yards.  But now?  Unless we’re looking for something specific and happen to be passing the yard sell anyway . . . junk.  Lots and lots of junk.  The same you can buy at the second hand store.  Yard sales wear me down.  And today was no exception.

Normally my sibs and I don’t hold yard sales.  Items are donated, thrown out, or given away.  Yard sales are too much work – and you end up donating or throwing away everything that’s left – which in our case was most of it.  Patrick was really dreading that part – but I told him he didn’t have to take it to a donation center himself.  We had enough in the driveway that someone would pick it up – oooo – but not on the weekend.  It felt like we returned more things to the house than what we carried out.  How is that even possible?

Sunny gave me a bag of floppy discs that I will try to go through.  Turns out most of them were mine - or half anyway.  And I had already copied the pictures.  Not all floppies could be opened. I ended up copying what I could and discarding all the floppies.  Are those considered antiques?

We had two gentlemen arrive at the same time – both well over 70.  One pointed to the empty reel/film canister and said, “I bet most people won’t even know what that is.”

My nine year old didn’t.  But then I didn’t recognize the film splicer to be what it was.  I really felt foolish when I asked Patrick about it because I have worked with film splicers before – for two different companies.  Silly me.

And Bob – who Corey has mentioned in at least four of his posts held up a porcelain one-piece nativity of Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus in a manger and asked the price (I had decided that all large knickknacks, statuettes, porcelain things would be 75 cents and the smaller ones would go for a quarter.  Wasn’t enough. 

“Two dollars?” I said wondering if he still thought it worth more.  He gave us a twenty dollar bill and would not accept change.

It was very sweet of him to donate to the cause – as he really didn’t have the need for the statue as I had to explain two or three times what it was. 

We sold most of the larger glass dishware and all of the tacky things. We sold items that I had never even seen before – some that were still in their original boxes and I suspect had never even been open.

The proceeds are going towards mom’s needs.  Not enough to pay even a week of her stay, but perhaps enough that Patrick can give some money to both Kayla and I when she runs out of medication or her bras where out or something like that.  Pocket change . . .  

Mostly it was just Patrick and I who were out there.  Sunny was keeping Jenna entertained and Kayla and Bill had gone with his family.  Roland's oldest sister seemed like the type who would spend all day driving around from one yard sell to another.  His family loves flea markets and second hand stores.

We’re not yard sale people.  I don’t know if Patrick or Kayla has ever even purchased yard sell items before.  I have.  Roland has.  Yard sale treasures that were junk put out by somebody else becomes recycled again. There were some ceramic fish on the table that I remember buying at another yard sale just up the street almost forty years ago.

Sometimes what's one man's junk is another man's treasure and sometimes what's one man's junk is always junk.