Welcome to garage sales Unhinged.
Where the characters are as quirky as the vines.
I'm Julie. And I'm Jake.
Join us as we dive into the wild world of garage sales, yard
sales, estate sales, and anywhere second hand sales are
happening from. Bizarre bargains to hilarious
haggles. You won't believe the stories
we've got lined up. Let's get unhinged.
Jake, I went on an adventure the other week.
I don't want to know about. It we have a podcast where we
can talk about the adventure. I did it specifically for this.
No, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm kidding. Like I, I'd love to hear about
how your how your weekend adventure was it.
It wasn't just hanging at home, I take it.
No, it wasn't actually. So I have I have a lot of work
travel coming up and some of them some of the trips I'm
adding on an extra day to spend time with friends or to explore
the city of maybe not have been to before.
But I will say, whenever I do that, I do try to go to antique
stores and vintage shops so I can bring those type of stories
back to for the podcast. Because whenever you go shopping
in another locale, I'm going to talk about, oh, OK.
So whenever you go shopping in another locale, like it's fun to
see what they have. And, and I know I've talked
about before, whenever I stop by an antique store in Maine and
they were selling Civil War era stuff and I'm going, I didn't, I
didn't even know that was legal. Like you could do that.
I thought everything was supposed to be in a museum.
It's supposed to be you turn into Indiana Jones in that
moment and just start punching the shopkeepers, you know?
Well, how so? It like, yes, I like going to
the shops. I love talking to the people
that own these places and, and having those conversations with
them. Another thing I've started doing
is I will look at Facebook Marketplace for the location
that I'm in. So Facebook Marketplace is based
off of your geographic location of where you're at.
And when I'm traveling, I'll turn it to, you know, pick up
the geolocation for the area that I'm in.
And this stuff that comes up. People are crazy.
So like when you say like they're asking too much or
they're getting like they don't know what they're getting rid of
or what. Just some of the crazy things
like, you know, maybe it's a folk art that they made while
high on meth. And I'm going, no, that's not
worth 50 bucks. There's also times so like in
Florida, my friends are trying to find an old surfboard that
they can build a, a bench out of to try to buy an old used
surfboard in Florida. It's really hard to find that at
a, at a price that you're like, hey, I'm going to drill holes in
this thing and I'm going to put it up.
However, to buy a used surfboard in North Texas cheap because
usually someone's like, I can't give this away.
Like I need it to leave my garage.
Right, I just did this for the Graham one weekend and now I'm
stuck with this thing. I live nowhere near a body of
water and the Graham didn't work for me.
Well so I did find a used surfboard out in Hawaii at the
Goodwill and I think they were asking $20.00 for it and I
texted my friends. You got to get it back to your
crab. Yeah.
Where's you live? Yeah.
Well, so I texted my friends in Florida.
I was like, hey, I found a surfboard for $20 and I'm like,
cool, bring it back. And I was like, no.
No, you know what I'm going to, I'm going to put it in the
water. I'm going to kind of angle it
towards you and I'm going to push.
Yes. And in about two months, go and
check. Except for for that surfboard to
get from Hawaii to Florida, it's going to go a lot.
I can see it floating in, like, the Panama Canal, like, oh,
cool, It took the shortcut. Yeah.
Yeah, it's OK. I put a note on it.
It's OK. Well, so a couple weeks ago I
was out running some errands and I saw the beacon that has caught
my eye on weekends, which is the notorious estate sell sign.
And I'm like, OK, well, I don't have anywhere to be at this
pressing moment. And so I did a hard right think
of like Dukes of Hazzard, like going around the corner, like
got to get there. And I don't know when this
estate sale happened, but whenever I walked in, I was
probably the second person that I've walked into this house for
the day. And I saw a lady leaving with
some fake plants. And I was like, that's a good
idea to get. Do you know how expensive like
new fake plants are? Oh yeah.
They're ridiculous. They are kind of crazy.
So if you're in the market for fake plants, go to estate sales.
They have Primo's fake plants for pennies on the dollar.
And this day, this estate sale was doing 25% off everything.
So it makes me think if I went there on a Friday, they probably
had the first day was either Wednesday or Thursday.
So they didn't have a ton of things leftover.
But for it to be 25% off, they were really trying to get
everything out of the house that weekend.
So I thought, OK, well, I'll walk around.
I'll see what they have. Really nice neighborhood, like
upscale neighborhoods. I'm like cool, I'm I'm probably
going to find something. I did find fake plants, however,
I don't really have a home for the fake plants in my current
house, so I didn't buy those, but I'm kind of kicking myself
but also kind of not. Anyway, fake plants are great.
They had the the people that used to live in the house were
named Mary Ann and Phil because they had a lot of dishes that
were like Phil's barbecue and Mary Ann's appetizers.
And I was like, OK, I know their names now, but they both of them
have passed. Their family is going through
the process of cleaning out the house, probably getting it ready
to go on the market. But as I'm walking through the
house, there was a couple things that caught my eye.
One, this couple love doing puzzles, loved doing puzzles.
And they probably had framed at least 30 puzzles throughout the
house. Wow.
And not really like I like I love puzzles, but I like doing
them then breaking them up and putting back them box and giving
it to somebody else for them to do later.
I don't really feel the need to like not only do the puzzle, but
then like shellac. It remember rate the fact that I
I did this. And then have a puzzle hanging
up in almost every single room of a massive house.
It is kind of, it feels like the difference between catch and
release and mounting the fish. You know, it's like I, I
appreciate this experience and now it's for someone else to
enjoy versus. All right, you need to know I
did this. Yeah.
It's which? I mean, I, I've heard of that,
like people framing the puzzles, especially when it's a really
beautiful piece of art or something like that.
Yeah, yeah. But some of these weren't.
But also. Hey, they were 25% off.
So if you needed, if you needed artwork for, you know, maybe
your first home, an apartment, your first apartment for maybe
AC rated movie like no, like anyway, I don't know what C
rated. Is yeah, I don't know.
I wasn't going to ask. It sounds like it's the other
rating system for people that are cooler than you.
Yeah. Anyway, Elaine, movie there.
Well, I said it anyway. I didn't buy the framed puzzles.
So for people that are not familiar with estate sales, I
learned this from our parents. The way you attack an estate
cell is that you first go to the garage because they usually have
some tools, good equipment in there, stuff like that.
I will say they had quite a few tools in good condition.
Some of it was still brand new. So again, everything was priced
to sell and price to move. So like if I was in the market
for it, it was a good place to go.
And then the second place was to the backyard because the
backyard is where they usually have planter's pots.
And if you've ever bought a brand new planter's pot, just go
and take out a second loan like it is.
They're so expensive, especially the large ones like the
oversized planter pots. People are wanting $200 for
that. What in this economy, right?
So they had a couple of very large container of planter pots
that I would have loved to have had, but I'm not ready for them
yet so I would have had to store.
Them When you say you're not ready for planter's pots, is
this an emotional thing? For you, Yeah.
I'm not emotionally ready. No, I'm going to end up, I'm
going to end up redoing our side yard and I want to put planer
spots out there. OK.
And I'm not ready to do the side yard yet so then it turns into
OK once I take their stuff. Then I have to figure out where
to store it. OK.
Yeah, you're right. You're right.
That is kind of part of the the old logistics of this wild game
of second hand that we talked about like, oh that's a good
deal is like the savings I could achieved right now worth the
logistic nightmare that it says Nepal.
OK, no, that's cool. Yeah.
Well, and it it's also because I've been going to a lot of
estate sales, they have planter pots at every single estate
sale. So yeah.
Hey, if if it wasn't something that was so unique or the right
specific type of color or something like that, I can hold
off because there's going to be another one available and next
weekend. So like, just hold off on it if
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So they had some really good planters, pots in the backyard.
Cool. Also, I think you and I have
talked about it, if you're ever in that in the market for a new
house, going to an estate sale in the neighborhood you want to
go to, it's a great way to see a house layout before that gets
staged and before people start making offers on it.
So the things that I did buy stuff from this estate sale and
I did spend a small fortune. So they had, I went into the
master closet and in the master closet they had some men's
clothes, some women's clothes, not really the style that I like
or even the site. I don't even know if they were
the sizes that I wear. However, they had and I, and
I've noticed I've started picking these up more and more.
They had vintage scarves. And so I started, I went through
the pile. I was searching up the ones I
could find but also I'm not buying them to resell, I'm
buying them because I like them. So I bought 4 scarves and one
handkerchief. So the scarves were they're all
vintage. They're all really pretty and I
want to wear them so like they're my style.
But if I ever decide to sell them, there is a market for
these vintage scarves and some of them are like oversized
scarves. So there's different ways that
you can wear it and. You could sell them to Winnie
Kravitz, yeah. Oh man, if I had a mesh shirt
collection he would purchase the whole thing.
Not the whole thing, just the meshy parts.
Anyway, the the handkerchief, it was definitely the man's
handkerchief. But the thing about this
handkerchief, it was silk. I'm sorry, may I ask?
Yeah, you're, you're talking about the handkerchief.
Yes. And in talking about the
handkerchief, you point out like it was clearly the man's
handkerchief. I wonder if you could explain
how it was clear to you that this was a man's handkerchief?
Because based off of the lady's wardrobe and the other scarves
and everything, it wasn't like her color.
It was more of the man's color. It was that like a it's a off
white with a a brown embroidery around it.
OK, I wasn't sure. I, I wasn't sure if there was
just like, you know, like. His and hers.
Right. Or like, you know, they were
like sports stats, you know, sewed into the handkerchief or
something like that. I wasn't sure.
No, no. But I do travel with
handkerchiefs. I know Jacob just gave me a look
like I have a top hat on you. Know subscribe to our Patreon
you can see the quizzical look I just gave Julie not.
Telling people we have a Patreon.
It's it's right on our home page.
Go to our Blue Sky profile. No, we don't have.
That and sign up to our Patreon, and while you're adding,
contribute to our GoFundMe. Yes, we do have that.
Yes. No.
So I like traveling with handkerchiefs because whenever I
need a tissue and it's usually like I'm not honking out a great
big loogie, it's like I, I have a, you know, I need to bat a
tear or a like, or I need to like rub my nose like it's a
nose. Bat a tear.
I love that. Yeah, it's not.
Girls don't do that. No, no.
It's a yeah, you, you just like yeah, you, you, you, you wipe
away an emotion and. I mean, especially right now
during this cold part of the world, you walk outside and the
wind hits you and like all of a sudden, like your eyes water,
your nose starts to drain and it's like just having a
handkerchief there. So, so you're not like
slobbering down your face and all that stuff.
It's nice to have and it makes me feel better than other
people. There, I said it.
I like having handkerchiefs. Anyway, I bought this one.
It's it's a silk handkerchief. It's a beautiful handkerchief.
So like I keep it in my travel stuff.
So it's with me all the time. So I bought these scarves.
They were each each of them with the discount $4.
Oh, that's pretty cheap for a handkerchief.
Well, but the scarves, so they were so they included the
handkerchief in with the scarves.
The scarves were each $5 and then with that 25% off there
were 4 bucks so. Help me mask that.
How much did you pay total? $20.
For. For the four scarves and the one
handkerchief. That's not bad.
Yeah, no, it was good. And again, I did look up one of
these scarves. Like I said, they're all
vintage. If I wanted to resell it, it
would resell for $60.00. No, totally, yeah.
But I didn't buy it to resell it.
I'd buy it because I like it and I'm going to wear it.
The thing and the next thing I bought, which I had been in the
market for and I just didn't want to go spend an ungodly
amount of money, was a certain size curling iron.
So I was looking for 1 1/2 inch diameter curling iron to buy a
brand new one. You're looking at least.
Yeah. My, my current, the same size
curling iron that I have it, it wasn't heating up as well
anymore. There's something wrong in the
electronics. I've had it for 20-30 years,
like I've had it for a very long time.
And I thought, OK, well, I just need to get another one.
And it was one of those things I like dragging my feet if I
didn't want to. And I'll just, you know, I'll
just keep using this thing that doesn't work that well.
It's probably going to catch the house on fire.
It's going to like ruin my hair someday or you know, something
like that. I found one at this estate sells
same size. It's a newer model than the one
that I currently have. I bought it for $8.
Nice. I was so excited and I did ask
the state sell people and like, does this work?
And the lady looked at me. She goes, you're welcome to plug
it in. We've been told that everything
works, but we didn't personally go through and check everything.
Oh, did you do it? Did you go and like find an
outlet and. Yeah, because I was, It was in
the bathroom. It was in the bathroom.
And so I plugged it into the wall and I turned it on and
nothing happens. Sure, You got to wait for it,
right? It's old, you know.
Well, it's not that old. Like it's still like it was
probably manufactured in the last 10 years.
And I'm like, oh man, like this one doesn't work and that.
And I was like wait a minute and I reached over and hit the
GFGFCG the reset button in the wall and guess what?
It worked magically. There you go.
And it heated up very fast. So anyway, I got a really cool
curling iron. Now this next item that I am
going to tell you I bought. I bought it as a gift for our
mother. Well, should you not talk about
it because she might be one of our 4 listeners.
Now I'm going to talk about it. She she kind of knows that I got
her something, but she doesn't know all the details of it.
So mom, if you're listening to this, turn off the podcast.
Right now. Yeah, Mom.
Jeez, mom. So I bought a fur coat and it is
a vintage fur coat. It has it's from a a store in
New Jersey. That store is no longer
operating, but it's authentic. It's from this place in New
Jersey that used to shell out fur coats for decades that
closed in the late 90s. And this coat also has a high
resale value. So if mom doesn't care for this
coat, if I don't want to keep the coat, I could turn around
and make $200 easily on this coat.
The interesting thing about and I don't know what kind of animal
it came from, and people are like, you bought real fur.
I'm like, yeah. Oh yeah, this.
You had texted me that you had bought a fur coat and I asked
whether it was real or fake and you said real and I called you a
murderer. Yeah, yeah, but I'm a second
hand murderer. You're right.
Yeah. It's like, look, what is can you
really desecrate A corpse, Right.
You know, it's, it's just a thing.
I'm essentially buying. I'm essentially buying.
You know you can. I'm essentially I'm essentially
buying a wearable taxidermy. Yeah.
That's all it is. The animal died decades ago.
Time ago, right? It like probably the fur that,
you know, the fur that that's on that jacket probably predated
PETA. So you're cool.
Yeah. I mean, this is from like an
animal that's probably long extinct.
It's. Honestly the animal was probably
an asshole so it's OK. Totally an asshole.
Yeah. The interesting thing about this
jacket, because, again, we live in Texas.
Why do you need a fur coat? One our mother wanted 12.
Shut up. The sleeves can actually be
removed. Oh, what?
So you can actually have just the fur vest or just wear the
fur sleeves, but I wouldn't recommend that.
All right, Mom, grow a mullet and get into Pat's blue ribbon.
We want to see you sleeveless and hairy chested.
I do not want to see my mother sleeveless and hairy.
Tested that will resolve so much for me.
Oh my God, my therapist is going to have a heyday with that 1.
So it's a beautiful coat. The inside of it is monograms
with the the previous owner's name and everything, which is
fine. No one's going to be looking at
it anyway. But but I thought it was such a
cool coat. It's amazing.
It's beautiful. And that's what I got our mom.
I will tell you how much I paid for it.
The original price was oh do I want to say this, The original
price was $300 and with the 25% off I ended up paying $225.
Whoa. So have you done enough research
to know what this thing would kind of go for?
It could go for anywhere between 400 and $600.00 if I wanted to
resell it. And here's The thing is I have a
friend that she sells vintage clothing and she does specialize
in some fur coats. If I really wanted to resell it,
I could work with her because she has the audience and she has
the market for it. Give her cut of the Commission
and then I could still make money off of it.
Wow. You know what?
You could sell the and you could sell the sleeves at a different
time, you know? Or I could keep them for hostage
and just. Look it it's a vintage furry
tube instead of 2. You know, I bet I could put
like, you remember those little Mexican jumping beans.
I bet I could put that in the fur coat, sew it up and just let
it like run around like a wild animal that it is.
Newly discovered species. Wow.
But I will say, like it was, it was a good estate sale.
I think a lot of items had already left the house by the
time I'd gotten there. But really glad I did the Dukes
of Hazzard turn into the neighborhood to go to this place
because by the time that I was leaving, the street was packed
with people and I just kind of looked at them going.
I got all the vintage scarves and I have the fur coat and the
curling iron. Just screw yourself.
I hope you were walking away slow motion, just kind of waving
the hanky at them, you know? It was just very much a
Casablanca moment of I'm I'm leaving on the airplane and no
one can touch me. Beginning of a beautiful fur
vest. Yes, yeah, an 80° weather in
Texas. That's right.
Great. Well, and also it's like, OK, so
where are you going to wear this fur coat to?
I'm like our mom has said before, in my house, if I want
to, I'm here in. The grocery store exactly.
Like, look, there's some, there's some ladies in Sunday
school I'd really like to put in their place.
Yeah. That.
That's what this is for. I'm going to pull that tithe
money real slow out of the pocket of.
That, that's right, that. Yeah.
That way, you know, yes, I can give the church $4.00.
I'm wearing a $600.00 coat. But it was a gift, so she didn't
buy it. That's right.
Like am I supposed to turn away someone's generosity?
I don't know if Jesus would do that.
So here's the thing too, I don't know if you realize this, but
our our immediate family, mom, our brother Richie, our extended
family, all that stuff we don't do, we usually don't do
Christmas together because I thought you.
Were going to say we don't tie but generally don't support the
church. We don't usually spend Christmas
together and so yours is a little bit different because we
do an episode around a gift exchange with a second hand item
for everyone else in our family. I don't shop for them until
after Christmas. Like, I go for the bargain, I go
for the coupons, I go for the discounts.
And then also whenever I have the time, I go second hand
shopping, thrift stores, estate sales.
So only, you know, for I didn't buy mom a gift yet.
So like whenever I found that fur coat, I was like, she needed
something for Christmas. So perfect.
Well, fantastic. I'm, I'm really excited to see
like I want to see like, like mom's going to just have like 1
sleeve off the things so she can show off the new, you know,
shoulder tattoo. Yeah, that'd be cool.
Yeah, she can totally do that. Like I want a mom to have a mom
tattoo. Very nice.
What if mom had AU tattoo? Whoa.
Me. It says me, right?
Whoa. But anyway, it was, it was a
really good estate sale. It's fun to go in and peruse
everything. I will say it's something I I'm
kind of kicking myself for not buying and I wish I had, but
also for people that like to go estate selling, if you're
looking for some really good quality, but at a discount.
Christmas ornaments. So this estate sale had a bunch
of Christmas ornaments. They were asking with the
discount. It was $8 per bag and I felt
like, but I could get them cheaper.
However, I can't. And again, it went back to if I
bought these, I'd have to get rid of my other ornaments
because again, storage. And so I ended up not buying
them. But now I'm kicking myself.
I'm like maybe the next estate sell it is.
Kind of funny you, you go around what, what feels like kind of
the go to place for a lot of people lately for Christmas
decorations is Home Depot and Lowe's.
But like the the the thing everybody's trying to achieve
now is a vintage look. Yeah.
And so by the genuine item, you're getting it boring.
Much better prize. The these were not vintage they
were newer ornaments but they had probably 5 bags of gold
ornaments and I have a white Christmas tree so like it would
have been pretty with a gold and white Christmas tree for next
year but I didn't buy them so I won't be having gold and white.
Damn, you almost batted 1000, Julie.
I know, I know, I'd spent a lot of money on a fur coat, so I
held back on the ornaments. Yeah, I, I don't think they saw
any. I don't think they saw you
coming. I don't think they saw anybody
like buying that fur coat. So way to blow the moments.
One of the estate sale ladies said that there's going to be
two young girls that were going to be sad that the that the colt
that the coat sold and I think it was the the ladies like
grandchildren that wanted it or great grandchildren.
That's cool. The family put it in the state
cell for a reason. Or maybe she was just referring
to two kids that wanted to sneak into an R rated movie, you know?
Oh no, it was 3 raccoons. Right.
Exactly. Yeah.
But anyway, that's the story I had for this week.
It was a fun, fun venture out while doing some errands.
Well, congratulations on the hall.
Sounds good. Thanks, it was fun.
All right, everybody, take care. Bundle up.
Be safe. Subscribe to our Patreon.
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