NW’s Largest Garage Sale + auctions
I made it to my first ever NW’s Largest Garage Sale, a GIANT bi-annual sale held at the Clark County Event Center, full of vintage sellers. Allyson had gone to the November sale last year and I was very jealous so I made sure the April sale was on my calendar.
We bought early-bird tickets (worth it) and were in line around 6:45 AM for 7:00 AM entry. In total we shopped for about 4 hours, but honestly I probably could have been there all day. I’m extremly happy with what we spent and what we got. The vendors were all great, very open to negotating prices which is fun. I’m not great at it, but it’s something I hope to get better at. I unfortunately don’t have any cute pictures at the moment, it was such a whirlwhind of a day. I do have some regrets around items I didn’t purchase for myself. I think when I go to the next sale I’ll stick around for personal shopping. I’ll be thinking about an antique sterling silver apple box with three beautiful inlaid stones on the top that I didn’t get and it was only $30 WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME. I’ve thought about it literally every day since the sale.
We ended up with two giant bags packed full which we unloaded briefly to make a Reel for Instagram and I of course neglected to take pictures. Then everything got packed back up to go to our office for cleanup and processing into Ricochet, the consignment software used by Memory Den. These are the things people don’t think about when they complain about our prices. Travel, paying for items, paying for supplies, cleaning, processing, pricing, bookkeeping, printing tags, packing, unpacking, researching. In this case, paying for entry to an event. It’s all fun and worth it, but it stings when people say we just resell Goodwill finds at a markup.
ANYWAYYYY, our haul is currently in our office waiting for me to come and get everything looking perfect for the booth. Allyson is off to LA for three months to work on a movie and I work full time as a receptionist, so I won’t have pictures for a few days which is sad! I had hoped to get things taken care of yesterday but my dog has a real knack for getting deathly ill when my husband is out of town and I need to do things outside of the house. Thankfully my husband is back tonight and our dog is getting medical treatment tomorrow and if all goes well, I’ll have a lot to drop off next week.
Now - I do have some pictures to share, but they’re from auction wins. Because I simply CANNOT stop buying from online auctions!!! I like online auctions for jewelry and smaller items, since shipping is so expensive and unpredictable. My favorite auction site is AuctionNinja because it’s easy to find shipping only sales, and those sellers are super upfront about their shipping prices which I love. I have blacklisted HiBid and will never use them again, sorry to all the sellers I used to buy from who use their platform. They’re slimy. Never again. I also somewhat enjoy CTBids, but the sellers on there can be very hit or miss. Some ship, some don’t. I absolutey HATE that you can’t go back and look at what items sold for, even if you had them on a watch list. I just think they’re UI in general is terrible, both in the app and the web platform. That being said though, I have gotten some truly amazing items from CTBids. And met some really nice sellers! And seen some very cool homes when I get to participate in a pickup. I used to buy more from CTBids when I worked part-time, but a lot of their pickups are weekdays so I can only bid on things that are shippable.
I recently won a few random lots from a local auction house - a box of vintage art, a box of wood items and a box of “chicken decor.”
I was able to preview the art auction and placed quite a few bids, but left with just one box. The pieces are varied and interesting, but weren’t in good enough shape to be sold as single lots at a higher end auction, so they ended up in a day auction in a big ‘ol box for people like me. I’m probably going to keep the small oil study of the ocean, the colors are just so beautiful and I like the framing. The rest will head to the booth after cleanup. Sadly the Ladies Homes Journal magazine covers both have a little water damage, but the frames are great and I think they’ll still look great on a gallery wall. I’ll also need to do some repair work on the acrylic landscape painting in the wooden frame.
For the lot of wood items and chicken decor, I had hoped to go to the auction preview but ended up breaking out in hives all over my body thanks to a newly developed amoxicillin allergy (I’m an oversharer, sorry) so I had to bid on items sight unseen.
I am absolutely tickled by the chicken decor and so happy I got it! I love a wicker animal, I love a basket, I love a trinket box, I love a chicken. I want to keep it all but no, I can’t. It’s all very dusty and must have been packed away in a garage or attic. Cleaning the wicker will be fun :’)
The wood pieces are also nice! More cleaning. I’ll probably do some sanding and oiling to bring everything back to life. And I’ll integrate it all into the booth as needed, it won’t all go at once. Wooden bowls are great for merchandising purposes and are fun to play with, so I’m glad to have a diverse selection of options for us to use. These are just a few of the items that were in the lot.
I also got crazyyyyyy lucky with a CTBids auction and somehow managed to snag an absolutely beautiful Navajo sterling silver beaded necklace for $11, a yellow bakelite beaded necklace for $11 and an absolutely wild original ceramic ashtray (?), platter (?), trinket dish (?) with two mice on a pumpkin on a lily pad for $6. I’m like… 90% sure I’m keeping it. It’s big and heavy and weird and I fell in love with the faces of the mice. And I already put some jewelry in it. I wish I had a better picture of it! I always write these at work so I can’t step away to take a picture. I’ll try to remember to come back with a nice photo.
Okay well, this was a long post! Thanks for reading my diary entry! I’ll be back with haul pictures as soon as I can get to our office!
