Monthly archive: February, 2012

ESTATE SALE CONFIDENTIAL: ESTATE SALE ART CRAWL

February 26, 2012, by No comments yet

As you’ve guessed by now, estate sale shopping is as much about observation as it is buying used stuff that you may or may not need. Admiring the collective detritus is exciting. This is not the same as visiting a museum, since you get to manhandle the items (and there’s no curator to relate any stories and such), but more like an art crawl, except in the person’s home. And the person is usually dead.

One thing that always amuses me is original artwork. My own home is filled with art from people I know or professional artists whose work I admire (and was lucky enough to nab before their prices went sky-high.) But this weekend’s trip saw an abundance of original artwork–how great is that?

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ESTATE SALE CONFIDENTIAL: CATACOMBS AND TWILIGHT ZONES

February 19, 2012, by 3 comments

Apropos of the coming Mardi Gras, this weekend was a parade of estate sales, fun sales and sad sales, sales that stank to high heaven, those of low income and high treasure and those of great wealth and insipid taste. From Thursday to Sunday, thirteen sales total, with ESC’s recurring guest star Mike Haeg on Friday, and special guest star Holly Petersen on Saturday. Despite hitting the magic thirteen, I still missed three more. Never, never in my many years of wandering the estate sale circuit have I seen so many sales in a given weekend.

This calls to mind lyrics from the official theme to Estate Sale Confidential, the White Stripes’ “Rag and Bone”, especially the part where Bone (Jack White) politely leaves a home that has rejected him, and begins his journey across what we should consider Detroit.

If you don’t want it, we’ll take it, if you don’t want to give it to us, we’ll keep walking by. We’re not tired, but we got plenty o’ homes we ain’t been to yet, on the Westside, Southwestside, Middle East, rich house, dog house, outhouse, old folks house, house for unwed mothers, halfway homes, catacombs, Twilight Zones…

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ESTATE SALE CONFIDENTIAL: THE CRUELEST MERCHANDISE

February 12, 2012, by No comments yet

A blue velvet, electric owl painting. Need I say more?

“The worst trouble a man can be in, I think, is to have one hope left, and that a hope of something so inherently improbably that he knows deep in his heart it won’t happen… Three feeble gardenias on a vendor’s tray in the rain an hour after curtain time; a cup of fly-specked jelly beans in a shop window: these are the merchant’s last precarious handhold on the window ledge. The cruelest merchandise is a talent for which there is no demand.” –Joseph Liebling, from “People in Trouble”

Estates sales, we might remember, are a business. They’re not merely a group of grieving individuals piling the detritus of the recently deceased on tables and then pocketing cash. As I mentioned last week, there are collectors and antique store dealers plundering this stuff to fill their stores, real and virtual, but let’s not forget that the sales themselves are run by men and women who depend upon their success for their livelihoods.

And there are some weekends where I don’t how the hell they manage. This was one of them.

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WE LIVE, WE DIE, WE DANCE

February 9, 2012, by 1 comment

Pina, 2011. Directed by Wim Wenders, conceived by Wenders and the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch.

There are blessed and brief moments in human history where people gather to form an organic unit–a team, a company, a troupe–that performs wonders.  Often, the individuals didn’t know they’re special; often, they were not special, but thrived in the group, coming fully alive for the first time.

The 1927 New York Yankees. The Founding Fathers. The Mercury Theater performing Caesar, Macbeth, War of the Worlds, and finally, Citizen Kane.  Insert your favorite band here.

We watch, lucky to witness these spectacular convergences. And, oh, to actually be a part of one of these blessed aggregates! But that is too much to ask for, generally. So we must be content to bask in their sun-bright presence.

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ESTATE SALE CONFIDENTIAL: WATCHING THE PARADE GO BY

February 5, 2012, by No comments yet

There are moments in the estate sale biz when you find yourself thoroughly outflanked by the likes of the professional. When you realize that for some people, estate sale carousing is a serious undertaking, it’s a man’s bread-and-butter, it puts the kids through college, pays the mortgage, and keeps one in beer and skittles, etc., etc.

I was surprised as all hell to run into the mother of all collectors’ sales, in Spring Lake Park, and that a rare Friday evening sale, advertising antiques, turned out to have virtually no collectors at all. This was a busy weekend, where we saw virtually every type of sale imaginable–seven total with Mayor Mike Haeg and ESC guest star Holly Petersen, including two collectors’ sales, two shoes off sales, two warehouse sales, and a damnable Craigslist sale that I would beware of in the future. But we came away with a bonanza of sorts.

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