On Thursday my next door neighbor and I drove an hour south of Atlanta to check out the estate sale of a retired antique dealer. This collector had moved from upstate New York to middle Georgia in 1981 but left her four shipping containers of treasure unopened and in storage for the next thirty two years. The company organizing the sale posted snapshots of box contents and as soon as I saw the piles of vintage greeting cards I requested the day off from work.
My neighbor and I arrived an hour early in an effort to get a good spot in line. Even so, we were numbers 93 and 94 and they were only letting in forty at a time. The crowd gathering outside was awesome to watch. A "storage wars" type excitement was in the air. We were definitely not the only ones who'd driven far to be part of this sale.
When 9am rolled around the shipping containers were opened and the first forty 40 shoppers pushed into the old one story clapboard home. One shipping container was full of glass items, very old sewing notions, sheet sets and quilts. The others were full of amazing furniture. In the back a shed was floor to ceiling with tools and old suitcases. Once inside the home there was an entire room, wall to wall, laid out with 1950s Christmas items; ornaments, unopened boxes of tinsel, greeting cards, stockings, etc.
I exercised as much restraint as I could. Even so, I walked away with $50 worth of ephemera that I have no need/plans for and handful of things I think I can resell for profit. My FAVORITE (okay, one of my FAVORITE) finds is the pair of vintage garden books picture above. The embossed covers are beautiful!! And the knowledge inside is still relevant and noteworthy. Not a total waste of money, right? SOMEDAY I'll have a coffee table to put them on...
In other news, this is the RAINIEST summer I can EVER remember in Atlanta. (And I'm from here, so I can remember a lot of them.) For better and worse the garden is hanging in there. A few tomatoes have burst from all the rain but mostly the vegetables seem desperate for a little sun. No signs of root rot yet. Fingers crossed we get a little reprieve this weekend.
Happy Saturday!