You know those times when you are driving down a road in an older neighborhood and you suddenly see an estate sale sign? Well that is what I came across last week on my way to the post office. An elderly lady and her elderly daughter were having an estate sale at her house, a house that she had lived in for 51 years! She was moving from an area that had once been a sleepy neighborhood but was now a busy area to a retirement community in Florida.

Unfortunately since this was an unadvertised sale and I didn’t see it right away, I was only able to shop there on day three of the three day sale. That’s okay though. I still managed to find some interesting treasures.

A few months ago I posted a picture of a vintage Rich’s tote bag that I found at an estate sale. Rich’s was an Atlanta, Georgia department store that originally opened in 1867. It was always one of my Mom’s favorite places to shop. It was closed/taken over by Macy’s in 2005 and to this day my mother still calls it Rich’s and won’t use the word Macy’s.  This is a cute little canvas tote bag. I will probably list it locally on Facebook marketplace and if it doesn’t sell quickly there then I will list it on ebay.

I just can’t resist vintage yardsticks and I purchased six of them at this sale. My collection is now on display in a vintage brass bucket but soon my husband is going to help me make a coffee table with yardsticks on the top to use in my sewing room. Even though I have been wanting to make one of these for years, I think it will be tough to start cutting and gluing them to the tabletop.

I am not sure what I am going to do with this next purchase. It is an old wicker hamper full of vintage glassware and stemware. The stemware had the original stickers on them so I know that they are Cellini. I am not sure of the name of the glassware pattern. It is vintage but it is a pattern that I have never seen before. It came with five water glasses, seven juice glasses, and a lovely pitcher. I don’t like to sell sets of glassware on ebay or etsy. It is too much work and expense to package it safely and then it can still get broken. Out of what I bought, I like the water glasses (and will use them) and my daughter likes the fancy Cellini gold-rimmed glasses. So I will probably keep those and try selling the rest on Facebook marketplace. The challenge will be finding out the name of the glass pattern. If they don’t sell in a reasonable amount of time then I will probably donate the pieces that I don’t think that I will use. I bought 17 pieces for ten dollars and will be keeping nine of the pieces so that is still a good deal even if I can’t sell the extra pieces.

My husband found a Coach purse at the sale (not pictured). It was only five dollars. It is small and lightweight which I think will make it the perfect size for estate sale and yard sale shopping. I like to carry a light-weight purse when I am out shopping at these kind of events. I like a cross body purse like this because it is easier to keep it close to my body and is less likely to bump into or brush against breakable items at a sale. While I could put my money and credit card in my purse, I don’t really like to do this because there is always the chance that it might fall out when I am reaching for my phone or glasses. My everyday purses are too big and too heavy (they make my shoulder hurt.) to take to sales. The purse is black and in excellent condition.

My husband also picked out a GPS system (not pictured). It is a Magellan GPS and he thought it was a great deal for ten dollars. While we mostly use our phone mapping program, sometimes that doesn’t work when you have bad signal. He thinks this one will work well once we update the software on it.

This next item is a miniature blue and white pitcher that was made in Japan. I have been adding pieces to my miniature collection and this will be a nice addition. She didn’t actually charge us for this piece. She included it with everything else since we were buying so much.

I walked into a bedroom and saw this vintage, mid-century modern piece of wall art hanging there and immediately took it off of the wall. It is vintage string art and is very popular right now. Notice how the string is attached to a stick, very nature-y. It was only four dollars and I found some of them on Etsy for 80 to 250 dollars. I still need to do more research on it because I just don’t know much about it.

And my final purchase? This is something that I might not have thought to buy in the past, but after reading about them Diana’s Adirondack Girl at Heart blog, I knew that it would be a winner. It is a vintage wall hanging curio cabinet full of miniature, vintage perfume bottles and vintage perfume compacts. What a cool find. It really pays to read blogs that are related to your areas of interest. Diana has written several time about selling vintage perfume so I really was excited to buy all these small bottles. Also, I have started collecting vintage compacts and there were a good many of them in this case. There are probably only two or three that I plan on keeping so the rest will be listed on etsy. I plan on cleaning up and possibly painting the curio cabinet and using it to display some of my growing collection of miniatures. So for ten dollars this was a triple score… perfume, compacts, and a display cabinet.

It was a great sale and the lady told us she would be having another one soon. She still had a lot of things she didn’t have time to bring out for this sale. Hopefully I will be driving by the next time she has her estate sale. How are sales in your area? One of my readers, Kathy A, says that they are still on lockdown in Michigan and online auctions are their only option at this time. Stay safe everyone.