Last Saturday's auction was unlike any I've been to before. The sellers had owned some kind of store back in the 40s and 50s, so the auction was chock full of new old stock items, and lots of them. For example, an entire trailer of light bulbs and a trailer full of antennae. And three vintage refrigerators still in their crates. It's fun to find a vintage fan still in its original box. Like this GE beauty.
Tags still attached. Even has its warranty card!
I bought this International fan still in its box, too. It's quite large and has an open back. Roger suspects it's some kind of attic fan.
I think that we can all agree that paint by number is hot. How about paint by number office baskets?
And paint by number tiles? I got four pairs of these tiles and each one is different. I also got a paint by number magazine rack, but didn't get a picture of it.
My good friend Bobbi went to the auction with me, because Roger was gone all weekend. She was a trooper and carried most of my purchases to the car. And called her husband for his trailer when my purchases outgrew her SUV. She totally sucked air when these two children's folding chairs were pulled out of their original box! Very subtle, Bobbi...
I'm not entirely sure what this base is for, but it doesn't matter because it's sea foam green. I'm going to find a use for it in my craft trailer.
There was also a handful of bikes at the auction....
This is the real reason I was at the auction. Roger went out the night before the sale to scope out the bikes. He took pictures, and then sent Bobbi and I off with an illustrated, annotated list of what to bid on. It was our task to locate and identify the 16 bikes he was interested in. Can you say "needle in a haystack"? We managed to find 15 of the 16. I suspect the one we couldn't find was pulled from the auction, because it just plain wasn't there.
I was the only girl out there bidding against the bike guys. I think I surprised them at the beginning. "I have a list!" I informed them. One of them actually asked if I was buying them for yard art! I came home with these 12 bikes. Four of them were not on the list, but still managed to meet with Roger's approval.
Funny story about being a girl buying "boy stuff". I bought a box of vehicle lights for $10. It wasn't something Roger had mentioned, but I know decent lights when I see them even if I can't tell you what they're for! I think I stole that box out from under the noses of all the men there! At the end of the sale, a man came up to me and asked to buy one of the lights out of my box. He showed me which one he was interested in, and I told him I didn't think I wanted to sell that one.
"It's not a bike light!" he said.
"I know, but I like the way it's shaped," I replied. I'm sure I couldn't have said anything that would irritate him more.
"Fine!" and he stalked off.
A little while later he was back. "Would $40 buy that light?"
Now, I'm no math whiz, but I know $40 was four times what I paid for that entire box of lights, so I sold it to him. I bet it was worth more than $40, but we both ended up satisfied with the deal.
