Weekend Finds

My first Thrift Share Monday post!

This weekend was just not a very good weekend for me. I left early on Friday morning and on my way in to town passed a subdivision that had advertised a neighborhood sale for Saturday. I decided to go in and see if any of the sales were open of Friday. There were about four sales open. One was an older lady who  seemed to be emptying out her house. I bought a couple books, some Robert Kiyosaki audio CDs, a Far Side mug and a Disney Smarties mug.

1991 Disney Smarties Mug

Far Side Mug

At another sale a few doors down I picked up a small vintage Caboodle, a Donald Duck bean bag plush, two small bags of Kelly and Cabbage Patch dolls, and a Tomy Great Greetings maker, just like the one I used to have.

Vintage 1980s Great Greetings Card Maker

It was still in it's original box and has all the design plates and the little crayon to make the rubbings with. I was also happy to see on the box the original price tag from Venture. We used to shop there all the time when I was little, but it has long been closed and was turned into a K-Mart. Seeing old tags like that makes me happy! 

I should have just gone home after that, because I didn't buy much else. Saturday I went out early again and it was dismal. There was a neighborhood sale advertised that I was excited about, because it's in a nice mid-century neighborhood and there are usually a lot of good sales. I went there first at 8:00 a.m. and there were barely five houses open, and most of them were people who just pulled out a few things so they could participate. I went to all the sales on my route and only managed to spend $5.00. I bought a vintage 1980s clear phone for $1.00, and four boxes of new audio cassette tapes for $1.00 each.

Then I went back to the neighborhood from the previous day, thinking there would be more sales open on Saturday. Nope. Same ones. Good thing I thought to check it out on Friday.

I did run across to sales that had a Sega Genesis. I've been looking for one because I want to be able to test games before I sell them. The first one I found was $5.00, but was really dirty and dusty and only had one game. So I decided to pass. The second one was a bit cleaner, but still looked like it had been sitting in someone's garage for 10 years. It was $10.00 and had a bunch of games, but they were mostly sports. (Genesis sports games are about the most worthless as worthless sports games get) I passed on that one too. I don't like to buy electronic items that look like they have been stored in a damp area, because who knows what kind of mold and corrosion is going on inside, and it may not even work.

On the upside, I managed to get almost everything listed on Ebay and Etsy, and I'm hoping for some good sales this week!

Vintage Infocom Games

Garage sale season is here (well, it's been here for a while now) and it's one of my favorite times of the year. I love browsing garage and estate sales looking for cool stuff, lost treasures from my youth, and inventory for my Etsy shop and Ebay.

Being a child of the 80s, I'm always on the lookout for 80s toys: Nintendo and Super Nintendo games, Fisher Price Little People sets, old point and click adventure computer games, or anything that makes me say "I used to have that!"

One of my favorite finds so far this year:

This is an old Infocom game called Deadline. Most Infocom games from 80s were text adventures and they had no graphics (gasp!)

Many of the games came with extra little props called "feelies" that provided some hints or clues in the story. In this game the feelies are a crime scene photo, a bag of pills, an autopsy report and a letter. As far as collectors are concerned, the feelies are usually worth more than the game itself, because they were more likely to have been thrown away or gotten lost over time. 

I listed this game on Ebay and it sold for $38.00 within a few days (I probably should have priced it higher, but I needed to sell some stuff quickly). 

This game also serves as a reminder to me of my rule to never skip any garage sales I see. I was at a subdivision sale and had purchased some vintage driftwood grapes, and there was another sale across the street, but it didn't look like they had much. One table and a few other things on the driveway. I almost passed it up, but thought, I'm already here, I might as well check it out. Good thing I did, because there was a box on the ground under the table that had this game in it along with a few others for $1.00 each. I would have missed out on a $110.00 profit!

The only sales I do skip are ones that look like they mostly baby stuff (like a sea of pink or blue on the driveway). Never have much luck at those.