I’m a casual estate sale shopper. I don’t necessarily ferret them out, but I’d probably drive off a cliff if the arrows on a highlighter-green poster board directing me to an estate sale told me to.
Mostly though, I’m a creature of habit. I bully the swap meets, Craigslist and OfferUp. Thrift stores aren’t the honey hole they were in the ’90s, but once a year, I experience a thrift store miracle that usually coincides with a really hip elderly person dying.
Recently, however, I’ve been dipping into the world of estate sales to see how the other half lives. When I was a novice, my approach to estate sales involved me accidentally rolling up on one on a Saturday morning. I’d thumb through some truly disheartening swing-music box sets, Barbara Streisand and Engelbert Humperdinck records, and end up buying a cribbage board and a 25-cent deck of cards.
I recently learned that some estate sales start as early as Wednesday or Thursday, so what I was seeing by the weekend had already been picked to the bone by all the resale vultures. I like the idea of this as it gives this addict a weekday place to dig.
Estate sales are the ultimate tease. They show a little leg when the estate sale organizers start posting delectable photographs of the contents on the website weeks in advance. They light a candle and strip off another layer of clothes when they reveal the address the day before. Sometimes they may tell you two weeks prior what part of the city they’re in, but they don’t give you an address until the morning before. Once you show up, you can get on a numbered list and that’s your position in the queue to get into the sale. The result of this system is that the professional shoppers are like sharks circling that area of town and hitting refresh until they get the address. Once revealed, they dart over to get their names on the sign-up list, because the first rule of estate sales is “if you’re not first, you’re last.” This may seem like a lot of work, but when you’re buying antiques that may have some significant Antiques Road Show-type value, it’s worth it.
The address for a particular estate sale went live on a recent Wednesday morning and I had a friend who was in the neighborhood sign me up. I was number 11 in the queue. My friend took a photo of the list and sent it over for me. I was trying to see if there were any familiar names of the 10 folks preceding me in line; wondering if number three, Julie Dong, was buying records or jewelry. I saw a couple other record guys whose numbers were on par with Trump’s approval ratings in West Virginia, so they were no threat.
When I arrived, they let the first 10 people in. Now at the front of the line, I looked over each person as they frantically hustled in. There was one longhaired guy I didn’t know, but I mentally cursed him since everything about his demeanor screamed “record collector.”
The fatal flaw one commits in an estate sale is having too much pride to ask where specific items might be. Because if you guess left and someone else guesses right and they guessed right, then please see rule number one of estate sales.
I found two boxes of records. The longhaired guy was already crouched down and thumbing through the box on the left. I assumed the position at the box on the right and started pulling out titles like Led Zeppelin, Muddy Waters, Bob Marley, Rolling Stones, etc. Longhaired guy looked at me like I had just run over all his pets with slow methodical purpose. All of them. It was clear: He had crouched before the wrong box. My longhaired rival had no apparent need for John Phillip Sousa marches.
“Hey, could I grab that Doors Soft Parade record?” he asked.
I said, “Naw, son” and felt pretty proud that I didn’t say, “Hell no, don’t look over here at what I’m doing.”
About a minute later I went to reach for the one 45 in a crate, but another record guy I know grabbed it first. He knew it was rare and then looked at me. He asked me if it was something I really wanted. It was. The 45 in question was San Diego’s own Soma. The A-side, “Tell Mama,” plays like a feel-good California coastal drive with pleasant harmonies, bar-room twang and a monster, out-of-the-blue drum break that’s ripe for sampling. The B-side is a soulful cover of Neil Young’s “Southern Man.” I had a copy of it years ago before the vinyl cracked.
My fellow collector handed it to me.
“Karma,” he said, and walked away.
At this point, I searched out the multiple rooms of the spacious property until I found longhaired guy. I gave him The Doors Soft Parade record he had asked about earlier and felt a little more even with the universe.
“Can I have that copy of Bob Marley’s Exodus as well?”
“Hell no,” I replied.