Thrifting Two Estate Sales: Fantastic Finds & One Clear Winner!

EDMONDS
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One town, one estate sale firm having two sales—which will have the best deals, and which will have the best stuff?

The first house in Edmonds, Washington is advertised as a “Lifetime Collector” sale, a modest 1960s-vintage home packed with so much! Some nice and really cheaply priced furniture is buried under piles of Peking glass animals, comics and sports cards, sewing items, kitchen collectibles, tons of toys, dolls, and teddy bears… but are these things today’s collectors will buy?

We dig deep and look for the things hidden under the surface, finding a uranium glass cake plate under a pile of doll accessories, a Shawnee rooster pitcher hidden on a low shelf, a wooden rule in a box of sewing notions, and a smattering of fun smalls as diverse as a 1970s Lucy Van Pelt figurine and an artist-painted Russian lacquer box. At only $35, our haul decorates the top of our van while we look for bags and wrap, and we realize what bargains there really were in this crowded house!

Then it’s on to their “Executive Home” sale in Picnic Point, a wealthy Seattle suburb of large homes built to take advantage of mountain and sea views. A look up the drive at a neighbor’s garage sale gives us pause for a small detour (and a cute feather pen for only 50 cents), but then it’s time to see how this high-end estate compares to the first.

You’d think there’d be no comparison, but right away, we see the same Shawnee Charlie Chicken pitcher we bought at the other estate… but for $20 rather than the $12 we paid! Estate sale prices can be higher in fancy neighborhoods where the neighbors are used to spending more on things, and we encounter some of that in this house… until we dig deeper. We find Steuben glass, better quality silver plate, Pilchuck glass pieces, and a lovely lamp with art glass shades that are all to our liking.

Larger houses are often sparsely decorated for their size, and this one has lots of rooms with just a few objects in each. Perhaps that’s why the shoppers before us grabbed furniture and larger items but didn’t take time to peruse the smalls—which is why we’re picking up a Lalique Dahlia dresser box worth approximately $150 for just $6, late in the afternoon! We’re not alone—a vintage fashion picker grabs a spangly 1990s blouse we’d just noticed for $35, and we look through Vera and Norwegian textiles, original regional still-life paintings, concrete yard art, and a lot of other nice things in this stylish home, picking up a Glass Eye oil lamp made of Mt. St. Helens ash and some other goodies along the way.

In the end, both sales prove worth our visits, though the experiences, pricing, and types of items for sale are so different between the two! We will definitely look for more sales by Ginny’s Girls, the service that put on these and is very active in the Puget Sound region.

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