Who thinks of these things? We put it on the shelf next to the register and it sold IMMEDIATELY! Who BUYS these things?
A Giant Nose
I have a huge nose! And this thing was heavy! Made of solid plaster! We found it at the estate sale of two of Atlanta’s longest standing art patrons. I would have liked to see the head this belonged to. We looked for the rest of the face but couldn’t find it. Just the nose.
Antique Instagram!
Today the internet is covered in cat pictures, as it should be! But back in the day people had to make actual physical scrapbooks of things they obsessed about. Take this dog-eared scrapbook containing 100% cat pictures cut from magazines and newspapers from the 40s. Now that shows devotion. The time. The energy. The paste involved. I’m impressed.
Creepy Old Doll Heads
My immediate question upon discovering that box of old doll heads was, Where are the bodies? Why just heads? Now I need to look for the box of doll arms and other parts, because you can’t have just the heads, right? That would be creepy.
Speckled Furb and Sweetie from Planet Floof
These two smoochy alien species visited me from the galaxy ADORBS-ATRON! The speckled one at right — who some say is a Dachshund but I say is a magical fur ball — is named Dallas and I made out with him the whole time his humans shopped the estate sale. Then came Sweetie fluffering in on a ray of sunshine! I’m a sucker for these life forms! Bring ’em on!
A Mountain of Scissors
We just kept finding scissors. SO MANY PAIRS OF SCISSORS. Why so many scissors? Big ones, small ones, colorful ones, new and old, half still in their packaging. Hundreds of scissors! I was getting giddy with the scissors. I wanted to run with them. Get it? I wanted to RUN WITH SCISSORS! (Evil laugh.)
My Irreverent Youth on Wheels
Stay tuned, as we’ve got a vintage Datsun 280ZX available in an upcoming sale. At left is not a pic of the actual 280ZX for sale, that will be forthcoming toot sweet. At left is the 1982 Datsun 280ZX I had when I was 18 and flunking out of college while working as a cocktail waitress with my sister at a bar in San Diego called The Pacific Beach Cafe. One night after our shifts ended we drove to San Francisco in the middle of the night with a case of Lowenbrau in the back (Cheryl being the designated driver and me being not!). I Eventually sold the car, straightened myself out, graduated college, grew up and became the successful business woman I am today. Yawn. DAMN I miss my irreverent youth and my 280ZX!
Basket of Deplorables
These are authentic 1960s Scandinavian DAM troll dolls! Troll dolls were originally created in 1959 by a Danish fisherman and woodcutter named Thomas Dam, who couldn’t afford a Christmas gift for his young daughter Lila and carved the first doll from his imagination. They became a fad in the States after that. Today these things can fetch $50 a piece. These were the first to sell at this estate sale, to someone who showed up at 5am to sit in line. Toy collectors are pretty passionate!
Old Gold Tooth
Gramps must have been up in the GRILL with this solid gold tooth! I found it on the last day of the sale inside a tiny envelope inside a tiny box inside a tiny drawer inside an end table. It felt weird selling someone’s personal gold tooth — you can’t exactly make a necklace out of it — so I put it in the “Maybe You Wanna Keep This” box we always keep cordoned off for the client/family members as the sale progresses. (That thing was heavy!)
Silk Escape Maps
How cool is THIS? My sister was like, “Hollis, look at these cool scarves!” And I was like, “Holy crap! Those aren’t scarves! Those are old ESCAPE MAPS!”
The house in Decatur we were prepping once belonged to a WWII vet. During WWII, the Red Cross was allowed to distribute playing cards and board games to the American prisoners of war in Germany and France. Hidden inside the games were super tightly folded maps of their surrounding areas so, if they escaped, they’d know how to find their way out of hostile territory. They were called “escape maps,” and were made of silk because silk weighs next to nothing yet is so strong and durable it was literally used to make parachutes not just for people, but for jeeps and tanks, too.