Yard-sale haul 2018

This year, Brian and I weren't able to devote quite as much time as usual to shopping the local town-wide yard sale, which took place this weekend. We'd already arranged with my dad to go to the Princeton football game on Saturday if the weather was good, and as of Friday the forecast was calling for "cloudy and delightful," so we had to limit our Saturday sale-hopping to just a couple of hours in the morning in order to make a 1pm kickoff.

So we planned out our abbreviated trip strategically, examining the list of sales and focusing our attention on a two-block square on the south side of town that had the highest concentration of sales—and particularly, the most sales that were limited to Saturday only. We walked out on Benner Street, turning off here and there to catch any scattered sales we passed en route, then went down the whole length of Felton Street (which is basically one big yard-sale block party) and back up South Second, then across Raritan and back home by way of Montgomery to grab an early lunch and take off for the game. We covered perhaps two miles in total, but probably managed to hit about 30 sales.

Most of these, not surprisingly, had nothing we needed. Our house is pretty much fully furnished and equipped, and while I took the time to browse every rack of women's clothing we passed, I knew the odds of finding something that fit both my size and my tastes were pretty slim. And the one item Brian had really been jonesing for—an accordion—we'd actually managed to pick up at a flea market for $60 the previous weekend. So basically, we were just cruising the sales looking for targets of opportunity: interesting books, board games, and any little miscellaneous items that looked like they'd either be useful for us or make good holiday gifts for family and friends.

However, since we managed to hit so many sales in this relatively short trip, we actually found several things that looked worth the price (which was never more than two bucks, so we pretty much grabbed anything that looked potentially interesting). Here's what we got:

• Three books for ourselves. At the very first sale we passed, I picked up an English translation of the "Figaro trilogy" by Beaumarchais, which was the original bases for the operas "The Barber of Seville" and "The Marriage of Figaro." (I hadn't previously been aware there was a third play in the series, so that will make an interesting new discovery.) At one of the Felton Avenue sales, we found the second Rabbi Small mystery, Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry, which I started reading to Brian that very afternoon on the way to the game. And at one of the last sales we passed on our way home, we got the first volume of "Lumberjanes," a comic book series co-written by Noelle Stevenson, whom we've seen and appreciated as a guest on "Critical Role."
• Three possible gift items. First, we picked up a young adult fantasy novel that looked like a promising gift for one of our older niblings (side note: this word is apparently the gender-neutral form of "nieces and/or nephews"), though we're not sure which. We also found this set of princess-themed wooden beads for my princess-obsessed, four-year-old niece. Finally, we took a gamble on a box of card tricks, since we recalled that one of our nephews used to have a mild interest in magic; if we learn that he's over that by now, maybe we can pitch it to one of the other niblings.
• Several potentially household useful items. One item I was specifically on the lookout for was wooden clothespins, since I ran a load of laundry last week and actually had to leave some things off the line because I ran out of pins. So when I found a big Ziploc bag full of them for 75 cents, I grabbed it, and now the limiting factor on how much we can hang is the amount of space on the clothesline. We also spent 50 cents on a new multi-meter, since our old one, which could no longer measure anything but voltage, had been converted into a prop for Brian's steampunk costume. Brian also spent $1 on an orphaned luggage strap, which will replace a broken one on his new accordion. And we picked up a nice little wooden box that a seller offered us for free; we're not quite sure what we'll do with it, put it should be useful for something.
• One game. For $1, we found a copy of the quirky game Guillotine, in which the players are French revolutionaries competing to assemble the most prestigious collection of heads. We'd played it before and enjoyed it, so we figured it was worth a buck even if it might be missing a few cards—but when we got it home, Brian was able to verify that it was in fact complete, so this was a particularly good deal.

For only two hours, this was a pretty good haul, and probably provided us with as much entertainment as watching Princeton mop up the field with Lehigh. (We left in the middle of the third quarter, when Princeton was ahead 52 to 7 and it was starting to rain. At least Lehigh won the battle of the bands, as theirs was at least three times the size of Princeton's.)

This morning, we ventured out again, this time aiming for a spot on the north side of town where I'd identified another cluster of sales, including several scheduled for Sunday only. Unfortunately, many of the sellers apparently were either put up by the weather (a light drizzle) or too tired out after the previous day to set up shop again. Many of the sale sites on our list had no sale in site, though some of them had boxes of slightly damp stuff marked "free" sitting out by the curb. We poked through those and through the tables at the few sales we actually passed, but found little of interest. However, Brian picked up a few items mostly for their amusement value: a yo-yo, a pair of colorful dice, and a "protein structure coloring book" dating from 1979. It was only a little set of photocopied sheets, but he just had to pick it up to show his coworkers, since his workplace recently developed two coloring books of its own.

But before calling it a day, we decided to cross Raritan and head down South First, which we hadn't made it to on Saturday—and there we encountered the madhouse that is the annual Congregation Achavas Achim jumble sale. This is basically a huge assortment of stuff all thrown together willy-nilly: clothing, books, games, kitchen items, and various tchotchkes all sprawling across numerous tables and the ground. When we hit this sale in 2014, we hunted through the mass of miscellany and found nothing of interest except a can of walnuts, but the price on that was good enough to encourage us to keep trying.

This time, our efforts were rewarded, as out of the vast unsorted mass, we managed to pick out two interesting-looking puzzles. One was a three-dimensional jigsaw of an old-fashioned globe, complete with a stand to display it on if you actually manage to complete it; the other appeared to be a wooden puzzle like these, but when we got it home and sorted out the pieces, it actually turned out to be two separate puzzles—both the sphere and the truncated cube from this set. We haven't decided yet whether to keep these or give them as gifts, but either way, they were a good enough find to justify the trip.

So, in total, we spent about four hours at the sales, covered maybe four or five miles, and picked up 16 items for just under $12. That's a pretty good return on our investment of both time and money, and a nice start on our holiday shopping.