Thursday Sale Bonanza -- Lots of Lefton and Christmas Kitsch

I think it's a basic principle of business that you're supposed to spend less than you bring in.  That gets really hard when the weather warms up!  Just when the flea markets and yard sales are starting up again and there are lots of bargains to be found, people are busy outside and not spending as much time in antique malls and shopping online (and they're going to flea markets and yard sales)!

As I try to not-buy-as-much (as-if I could...), I avoid the looking at the temptation of the weekly emails from estatesales.net and gsalr.com.   I owe a big THANK YOU to my friend Bargain Hunter for giving me a heads-up on a really good sale last Thurday, loaded with Lefton figurines!  

It turned out to be the left-over accumulation of a former antiques dealer who'd passed away last year.  Most of it was her 'barn stuff' -- you know, the boxes of collected odds and ends that don't make it into the booth or to a sale (bits of china, linens, broken down pictures and frames).  There was an entire table of Lefton and made-in-Japan figurines, though, and I was the first one to it!

Look at all this SWEET Lefton!

Not Lefton, but sweet nonetheless

The caption on the cookie jar lid says it all...

It all needed a good cleaning (but who doesn't love playing with their thrifty finds?)

Besides the great kitsch, I also got a couple of quilt tops -- one had piping around the edge to finish it off, but no back fabric.  Rather strange!

Love this butterfly quilt top -- I'm thinking of bringing my quilting skills out of retirement to finish it

This is the bound block quilt

This plastic half apron appealed to my love of strange souvenirs.  It's from the Hiawatha rail line that goes from Chicago to Seattle.  I think it's from the 1960s

These were an odd (and luckily, inexpensive) impulse buy -- 2 legal document packets from 1927, dealing with a property dispute in Dearborn Heights, Michigan.  They'll probably be good for a scrapbooker to use.

Once I'd taken the bait and gone shopping, I looked for more sales close to home and found one just a couple of miles away (a rare occurrence)!   Since they opened the first sale 1/2 hour early, I was able to check out and race over to the second one and get there just as everyone was going in.  I made a beeline for the basement, hoping to get a green ceramic Christmas tree I'd seen in the picture.  I got it and that was just the tip of the iceberg!  I ended up with 2 box-flats of great vintage Christmas, plus some other odds and ends.

TWO ceramic Christmas trees + a Holt Howard Santa + a Royal light-up snowman!

The tall angels need to be rewired, but are really hard to find.  Napco and Enesco NOEL candle holder sets are always popular.  The little angel shelf sitters with lambs are so sweet -- even though one has a repaired wing, I couldn't pass them up

I think Santa's creepy -- much creepier at home than he had been at the sale.  He looks like the drunken love-child of  Joe Piscopo and Kris Kringle

Black transferware tray, Texasware-type bowl, West Bend penguin ice bucket and an Oven Serve bowl.

Dogs playing poker -- who could resist?

So, in the space of about an hour and a half, I had spent all my shopping money for 2 weeks!  Well worth it, though, don't you think?

This Friday and Saturday are theM-15 Heritage Yard Sale and also Davisburg Antiques.  I'm really looking forward to both of them, since they were great shopping ops last fall.  I'd better get some more shopping money out of the bank!