A little shopping . . Lots of bargains

It's been an odd (and very busy) couple of weeks.  I've decided that I have enough stuff and have resolved to buy less and destash.  Those are famous last words...

I haven't been to a good estate sale in a long time and I've really missed them.  It seems like the best ones often start on Thursday and I don't get out of my day job in time to go to them.   The ones on Fridays are too far away or don't look good enough to spend the gas.  So most of my shopping has been at thrift stores.

I went to one family-run estate sale last week that was just a few miles away.  It didn't look like anything I really wanted, but when they're local, I go.  The cheapest thing there was $15  and it was a wooden file/recipe box with pre-printed Betty Crocker recipes inside. The tag said '$15 - Complete Set', as though this was a great bargain!  One man who went in with me was there specifically to see some silverplate flatware.  It was in a silver chest and I couldn't see the price, but the seller  started 'selling' him -- HARD!  She said that it was in the top ten most popular patterns ever (I don't know how she knew that...) and that she'd looked that flatware up on Ebay and 'just a fork was selling for $125'.  She said she'd priced it as she had because 'just a fork was selling for $125' -- I wish I could have seen how much the entire set was!  I didn't want to point out that a person can put any price they want to on an Ebay item -- the trick is to get someone else to pay it!

My next stop was a rummage sale at a church in our next town over.  It was so much fun!  All the little older ladies working there were friendly and just happy to be there -- it was a delight.  I got a few bargains there, too.

Then I came home and cleaned, cleaned, cleaned dishes!  I had been to a thrift and gotten two large lots of dinnerware at an unbelievable price, but they were pretty dirty.  As I was cleaning them up, I realized I'd left all of the coffee cups of one of the sets at the thrift store.  There's no way I'm going to drive all the way back to get them with gas at almost $4 a gallon!  I called them and told them to reprice and resell the coffee cups.  Actually, no one really uses them any more anyway.

Here are some of my thrift store & rummage sale treasures. . .

One of the dinnerware sets

Salem dinnerware -- minus all of the coffee cups!

Pyrex!

I love this 8mm movie camera -- with original box & instruction manual

I've never seen Pyrex bowls this size before -- they're bigger than a ramekin, but not as big as a cereal or soup bowl.

 Last Saturday, I went to a moving sale at a local antique shop -- everything was either 50% off or just $1!  I got lots of stuff and saw several other dealers from our mall there.  It was really fun, but insanely crowded and busy.  So I went back today to see what else might be there that I missed in the crowds.  I picked up a few more things, but a lot of it was gone.  If I get pictures of it all, I post them later. 

So you can see that my destashing 'good intentions' haven't exactly paid off!  Maybe I'd do less shopping if I don't resolve not to shop -- what do you think?