I never buy retail if I can help it! So it's all dusty second-hand and antique stores and yes, garage sales. I've never been to the more rarified estate sale, even though I think that's where the best action's at. I'd like to, if I could find a friend to go with me...

...which is why I haven't done much garage saleing (sailing?) of late. I just don't like going to them alone, and I'd love to find a new garage sale pal. Anyway, some favorite finds ever: a huge pair of matched Mottahedeh orange glass vases for $10, a lemon wedge Pop art purse for $1, a huge pile of old Star Wars stickers for just about nothing that we used to decorate our bass, and a black and rhinestone cigarette holder for a quarter. (I'm sure I'm forgetting some!) Really good books and records are difficult for me to find around here, but weird rural antique stores yield some amazing ones -- the farther off the highway, the better.

(I like marbles too, weretable, and I've got a nice bunch, though your collection puts mine to total shame. I put them in the bottom of vases because they're pretty and they make good anchors for flowers.)

Not me. If I want old junk that no one wants, I garbage pick. I have an old art deco dresser (ca 1930)

≡ Click to see image ≡

...as seen in the motion picture "The Gradgerate".

This is one of the things I really miss from the U.S. - nobody here seems to do it, and I can't figure out why. We also don't have flea markets, and that makes me sad. I used to be a mad thriftshopper.

I bought a french press at a garage sale today for a buck!!!

I stopped going to yard sales because they encourage me to buy stuff I do not need and do not have room for. But other than that, I love them.

Weretable: those marbles will make great gifts for your friends, put a few in some creative container or something with a note that says "Here, I heard you had lost yours."

The UK equivalant is the car boot sale. I guess. Car boot sales depress me greatly. If someone isn't trying to get 10p for a broken standard lamp, they're selling books on how do deal wih miscarriage or empty hamster cages or brand new clothes which they never manged to slim down to. There's something all to revealing about peoples aspirations and the lives they both lived and tried to live.

Hate antique shops; love garage sales.

Spent many a Sunday morning in my late teens wandering giddily with friends (all of whom have remained up since Saturday night) through people's yards, looking at what people see fit to sell and what they may possibly be asking for them. Some real gems, too, though there are some dismal days of crap.

I still have 2 bags of marbles that my older brother had when I was a kid. Some quality is different from those you find for sale now. Crystal instead of glass? Glass instead of plastic? Don't know, but they look and feel different. You a marble maven, weretable?

It's funny, I have always liked marbles and I buy any that I see at garage sales (assuming they are in one piece) and only recently realized that a lot of the old ones are true collector's items. You see big marbles in eBay for hundreds of dollars a piece sometimes. It's insane. I don't care though, I just buy them when I see them and I'll never know if they are worth anything or not.

I didn't go to any sales Saturday morning, although I wanted to. I was working on landscaping in the 90+ heat. Joy Joy. Actually I don't mind when it is my own yard I am working on, but this wasn't and that made it feel so much hotter. Heh.