Garage Sales Have Only a Ghost of the Old Appeal

Just when you were ready to give up hope, you find it. Something. Anything. An item you want to buy at a garage sale.

In this case, it was a Spago T-shirt at Alice Waters’ garage sale. No doubt, Spago chef Wolfgang Puck wore it himself to chomp on chorizo at Chez Panisse while he and Alice sat around chatting about who invented California pizza. What made it even more exciting was that I got it for 50 cents by pointing out that there was an extra-virgin olive oil stain on the front.

OK, maybe it wasn’t that great. Maybe a celebrity chef isn’t a real celebrity. I’ll admit it wasn’t as if I found Don Johnson’s pj’s on Barbra Streisand’s lawn. Or Art Buchwald’s diary on Eddie Murphy’s patio. Or John John’s long johns in Daryl Hannah’s back yard. But in these days of garage-sale decline, you take what bargains you can get.

Back in the early ‘70s, in the golden age of garage sales--before respectable people considered it all right to buy their neighbors’ dirty linen in public--the sky was the limit. You could find it all--oak chairs, mahogany dressers, Bauer bowls, McCoy cookie jars, Elvis records--at the prices you now pay for a parfait at Spago or Chez Panisse. But when every schmo began considering himself a “collector”--and all his junk “collectibles”--prices went sky high.

Professionals swoop down on garage sales the moment they open and buy up the elusive good stuff. The things you used to get for nearly nothing and thought nothing of are now described in magazines and books with names like “A Guide to Collectibles From the ‘60s.”

I have a Flipper lunch box I bought for a dime at a garage sale mainly because it was metal and I wanted something sturdy for a first-aid kit. I also thought the comforting sight of Flipper would take some of the sting out of my kids’ hurts. Recently, I saw a photograph of it in an art book as if it’s some kind of Ming vase--with a price range listed beside it for its current value. (No, I’m not willing to sell. I’m hanging on to that Flipper investment.)

Another thing that killed garage sales is when they took on the hoity-toity title “estate sale.” Somehow I don’t think four greasy old cookie sheets, an unfinished hand-crocheted afghan and a copy of “The Scarsdale Diet” constitute an estate .

Going to estate sales, the thrill of the hunt, was ruined for me years ago when I realized it’s a vulture’s game.

It happened one day at an estate sale at a big Victorian house. Two floors and “an attic full of treasures.” The scent of bargains was intoxicating. I cast a predatory glance at a pine hutch just as an early bird moved in on it.

Soon, I had my hands full, especially with several beautiful, hand-embroidered linen sheets and matching pillow cases and handmade quilts. The prices were what you would pay for paper napkins retail. Grasping the spoils tightly, I approached the card table.

While standing in the pay line, I saw my friend Judy empty-handed. Judy is a woman with a serious garage-sale dependency problem. You can hardly sit down in Judy’s house without knocking over some crystal goblet or Lusterware teapot or rosewood piano bench that she had picked up for a song.

“You know that kid who is suspected of murdering his mother and father and sisters and brothers?” she said.

Why was she asking me this? What did this have to do with a 1961 Kennedy-cover Life magazine, or a Depression-glass salad set, or a felt poodle skirt, or an original Princess phone with light-up dial?

“This is the murder house,” she said.

I put back the $1 sheets and pillow cases. I put back the $5 handmade quilts. I put back the 25-cent Kennedy cover.

Ya know, had I held on to them, I could have made a killing.