Magic Summer: That's What She Said: #6 Nerds Like Toys

Guys, I'm a nerd. I admit it. No, I'm proud of it. I'm a choir teacher who knits, thinks JK Rowling is the greatest genius of the past century, gets excited over technology, wrote her first website in circa 1996 and sold 80s toys online before Etsy existed, and has been known to utter the sentence "All my favorite Star Trek episodes involve time travel."

Sarah is also a nerd, but while we share several nerd traits, hers presents in a slightly different way. She's with me on Harry Potter, but prefers Star Wars to Star Trek. She was right there with me, selling 80s toys online at the dawn of the online selling, but was busy taking photos and researching details while I wrote websites. She loves Marvel comics and movies. She's a die hard Muppets collector (Kermit is the best, and Muppet Babies are not up to snuff). She thinks writing dueling blogs is a really great idea.

So you understand that we are allowed to make fun of nerds, because we are them. We are brethren.

This week's estate sale was full of toys. Collectible toys. Star Wars, Star Trek, all kinds of robots and airplanes and other things that I couldn't strictly identify, but I knew were highly collectible. We knew this meant that there would be hard core collectors in line way before we were willing to show our faces, and we weren't disappointed.

Guys, we have numbers. Calm down. If you have number 1, you're still getting in first. Being pressed directly up on the door is not going to get you in any sooner. Didn't stop them from doing it, though. The guy with number one, who was practically hugging the door, kept yelling. I don't think he was upset about anything, I think he was just so excited/eager/impatient/whatever that his voice just kept getting louder and louder. This is also something I do, so again, I'm allowed to say that it's nuts.

It was a small house again this week, so a few shifts of people went in before we got in.

This Eastern European lady was very impatient. At one point the staff member at the door let in everyone up to her number and she said "Nineteen?" and he said "not yet" and she just wailed "PLEEEAAAAASE?!?!?" It did not work. So she decided to get a head start anyway.

We could hear her speculating what she could sell on eBay to "make lots of money". She finally got called in, so Sarah decided to try it out.

I was super proud.

With the line of eager nerds at the door, I fully expected that all the toys would be gone. But some were left and waiting for me to photograph!

All the all the all the airplanes.

Did they not see the Star Wars toys? Or are these somehow unworthy?

In case you want to build your own Enterprise!

This makes me wish I wanted to collect robots. So many!

This feels very specific. Why an Enterprise shuttle and not an Enterprise? I didn't see one in the preview pics so I don't think that someone had just grabbed it already.

Sarah found some things she was very excited about!

I do not remember what this Santa was, only that he was special. I guess you'll have to go to Sarah's partner blog to find out!

Sarah did not buy these, as they were priced (justly, from what I understand) really high. She did get to see them and hold them, and took a phone number from a staff member so that she could contact her and find out if they're still available the next day before driving out to try to grab them at a lower price!

I didn't have any agenda for this sale, but I found things anyway! This person was a musician of sorts. This seems to have been the case for many of the sales we've visited this summer. So far I've picked up a shekere and some maracas for school. Today I had the opportunity to grab a few strange musical instruments, but they were either not something I was interested in or someone snapped them up before I had the chance.

Ukeleles are not as hard to come by as a lute (which I failed to purchase) or a shekere (which I did purchase), and this one was broken. I texted a student who knows more about these things than I do to see if it was worth picking up, and before he responded someone else grabbed it. Oh well. One less ukelele for our school's burgeoning ukelele choir.

We are doing Will Rogers' Follies this year, so we are going to need a harmonica. They aren't that hard to find, but these seemed fancier than the usual one. I texted our director, and again, someone snapped them all up before I had a chance to respond. I guess I should buy first, think later next time!

I was not tempted by this. A musical ruler? Hard pass.

So many simple wind instruments! There's a fife, a soprano recorder, an alto recorder, a small wooden flute, and a very small recorder that I assume is similar to a garklein recorder. Off to the side there was a giant transverse flute that was cool but way too big for my tiny hands. I did grab the alto recorder. Some choral song somewhere needs a haunting wooden alto recorder sound. If nothing else, I can use it for show and tell when we talk about Renaissance instruments!

I also didn't pick up this tin whistle. But it's fun!

This impulse buy is going to need some TLC before showing up in my Etsy shop. It's a 60s belly dancer/harem girl costume. I bet someone out there is going to love the heck out of it!

We had two church sales on our agenda after that! At the first one, I was heartbroken by this beauty who was badly sun faded.

I could have tried dyeing it, but... well. Read this if you want to see how that would have ended. The jewelry table was much kinder to us, though! There were a ton and they were dirt cheap!

There were a lot of toys in the children's room, so when we found a few 80s toys in the stuffed animal box and I saw a few bags of Barbie clothes in another, I just had to check. And I was right!

JEM CLOTHES!!!! I haven't made a Jem find in well over a decade, friends. It's the lamest Jem find I could have made - Rock n Curl is somehow the most common, to the point I started eyerolling every time we found another back in the days when we were selling 80s toys on our own website - and the tights are now DIY leggings. But still! Any Jem find is better than no Jem find at all.

This is the only picture I took at the second church sale. It is going in my classroom and it is hilarious.

We finished our day at the Pelican's Nest. It's a restaurant by the lake, and the closest thing to a vacation restaurant spot we've got. It's also the home of the coconut pirates that inspired me to buy my own last summer!