Estate sale buys!


This morning we went to a nearby estate sale, see the listing here - http://www.estatesales.net/estate-sales/131541.aspx

It was the estate of a family that owned a store in Sea Isle City for many years. The sale was a mix of old store items, personal items and farm equipment. The old store stuff was very cool - old tin beach toys, toy guns, tin wind-up toys, blow-up water tubes in great 1950-60s graphics, bathing caps etc. many items still in their original packages. Unfortunately there were no racks of 1950s swimsuits like I was dreaming of finding!
But there was a rack of some personal clothing which was a great surprise. I bought 14 clothing items, mostly dresses, 1940-50s, including the 3 1950s tulle dresses  shown above. There was also a cool 1930s costume of some sort which was a jumper with halter top and wide legs, made of cotton fabric that had the names of colleges on it. That's soaking right now.
Since there ended up being clothing at the sale, now I'm wondering where all the old Summer/beach clothing ended up, since they had that shop near the beach for so many years. They had to have sold some beach clothing items in the store and they definately had to wear some themselves.
I also bought 2 boxes with a total of 190 patterns! Most are 1940-50s, but there are a few 1920-30s and maybe a dozen early 60s. One box was in very good condition, the other box of patterns are kind of beat, just from years of storage. Most look to be 34 bust. These were personal patterns, they weren't sold in the shop.




Here are some favorites that I pulled out of the lot -









The only item that I bought from the old store stock was this pair of old rubber beach shoes. I love old beach shoes and I've always wanted a pair. Not to wear, just to have, even though this pair is my size! They were only $1. This is the only item that I'll be keeping for myself, everything else will make it's way onto the website.

4 comments:

Nancy said...

Now those pattern boxes are a lucky lucky find. Congrats!

Sarsaparilla said...

Wow, what a wonderful estate sale that was! I only happen upon one or two like that all year long. Those dresses look fabulous!

Are those shoes rubber? I ask because I purchased an old suitcase last spring that had a couple of 50's bathing suits inside - plus a pair of thongs. And the thongs were hard as a rock! They had both curled into interesting sculptural shapes - and I decided they would make an intriguing conversation piece. I assume your shoes are not hard!

Dandelion Vintage said...

Yes, my shoes are rubber, but they are still nice and soft. The lady at the sale said there had been a bunch of them that had melted.

Suzanne said...

wow, i am wiping the drool off my face...