really unfinished.

Not to speak ill of the dead, but I went to the estate sale of some bona fide hoarders today. Not that hoarding is necessarily bad as long as it doesn't interfere with your quality of life. And in fact, it makes for a great estate sale. The whole house was full. It was so full that the people running the sale couldn't even bother to price everything individually. So they priced the nice items, the antiques and whatnot, and then left everything else up for negotiation.

In fact, there were even parts of the house that hadn't been thoroughly excavated. In both the attic and the basement, there were rooms that looked like they hadn't been touched in years and years and years. I guess at some point, the estate sale people have to draw a line. They will not go through any more dusty crap, but they will allow any willing customers to go through the dusty crap. If you find something good in there, they will kindly sell it to you. I came across a man in the basement who was filling a box with carburetors. Why were they there? Why did he want them? As someone with my own particular taste in treasures, I've learned not to ask.

The weird thing about this basement is that it was unfinished. Really, really unfinished. There were big rocks in the middle that I guess they couldn't get out, so they just dug around them, installed shelves on the side and stored some more of their junk.

Besides hoarders, people with interesting hobbies make for good estate sales. These people qualified on both counts. Scuba, anyone?

Someone in the house was really into ceramics. There were shelves and shelves full of homemade dishes, figurines, and novelty items like lighters. There were two kilns, making today only the second time I've ever seen a kiln secondhand. I saw a sign in the really unfinished basement about student projects, so maybe someone taught a pottery class right in the home.

Oh yes, and the dolls. Some people are into dolls, but you probably already knew that. However, the people who are interested in both dolls and ceramics can make their own dolls. In addition to the dolls, doll cases, and doll books, there were doll parts everywhere. Legs, arms, bald heads with no eyes, it was all there for me to buy as much as I wanted. Which was none of it. There was also a whole wall of cabinets full of doll hair. I don't particularly like dolls, but partial dolls and fake hair give me the willies, particularly when I'm trapped with them in what appears to be some sort of bunker.

I did buy a tall green glass bottle/vase. It was sitting in the basement, next to one of those machines with a belt that you strap around yourself to jiggle the fat away. Like everything else in there, it was sad and musty, but something about the shape and the color caught my eye. Then as I was looking at it, someone breezed by and told me I could have it for $2. Which seemed like a good price for a dirty, slightly cracked bottle out of someone's basement, but maybe I have a weird value system.

As I was toting my glass monstrosity through the house, several people mentioned that they also had noticed it, sitting amongst the carburetors. One of them, an antique dealer, said he almost bought it, but said he didn't know enough about glass to risk it. He probably didn't know that it was $2. He said it was definitely hand-blown glass and may be more than 100 years old.

I have no idea if any of that is true. I'm not an antique dealer. I just like to shop in other people's basements.