From Metal Detecting to Bargain Hunting!

Let's take a break from metal detecting to go to a..you guessed it..an Estate Sale!

This was the house, and it was gorgeous inside! It's another Aaron's Estate sale. Probably every other one I go to is run by Aaron's. 

This is the butler's pantry.

And a built-in desk on one side of the kitchen. 

The kitchen cabinets were really nice!  

This mural was painted on the dining room wall. 

Aaron's always displays the cups in a circle on a serving platter! 

One side of the master bedroom. 

This was on the other side of the fireplace. 

I love the ceiling in the master bedroom. 

Hello! This was outside the master bedroom. I love the frame on the mirror. 

A sitting room on the first floor. Huge windows looked out to a huge deck on the back which I was unable to get a picture of. 

The front entrance. There were beautiful hardwood floors throughout.

One of the two bedrooms in the basement or lower level. 

I loved this picture. The flowers were raised, and it was framed beautifully. But you know, $150 is way over my budget! 

I didn't buy anything but my friend Marie bought a coffee table book of pictures of Italy for $5. She is an Italian immigrant, so the pictures brought back a lot of good memories for her! 

Of course, we looked the house up and it sold for $499,000. No surprise there! 

Until the next time stay safe and well my friends!

Metal Detecting So Far

We haven't had a chance to go metal detecting much this week because it's been pretty hot and sunny. I'm definitely NOT complaining about that, it just makes it a little uncomfortable to be out there digging for too long! 

Before I show you what we've found so far, I'll show you a little of the process. 

After watching many videos on metal detecting we decided to buy this pin pointer. 

It's proven itself to be worth every penny! 

Here the metal detector is beeping that there is a penny down there somewhere! The detector tells us what kind of metal is in there and approximately how far down it should be. 

Depending on how hard the ground is either Rich or I will dig out a divot of grass. When we are on fairly nice grass, we try to dig a divot of at least 2-3 inches so as to not kill the grass in that spot. We always put it on a plastic sheet. Then we can check the divot to see if the metal is in there or if it's still in the hole. 

In this case the coin was still in the hole, so I used the pin pointer to tell me if we need to dig deeper or to a particular side of the hole. It beeps faster and faster the closer you get to the coin. In this case we had to dig a little deeper and...

there is the penny! Even though it's only a penny it's exciting to find!  

The we put the dirt and the divot back and try to make it look like we never dug there! In this particular spot there wasn't much grass so it was easy! 

Here's what we found so far this year. 

Quarter and some pennies. 

Two quarters, 1 dime, 4 pennies, a button and a Swiss army knife.

 

Three pennies, one of which is a wheat penny.

We found this unicorn in front of our house. It needs a good cleaning but I think it's copper. 

A few nights ago we went to our favorite park where we have found the most money and this was our haul! Four quarters, two dimes, two nickels and 11 pennies!

While we were there one of the park workers came up to us to ask if we found anything good. He said he sees a lot of people walking around with metal detectors, so we have lots of competition! 

I'm not worried! There's plenty of treasures under the ground for everyone! 

In other news, our son Chris has a new addition to his family. 

Meet Frank! Chris got him from his friend's sister. She has two other cats and Frank was always being picked on by them. He needed to be in a house where he is the only cat! He was relaxed and purring almost immediately after Chris brought him home. I think he realized he was safe now! He will have a good life with Chris who loves cats as much as we do! 

I can't wait until we can get to New Hampshire to meet him!

Until the next time stay safe and well, my friends! 

Metal Detecting Treasures In The Past

As I mentioned in my previous post Rich and I started metal detecting again. We used to go all the time a few years ago and then stopped going for some unknown reason. I guess Rich just lost interest in it. 

We used to go to all the different parks by our house and a lot of state parks, too. 

I did not keep track of all the coins we found but there were a lot. There is a particular park by our old house that has a small amphitheater and on the lawn surrounding it we found at least $10 worth of quarters! 

We also found other things besides coins, and this is what I am going to show you in this post. 

We found this pin at a playground by the swing sets. 

 

We found this knife while metal detecting but not with the metal detector. It was actually just stuck in the ground!  

This ring looks like it could have had some kind of stone in it at one time. We dug and dug looking for the stone but didn't find it.  It's silver and has some heft to it so it may be worth checking the value of it. 

This old Cub Scout neckerchief slide. I had to google that because I had no idea what it was called.  

These rings, none of which are valuable. If they were they wouldn't be around anymore! The one on the right has a small fake diamond in it. 

These are all the wheat pennies we found. None of them are worth more than 5 cents but I still kept them. 

And various other miscellaneous things like keys, foreign coins and tokens, dog tags, bullets, religious medals, buttons and pins. 

I really enjoy metal detecting. I don't actually use the metal detector because the way you have to hold it hurts my elbow for some reason. Rich is the detector and I'm just the digger, which is the more exciting part I think! 

One thing we've learned is you can be looking right at a coin in the ground and not see it because it's the same color as the dirt! 

And we always try to make the spot we dig look exactly how we found it. I also wander around and pick up any garbage I see. 

Next post I'll show you what we've found so far this year. 

Until then stay safe and well my friends!

Finally an Estate Sale

Boy, this year has really been lacking in Estate Sales! It's probably been more than a month since I went to the last one. 

I was glad to see this sign while running my errands today so of course I had to stop! 

You can't even see the house from the street it was set so far back down this long driveway!  

This was the best pictures I could get of the house. It was surrounded by trees on a huge, beautiful lot! 

 

This is the backyard. I took this picture out of a window in the walk out basement. 

The inside of the house was really unremarkable. It needs a lot of updating. 

It did have a finished basement with a nice sitting area and fireplace. 

 

There was also a bedroom (not pictured) and a game room with a bar. 

Anyway, here's some of the stuff for sale. 

A whole cupboard full of free coffee mugs! 

There was a decent amount of jewelry.

I thought these two pins were really cute. I didn't buy them though. 

This ring was interesting, and it had some weight to it. I thought maybe it might be worth more than a dollar until I saw "Avon" on the back! 

I almost bought this box of glass globe bowls. I've seen some cute crafts using those kinds of bowls, but I passed. I don't need to add to my collection of supplies for crafts I've yet to do! 

Here's something I haven't seen in a long time, electric scissors! They looked brand new, too! 

For a change I didn't leave this Estate Sale empty handed!

I bought this beautiful box in perfect condition! I love when I find boxes like this! I have several of them that I have found at estate sales. I use them for a variety of things! I don't know what this one will be used for yet, but I was excited to get it! 

I bought this bracelet, too. I don't know why because I seldom wear bracelets, but I thought it was pretty, so I bought it! 

Today was the second day of the sale so everything was 50% off. I paid $1 for the box and 50¢ for the bracelet. Can't beat that! 

I heard someone ask the person who was running the estate sale if the house was for sale and they said it sold in less than 24 hours after listing! Whoever bought it probably paid a fortune for it too considering it's in a very desirable area with a huge lot! I wasn't able to find a listing on it but my guess is it probably sold for around $450-500 thousand. 

Anyway, it's always fun to go to Estate Sales! 

In other news, Rich has started to use his metal detector again so we've been to a few places. In the next post I'll show you some of the "treasures" we found! 

Until then stay safe and well, my friends!