Blockbuster of a Book Haul

I live near about 4 million other people, and it turns out, a lot of them have recently inherited a house and they want it cleaned out to sell. Rather than hire a pricey crew to haul everything away, they hire a firm to run an online auction.  They may not make a lot of money, but the house gets cleaned out in record time by worker ants who are celebrating the deals they got! 

A few weeks ago, the weekly auction email had “quilting supplies” in the subject line, so I couldn’t resist. Tons of fabric was on offer, but from the photos, I couldn’t tell if it was good fabric, and other people kept bidding it up, so I didn’t even try for any of it. I spotted lots of quilting and needlework books that I wanted, but they were being sold by the shelf, say about 30 books or 200 magazines in each lot. Thinking I would surely lose some of those lots, I made the minimum bid of $5, but no one ever outbid me on any of them. And then toward the closing time, the minimum bid dropped to $1! I bid on about ten more lots, I couldn’t let those books go to a dump!

Some of the books I had my eye on:

I was so excited to go get my new treasures, but when I drove to the pickup location, it was a huge mansion, and all of my books were up a very steep staircase. A staircase with thick slippery white carpet on it.  My books were on floor on the bridge between bedrooms, overlooking the main room, in the way of anyone who was getting their merchandise from the bedrooms, so I tried to work fast!  (Next time I will look at the house on Google Street View and see if I think I can manage it.)

I had brought strong garbage bags to transport the books to my truck, but their corners still cut the bags open. I had to hold them carefully to get down the stairs without scattering books. This would make a good exercise program — doing stairs while holding weights.  🙂

I chatted with the people who had claimed all the fabric and craft supplies — one said she quilts for a church and 3 hospices, and another was just starting out as a quilter. Another craft lover asked me if the bed in the upstairs bedroom had been in the auction, and I noticed her talking to the auction rep, Terry, to see if she could purchase it. (This turned out to be important later.)

It was raining off and on, and it is not easy to go up stairs in wet jeans! After about three hours, I finally got all my books off that bridge, but then Terry pointed out that there were more shelves and stacks of books for me in the back bedroom! Other people had bought the actual shelves so I needed to get my books cleared off of them. Fortunately I heard Terry say that the house would also be open the next day, so I spent the last hour just bringing a lot of them downstairs to a spot on the main floor.  I thought I might be too sore to go upstairs the next day!

The next day, thankfully, it had stopped raining. I also took my husband along even though he had recently had a knee replacement. I stopped at a grocery store and bought 20 of their reusable shopping bags, and that was the smartest thing I could have done. The books fit perfectly and I could carry each load down; then my husband repacked them into large contractor garbage bags in the truck. Then I could reuse the bags to get more books.

We were just about loaded up when Terry brought out some tubs of beautiful fabric. They had been under that bed that sold the day before! A little negotiating and I took home three of them, one of them filled with the most beautiful Japanese fabric. It made me really glad I had had to come back the second day.

I ended up getting about 2000 craft books and magazines for about $60 (plus cost for the shopping bags and tolls on the highway). These are mostly from the 1990s and early 2000s, covering all kinds of quilting and stitchery. The original owner marked almost every pattern with a little post-it tag — I would be amazed if she ever had time to do any actual quilting or needlework!

So! those of you who know me are thinking, “I can’t believe there are books you didn’t already have!”

And the rest of you are thinking, “What on earth are you going to do with those books?!”

Well, my sister is a cross-stitcher, so I already passed a few boxes of magazines on to her. I have made one pass through the rest, and sorted them into Want/Pass categories. About half went into each category. All these books are in such nice shape, I thought about trying to sell them online, but as I researched, I found out that for most of them, there are already 40 to 70 copies of each available, for between 1 to 4 dollars. There is no telling how long I would have to store these before they sold, and I don’t have a good, climate-controlled area for storage. So I think I will donate some and take others to Half Price Books. I won’t get much but the books will get back in circulation. And in the meantime, I will have so much fun going through them, trying the techniques, and writing about them!

Books went into the Pass category:

• I already have it
• previous owner actually had two or three herself
• the quilts were really predictable
• plastic canvas projects — I don’t need to do ALL the crafts

Books went into the Keep category:

• unusual topics
• even one pattern that caught my eye
• great art work

Here are some of the fun surprises I have come across:

 

Today it is very rainy and I am going to hide out and sort books!