#Tchochtkies of the #dead, #Santa #Fe, part 2

Tchochtkies of the Dead part 2

       Another successful #estate #sale for us (meaning we found and bought stuff and didn’t pay too much) wasn’t an estate sale at all.  I found the advertisement in the estate sale listings, but it was for a fairly normal furniture store/consignment store with paintings, a new couch, only a few other items.  

        I spotted two odd chairs with curved handles, older leather seats that looked as if they decorated a private club in the Transvaal in the 1920s.   They had exotic, whitewashed arms that flowed into seat and looked like wooden imitations of elephant tusks.  They were – and are -- utterly unique.   When I suggested that Grace look at them, we immediately bought them and load them into the #Prius, which seems to be able to carry everything.  They look amazing in our living room.

       Another advertisement for another estate sale announced that the merchandise would only be available for 90 minutes on Friday or Saturday.  Little did we know that this 90-minute sale took place every week for months and perhaps years.  The ad boasted of Indian rugs, pottery, baskets, jewelry, kachinas, artwork, lots of antique chairs, decorated plates, textiles, collection of beads, cowboy boots, trunks, lots of collectibles and even (be still my heart) “paint by numbers.”

       Well, it wasn’t the paint by numbers paintings that attracted us!   We found a garage completely jammed by things picked up during travels to Bali, Mexico, Africa, Europe.  Paintings were stacked in an adjoining room so tightly that it was almost impossible to see any of them.  Everything was piled on something else.  A conglomeration of stuff and more stuff.

      We visited the dignified WASPy man, who claimed he was selling off the collections of a well-traveled aunt, twice. We bought some tiny, tiny pots; a silver-decorated belt; a two-foot long, wooden zebra (which we didn’t know we needed before we saw it, but which seems happy by the chair with the imitation elephant tusks); and a bit of wood looking like it once decorated a ‘30s movie house.   We discovered this estate sale in 2008 and saw it again in the classifieds in 2009, 2010 and 2011 (presumably again in 2012).  In its way, this estate sale resembles the Oriental rug store in Mill Valley, CA. that advertised it was “Going Out of Business” for more than a decade.  We presume that our WASPy friend will never run out of his tchochtkies, although he probably never calls them that.