Christmas Comes Early

Just when I begin to give up hope for the current state of garage sales, I stumble upon one at an unexpected time, in an unexpected place with some unexpected finds.

December is not what I would consider garage sale season in St. Louis.  Temperatures were in the '20's Saturday morning. I was on my way to pick up my son from a college class when I noticed a sign that said "Estate Sale".  I made a mental note and continued on to pick him up.  On our way home, we stopped by.  I could see it wasn't technically an "estate" sale as just the garage door was up.

I didn't see anything from the street that interested me, but decided I'd come this far, I might as well look.

Nobody was in the garage and I didn't see anything immediately, but then I noticed a box of vintage Christmas C6 light bulbs.

The bulbs were ordinary, but mixed in with them was this Santa bulb.

There was also this star bulb:

It reminded me of a 1950's stylized satellite.

The back is marked "Patent pending in Japan".

I grabbed those and set them aside.

Then I noticed a box of ornaments. My wife hung them on the tree before I could get a shot of them in the box. I love the shapes of some of these.

Most of the ornaments are wartime as indicated by the paper cap on the one above and the fact that they are clear rather than having a metallic sprayed interior.  Small pieces of tinsel were stuffed into them and hand painting was added to make them more festive.

Next I discovered these snow stencils from 1957.

The stencils inside are unpunched and unused, so I'm torn whether to preserve or use them.

Nothing was marked, but after gathering things up, I knocked on the door and an elderly woman answered.  She stepped out and gave a quick look over and came to $3 for the above items.

I noticed an Atari 2600 sitting on a table and asked her about it.  She said it was her son's.  She went to the doorway and yelled in asking him how much.  "It's $5!" he yelled back, clearly not wanting to be disturbed. It was missing the joysticks, but had the power adaptor and I knew I had some extra joysticks from another sale at home, so I took that too.

 It could use a little cleaning, but with a little tinkering, I got it working.