by Sheree Zielke

Created on: March 23, 2007   Last Updated: November 25, 2008

The Most Lucrative Return

"What do you think of this, Nana?"

We both maintained our practiced aloof composure, my 7-year old understudy and me, as she handed me a small card filled with miniature buttons and zippers, all in their original packaging. The little scamp had found a vintage pack of Barbie and Midge sewing notions dated to the early 60s. I knew this garage sale gem would do well on eBay.

"Hmm," I said (same aloofness). "I might be able to do something with that."

We paid the pittance asked and scurried away to our car, my granddaughter infected with my excitement but not completely comprehending that we had a good thing, a very good thing.

"You'll be getting some of the money from this," I told my granddaughter, "since it was your eyes that spotted it." My grandson upon hearing this (the same grandson who is usually lukewarm about going to garage sales) immediately suggested that perhaps we find some more garage sales.

A few days later the item was loaded on eBay where it turned a 3200% profit. The buyer in Britain who purchased it was ecstatic with her new treasure.

Garage sales, flea markets, and eBay have proved to be extremely good training grounds to teach my grandchildren the value of "junk." Our modern world is too full of "fast" this and "disposable" that. Nothing in their little lives has any lasting value. Use it, finish with it, and throw it away. Well, I am a Baby Boomer, and that kind of thinking is just plain blasphemous.

I grew up on a Manitoba farm where I was surrounded by the past: old CPR station houses, their Victorian wallpaper still intact, turquoise green power pole glass insulators, wooden farm tools like butter forms and churns, sad irons that truly lived up to their name, ugly old composition dolls with teeth, dainty depression glass bowls and pitchers, chipped enamel cooking pots and washing tubs, and wonderfully smelly old books.

But while my family was always moving onwards and upwards to the next best appliance, snowmobile, car, or garden tool, we were taught to respect that which had come before. I want my grandchildren to have that same appreciation.

So, every weekend our grandchildren spend with us during garage sale season, they will visit at least a half dozen or more sales as we make our way to other destinations like the St. Albert's Farmer's Market or a local play park. Besides, garage sales yield some great park toys for just a few cents. Our grandsons have that one figured out; they usually do well with their 25-cent budgets.

But my granddaughter with her wide open mind, inquisitive nature and incredible memory has begun to identify the "good" junk. She has learned to spot the glaze of 50s pottery, the rough edges of Depression glass, and she's learned to appreciate the wonderful scent of smelly old books (she learned to read from a Dick and Jane Primer as old as myself). She can spot crystal and she can find a silver spoon beneath the grime.

Does she ever get bored? Oh yes, sometimes she is garage saled out, but tired or not, she will always have an appreciation for the quality of the past and a respect for the work of the hands that went before her, many many many years before her.

Perhaps that is the most lucrative return of all.

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