If you love to go junking as I do let me assure you that you won’t be deprived of opportunities if your move from your smog laden metroplex to the Palm Springs and Desert Resort Communities. 

Local yard, garage and estate sales have never been better here in the Desert. Prices in general have been driven down by the slowing economy (as elsewhere). But what you will notice is that regionally, fewer people are interested in traditional antiques and collectables, with decorating interests veering towards “Mid-Century Modern”. It is definitely a buyers market if you are a lover of antiques.  

Of course if you are among the first people to arrive at a garage sale early Saturday morning you will probably see a similar group of dealers found every where else, armed with magnifying glasses, reference books, and iPods for price comparisons, moving through the jewelry, figurines, china and glass, books and records, doing the same thing you are doing… looking for treasures… or more specifically mistakes. 

These mistakes include items that are marked much lower than their actual value. Fine jewelry and diamonds mixed in with the costume and fake, rare patterns of china, and first edition books signed by the author to name a few. Anyone who watches Antiques Road Show knows about the $50 that bought two face jugs at a yard sale. The larger one brought to the show was worth $50,000. 

There are several estate sale companies operating in the desert. At these sales every item will be marked with a price tag.  (What they call a Tag-Sale on the east coast.)  It is less likely that you will find a mistake item at one of these sales, but you still have an opportunity run across items undervalued in today’s regional fad decorating market. 

 

For many years while living in the Desert and commuting to a job in Riverside I went to yard sales here in the Valley and would often come across items that I would love to have bought, but inevitably I would end up saying to myself, “if only I had an antique shop.” It wasn’t so much that I wanted to own the items as it was that I wanted to resell them at a profit. (That’s part of my hunter-gatherer-retailer genetic coding that I can’t seem to escape.)

 

Well, one day I got word that an old Main Street building across from the Mission Inn in Riverside was to be refurbished and put to use as the Mission Galleria antique mall. I managed to talk another HR employee into going together on a space rental. The business was a mixed blessing because it was so successful that I had to restock each week. This meant that I had to hit the garage sales hard each weekend. Now I was the ruthless dealer snatching the Nippon teapot out of the white-haired little old lady’s hands (not really). 

 

The good thing for me was that the Desert and Riverside were two distinct markets. The things that didn’t necessarily appeal to the Desert shoppers were hot sellers in Riverside. In terms of furnishing, I attribute the different tastes to of the mix of housing stock. In Palm Spring you can not find a single example of a Queen Anne house, or an American Craftsman Style Bungalow for that matter. So, I would export to Riverside the things that were brought to the Desert from elsewhere, that no one else wanted to buy.   

One of my “mistake” bargains I am wearing today. The story that surrounds this bargain began when my wife came home sporting a slightly used run of the mill Timex watch which she proudly announced that she only paid $5 for it , at an estate/yard sale down the street. I went back with her to the sale and after a brief period of rummaging I made an offer of $5 (which was accepted) for a box of assorted costume jewelry that also contained a watch. 

I did end up selling out the costume jewelry in the next two weeks for $3 to $5 an item, but the real prize I kept for myself… the men’s wristwatch. It had the nastiest, cruddiest looking metal expansion band on it. So much so that no one would ever want to put it on their wrist. And, naturally it was not ticking.

When this men’s gold wristwatch sold new in 1967, it came with a leather band and a logo buckle. So naturally, I first thing I did was to trash the band and as I wear it now it has the logo buckle. And further, for appearance I had the scratched plastic crystal buffed out to look like new, a free service by my jeweler. The reason it was not ticking was not a dead battery as most people would guess today. But, rather this watch had one of the finest and most accurate self-winding mechanisms ever made by the OMEGA Watch Company of Switzerland. The motion of the wrist while wearing it keeps it wound up and ticking. 

 

OMEGA was the official timekeeper at no less than 21 Olympic Games, bringing numerous innovations to Olympic sports over the years, such as the first electronic timekeeping at the Helsinki games in 1952 - the same year in which the company was awarded the Olympic Cross of Merit for its outstanding contribution to sport.

 

On account of its precision and reliability, OMEGA's Speedmaster watch was chosen by NASA as its official chronometer in 1965 and 4 years later was the first watch to be worn on the moon, when, on 21 July 1969, Neil Armstrong made his giant leap for mankind.

 

 

So, if you move to the Desert to take a job with Riverside County, don’t sell your comfortable “junking shoes” at a garage sale before you leave, because you will certainly need them here… although you may want to buy a replacement “I brake for all garage sales” bumper stickers, to put on the new convertible that you “had to have” to drive around here in the Valley.