Vintage Resources....Sale Finders

It's pretty easy to find Salvation Army and Goodwill stores year-round, and garage sales are a dime a dozen in the summer time. But digging through all the plastic contemporary junk on the shelves at the Salvation Army and Goodwill can get tiresome, and garage sales are far less common in the colder months...with good reason! Why would anyone want to sit outside on their driveway shivering in the snow just to make 50 cents here and 10 cents there? So what is the intrepid thrifter to do once she's bored with the Goodwill and unable to garage sale-hop?

Why, visit flea markets and estate sales, of course! Both are (for the most part) inside, and (for the most part) year-round! Of course, finding estate sales in the winter isn't quite as easy as finding garage sales in the summer...driving slowly through random neighborhoods looking for signs is likely to be a waste of effort.

But never fear! That's where the intrepid thrifter can turn to a wee bit of research! CraigsList is your friend here, of course, but as with anything, we want to move beyond the most obvious site into the specialized ones. My favorite is the Estate Sale Network. It is a nation-wide listing of estate sales. The estate sale agents themselves list their sales, usually including pictures of the types of items available so you can tell if it is your sort of sale or not. Nothing worse than driving out to a sale only to find loads of junk...and not the good kind of junk, either!

There is a similar site, gslar.com, that includes garage sales as well as yard sales and estate sales. I've personally not used this one yet, but it seems useful as well and I'll definitely be checking it out to see what kind of listings are up during the winter months when garage sales are less common.


What are your favorite resources for finding the sales?