Bargain Hunting Treasure Seeker: Finally we made it to the World's Longest Yard Sale!

I had wanted to check out the World's Longest Yard Sale for a while after seeing a show about it on HGTV. If you have never heard of it, you can check it out on the official website (www.127sale.com). It is always the first full weekend in August. This year it is August 5-8.

The first time I thought about going was for the 2007 sale, but couldn't find anyone to make the trek with me. So in 2008, my husband decided it would be fun for us to go as our anniversary present to each other (it was our 20th anniversary on June 4 of that year). Most people we know take exotic trips or cruises for a landmark anniversary-not us! I guess that does make us true "Bargain Hunting Treasure Seekers"!

After a lot of research and planning, we decided to start in Crossville, TN, which looked to us to be about the half way point. That way we could work our way north toward home along 127. Most everything I read said that you would never get to do the whole sale in the 4 days, so we figured that the halfway thing would work out pretty well. It actually worked too well! We were home by Friday night! I'll get back to that later though.

The desk clerk at the hotel we stayed at (just outside of Crossville) told us that it was too bad we didn't go further south. She said it is usually a lot better more towards the Alabama border.

On Wednesday morning when we woke up, the whole hotel was without power and without a back-up generator. Luckily, it came back on in time for us to shower before we left. We decided to check out the route a little bit to see where a good place to start would be-kind of scope it out and get a feel for what we were getting ourselves in for. We saw some vendors all set up on the side of the road, and people were already shopping! (I had read that most vendors will let you shop while they are setting up, or they will come early to set up to catch early shoppers). That began the fun!

We started out just stopping at every sale we saw big or little. Then we decided to skip the single sales (sales that were just one house per stop) and only stopped at areas where there were fields of vendors set up, or where there were a few houses right next to each other that we could stop at and walk to them all and take in at least 3 or 4 sales.

The best deals I got were... First, a dinner sized plate in the Miss America pattern from Anchor Hocking in clear or crystal (this pattern was produced from 1935-1938). It had a sticker of $2 on it-so trying to be a good bargain hunter, I offered the man ( who looked to be about 85 or older) $1. He said he couldn't take that, because that plate was really old, and his wife would have his hide if he just gave everything away! That was the first purchase of the trip and it was a good one! Second, was two place settings of Hazel Atlas Moroccan for a steal, and then a 4 piece set of Anchor Hocking Savannah bakeware (this isn't an antique, but it has been discontinued for several years now and I just love it). Other things I picked up were, a plum pyrex pie plate (to replace the one that dropped out of the fridge when someone opened the door too fast when it was full of taco dip for a party that day), a really old amethyst creamer ( I haven't figured out the maker or the pattern or the age of it yet), a set of salad plates ( to match some other pieces I've found at garage sales), and a Moroccan salad set.

Kevin got a neat antique ship's compass and an antique adz. The later he proudly displays in his woodshop.

Of course, we got a few of the souvenir t-shirts, and some unique treasures and lots of fun memories. I also got the bug to do it again someday--hopefully really soon! If you get a chance to go on the WLYS, make sure you stop at the Jeamestown Chamber of Commerce and buy your "official" t-shirt!

...Remember when I said starting at the halfway point might have been too good of an idea? Well...we kept on driving and stopping, and driving and stopping and before we knew it, we ran out of yard sales and decided that rather than stay another night in a hotel room, that we would just drive that last few hours of the journey and sleep in our own bed that night (that is how we ended up home on Friday). Even though we seemed to go at a pretty fast pace, I think we both were happy with the amount of things we got to see and purchase along the way! oh yeah, we never ended up needing the car top carrier-so it stayed in the car the whole trip-LOL!