Documentary Yard Sale In the Backwoods

Location
Seattle
Name
Andrew
Last Saturday, I had a FB message from a friend who knows I am into cameras, letting me know there was a large assortment of them at a yard sale. Being as it was my day off, and the siren call of old cameras is hard to resist, I hopped into the Jeep and went to see what was on offer. It was a gravel road ten minutes outside of town along the highway, which wound and split off frequently, but had sufficient signs to guide me to the location, and boy, what a location it was. Set a couple miles off from the highway in some woods, where a 120-foot trailer had existed but was no longer there. What was there was a veritable hoard of stuff, stuff of every kind, including a lot of cameras from a full cross-section of box cameras, medium format folders, small fixed-lens rangefinders and - oddly - only a few SLRs. Sadly, I live very near the coast and the moisture out here is a force to be reckoned with. All or nearly all of the stuff was covered in mold and the optics heavily affected by fungus. I did end up buying a small boxful, but I'm not sure at this point whether I'll be able to salvage anything working. I plan on cleaning up and posting some of the finds later. But I wanted to share the setting, because this place was truly bizarre. Photos follow.

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by Andrew Lossing, on Flickr
Old typewriters that have seen better days, raised from the ubiquitous mud by a few boards...

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by Andrew Lossing, on Flickr
What was once a living quarters, I guess, and a car which - hard to believe - once ran.

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by Andrew Lossing, on Flickr
I parked near this makeshift shelter. Is that... a pinball table?

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by Andrew Lossing, on Flickr
Part of the most centrally located series of shelters.

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by Andrew Lossing, on Flickr

Once again, the GR proves its ability to go anywhere and not attract a lot of attention...
 
It looks more like the aftermath of a natural disaster than a yard sale. Those kind of situations can be frustrating because you just know that everything that's made of wood, fabric, metal, paper or card is most likely going to be damp and ruined, so you walk away from a lot of interesting things you might otherwise have bought.

-R
 
Wow.

Just wow.|

Seems like a lot of work to haul all of this stuff out of a trailer when it would have been much easier to just haul it to the landfill.

Although I might consider the pinball machine and the old T-Bird.
 
It looks more like the aftermath of a natural disaster than a yard sale. Those kind of situations can be frustrating because you just know that everything that's made of wood, fabric, metal, paper or card is most likely going to be damp and ruined, so you walk away from a lot of interesting things you might otherwise have bought.

-R
Oh, I know. I'm telling you, the cameras were such a cool find, but every single lens is covered in fungus. It's very frustrating!
 
These are some great shots. I think I would've had some trouble with composition and context, it looks like such a mess of a yard.
"Yard" is very loosely applied. One of the shots in the middle shows a fairly large flat space (freshly upturned mud), I think that's where the trailer used to be. The rest of it is woods and hillside. It does not look like where someone would live.
 
Wow.

Just wow.|

Seems like a lot of work to haul all of this stuff out of a trailer when it would have been much easier to just haul it to the landfill.

Although I might consider the pinball machine and the old T-Bird.
Yes, I understood it to be some sort of estate sale, the woman who was running it has done a few around here, so I assume she is either getting paid for it or getting a cut of the sales... in spite of how "the hills have eyes" -ish the place was, there were quite a few people showing up.
 
Yes, I understood it to be some sort of estate sale, the woman who was running it has done a few around here, so I assume she is either getting paid for it or getting a cut of the sales... in spite of how "the hills have eyes" -ish the place was, there were quite a few people showing up.
People love rooting through other people's belongings
 
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