Flip it over!

The theme of this week’s thrifting adventure is: “Flip it Over!” I found several amazing treasures during my stop at two Goodwill Outlets in Indy yesterday…but the surprise treasures I found on the backs of several items turned out to be even cooler than the things that caught my eye in the first place.

Notice the really cool game board in the back, I did too…and it turned out to be reversible, with an equally cool bowling game on the back. In fact, it was a great day for games in general. The Chinese Checker boards have a cool checkerboard on the back (and this one happened to have all the checkers and 20 of the original marbles as well). I also learned a little about the Cleveland Indians and the Curse of Rocky Colavito.

I’m getting ready for our annual puzzlefest event this coming weekend…so puzzles were definitely jumping out to me as I searched through the bins. And speaking of “jumping out,” this one caught my eye because it is 3D! It had been broken up into four large pieces of assembled blocks…and I didn’t see any other pieces around it in the bin so I decided to take my chances. The fact that it was mostly assembled made it really easy to reassemble and I was delighted to find that all the pieces where there…as well as the 3D glasses! But the cooler thing, was discovering the Star Wars spoof comic on the back of the box. I totally missed that while I was shopping! The cards in “The Game of Authors” were also neat, and I was happy to find so many of them (though admittedly not a full set) because they led me to the box, which is interesting in its own right.

Next up: Photos! I found so many old photos on this trip. I was going to count but forgot to do it while I had them out. I’d guess at least 100. Sometimes I find clusters of photos that all seem to be from the same family, but these were in zip lock bags (marked $10)…so they seemed to be sets that had been reassembled for sale. The photos are amazing, but I happened to flip one of them over and loved the image on the back almost as much…so then I started checking all the backs of the photos too and found a few other ones that were neat as well. This proved to be another example of the benefits of flipping things over.

It was also a great day for Christmas finds. I couldn’t believe that these vintage ornaments and tree toppers had survived the bins! I was super-happy to rescue them…and managed to get them all home without breaking!

I found lots of vintage hand-sewn goodies as well. Some were in pretty bad shape, but I’ve been seeing lots of crafts on pinterest that I can try…and because they are stained or torn in some spots, I won’t feel super guilty for altering them.