My favorite shopping event of the year isn’t a sample sale or black Friday. Nope. I live for the White Elephant Preview Sale put on every year by the Oakland Museum Women’s Board. A fundraiser that has raised more than $27 million dollars since it was founded 60+ years ago, the White Elephant is the rummage sale to end all rummage sales. It is more than 96,000 square feet of the most perfectly organized and categorized junk you’ll ever find.
I’d love to share my experience at the 2020 White Elephant Preview Sale and give you some tips and tricks I’ve learned along the way at my three years of attending the sale.
Keith was my partner-in-crime this year for the sale. We had an absolute blast together. This was us waiting in line for about an hour. Totally tired, but excited to find some treasures.
People arrive early in the morning for the sale with a huge line wrapping around the Jingletown neighborhood of Oakland where the warehouse is located. We’ve met so many awesome people in line over the years who have been coming to the sale for 30 years or more. I aspire to be them someday. We usually line up around 8:45 for the doors opening at 10. I feel like that’s plenty early because the warehouse is so huge and you only really need to get there early if you want the big ticket furniture items that go pretty fast. There’s a Food Maxx a couple of blocks away that we park at in the morning. We then grab a Starbucks and a donut and walk over to the line.
The preview sale costs $20 for admission. You can buy your tickets online before the sale, but this year we just brought cash and paid in line and it was easy peasy. If you’re super into thrifting, I’d definitely recommend coughing up the cash for the preview sale. They run another White Elephant sale in March that’s free and open to the public, but it’s already been a bit picked over by the preview sale attendees by then.
Once the doors open, the warehouse floods with people so be prepared to be a little overwhelmed. Do some breathing exercises! There are 20 different departments within the warehouse that are like individual stores themselves. You pay at each department and they do take credit cards so the lines will slow you up, so plan accordingly. We had a long list of things we wanted to buy and we pursued each of them according to our priorities.
So, what did we get? Our first stop was at furniture because I wanted a huge gilded mirror to take my outfit of the day photos. Look at this beauty that we scored for just $140! Can’t wait to style it out. Once you find something you want to buy, you find a sale representative and tell them you want to buy an item. They will then tear off part of the tag and write your name and number on the back of the remaining tag. You’ll then take the torn tag to the furniture payment area. Once you pay, they will give you a receipt that you hold onto when it’s time to claim your furniture and they give you a little sticker that you take back to your furniture and place on the remaining tag to show that it’s bought and paid for. It’s a bit of a confusing system, but it works once you get the hang of it.
I also wanted a new table for our little dining nook. Now that I’m writing more and working from home consistently one day a week, I needed a bigger, more comfortable set-up than our tiny dining table. Look at the gorgeous table we scored for just $200! I’m thrilled with it, especially because there is storage in the benches. I can’t wait to get it all decorated and potentially even painted.
After finishing our shopping in furniture, we split up to do our individual shopping. Keith headed to electronics and I headed to housewares, where I got awesome dishes and stuff for our kitchen. I spent about $60 and got tons of bowls, a knife sharpener, jars, and a tea kettle. You can find literally anything you want at the White Elephant Sale. It’s so crazy to me how organized and well-priced it is.
We were pretty overwhelmed and over it by about 1pm so we headed back to our car and grabbed lunch at the Popeyes Chicken nearby. After eating, we made our way back to the mele and picked up our items with a truck. They have staff that will help you load your items into your car. Be sure to tip well. I was grinning from ear to ear all day after scoring such amazing treasures and supporting such an awesome cause. White Elephant Sale – YOU’RE AMAZING.
Whew. That was a long post. Thank you so much for letting me share my favorite sale of all time with you. Hopefully people will come across this post so they can get the lay of the White Elephant Preview Sale because it is a bit confusing and overwhelming at first. I wish I had this post a few years ago!
Do you like thrift shopping? Where are your favorite places to shop?
