That time I went to Michael Beasley's house and bought a framed Yale poster

Posted by Zach Harper 1768 days ago
Category: 2012 Offseason
Tags: Buck plate, Michael Beasley, Michael Beasley Estate Sale, Super Cool Beas, Wooden Duck, Yale, YOLO

As some of you made have read on RandBall Monday, Michael Beasley had an estate sale. Instead of moving his stuff from Minneapolis to Phoenix, he decided to put that new $18 million contract to use and just buy new stuff for his new home. After moving just a couple of miles at the beginning of this month, I can’t say that I blamed him.

After Dan Murphy live-tweeted his excursion to Orono to Beasley’s current/soon-to-be-former estate, I decided I had to get in on the action for Day 2 of the Beasley Estate Sale. My lady friend and I were hosting Spurs blogger Graydon Gordian for the weekend while he was in town for business, and he couldn’t have been more excited about the idea of heading to Michael Beasley’s place and rifling through his stuff.

There were even daydreams and comments about the off-chance he might be in the house, haggling over certain items. Sadly, he wasn’t there. We arrived at his house around 9:30 in the morning and parked about a half mile down the road from his home. We traversed rough, gravel roads that had yet to be repaved. We had a dog in an open yard barking at us, and a wily old man glaring from his yard at every passerby.

As we walked up to his house, we could see people coming and going. One gentleman walking away with a wooden box said to “enjoy the walk,” even though we couldn’t have been more than a couple hundred feet away at that point. A group of ladies walked by us holding lamps they had recently purchased. And when we arrived in his frontyard, there were a couple of workers from the estate sale bringing out purchased furniture to load into cars and trailers.

We stepped inside to find out that all items marked as $50 or lower were 50% off and anything over $50 would be 30% off — the benefits of last minute estate sale shopping. In the room to our left as we walked in, there were display cases with various watches, necklaces, cufflinks, wine-stoppers, and women’s handbags. The prices varied from $20 for the stoppers to a little over a thousand dollars for various jewelry items.

I offered my lady to buy here a handbag, but sadly nothing caught her eye.

We moved out of that room and into the living room where various chairs, couches, and lamps were being sold.

As we moved our way into the dining room, we saw a lovely dining room table with all kinds of knickknacks on display. There were bowls with decorative eggs inside, candlesticks on sale, and this odd green pitcher/vase that was already sold and spoken for. What’s weird is it was just sitting there, waiting to be picked up. For some reason it was too much to carry this out with you?

As I ventured out of the dining room to possibly explore the other two levels of the house, a framed poster caught my eye. It was this Yale poster, which left our group completely perplexed as to why this would be in Beasley’s possession. Was he a big fan of the Ivy League schools? Was he more of a Yale guy than a Harvard man? Did he just think it was classy to have this poster? I had so many questions and one of them was definitely, “did I want to spend $15 on this poster?” The other question being, “can I convince my lady this is a great addition to our new loft?”

My assumption that Graydon, my lady and I would be in this exploration together was quickly dashed, as I headed to the kitchen and living room to check out the rest of the middle floor and the items for sale on it while Graydon broke away giddily from the group to explore the basement. As I made it to the end of the room, we saw the same basketball hoop in the backyard area that Dan Murphy photographed the day before. I think Alan Horton was definitely correct when he stated that the trees could definitely explain a few things about his performance on the court.

As I moved back through the living room and into the kitchen, I am sad to realize I never checked how much the television was being listed for. Maybe it was a note on it saying it wasn’t for sale, but at a potential 30% off, I should have been more attentive to the details at hand, rather than just seeing what kind of glassware Beas was offering up to the public.

I was really hoping for some type of goblet to be available for sale, but there was nothing but china, vases and candlesticks.

As we made our way back through the kitchen and toward the stairs, Graydon returned back to find us. He was smiling from ear to ear, grasping a wooden duck and a decorative plate. As we realized what he was holding in his hands, all he could do was smile, nod at us in confirmation, and say, “yeah… yeah that’s exactly what I’m holding — a wooden duck.”

As I tried to subside my jealousy at his new treasure, we walked up the stairs to the floor where the magic happened. The first thing we noticed was a couple of really horrible stains at the top of the staircase. It could have been dog feces or spilled juice or some horrific water damage that somehow molded up the carpet and floor, but it didn’t look like something the next owners would probably want to deal with.

There were several rooms in the house taped off to restrict access, but we were still allowed to see Beasley’s room and what looked to be a child’s room. In his room, the master bathroom was restricted from the public but I peaked in to see quite a few pairs of pants draped across the counter. Most of them looked like track pants, but I didn’t investigate further because I was worried about crossing a boundary and getting kicked out before I could purchase a memento.

Beasley’s room was fairly nice, even though there were wine stains around the bed. His entire bed and the furniture in the room were available to be sold. The bed seemed like the best deal in the entire place. It was previously listed for $2200 and marked down to $1100. But don’t forget; you get to take an additional 30% off that price. Or you did if you went to the estate sale in search for a new bed.

Another room in the upstairs was taped off so we didn’t have access, but the majority of the taped off rooms made it look more like a crime scene than an area that just needed to be cleaned up a bit.

Although based on some of the stains around the upstairs, I can’t even imagine what would have been so bad that the room had to be quarantined from the customers. Did Brad Miller clean up his hunting “trophies” in there? Did they allow Pekovic to throw parties in there? Now I kind of want to go back to the house and sleuth around.

There wasn’t much to look at upstairs so we headed down to the basement.

The most notable of items in the basement (since Graydon broke off from the group earlier and claimed the duck and a plate with a buck painted on it) was a set of martini glasses that happened to be next to two (count em TWO) bottles of blue raspberry margarita mix that were available for $1 each. Actually, after the 50% off, you were essentially getting a buy one, get one free type of deal.

This may be my biggest regret from the day, actually. I meant to go back down to the basement before we left to purchase the two bottles of blue raspberry margarita mix. I’ve never had a blue raspberry margarita, and it doesn’t sound particularly good to me, but I would definitely have saved those for a big birthday party or a housewarming affair to bust them out and shout, “who wants a blue raspberry margarita from Michael Beasley’s house?!”

Again, if I can get back there to sleuth this week, I’m taking those bottles and leaving a dollar like the blue raspberry fairy.

There wasn’t much in the basement aside from a bunch of chairs and a couple of sofas, so we headed upstairs to the main floor and into the garage. There was a table with a lot of old AM/FM radios and walkmans because… well.. I have no idea why they were there. We speculated that someone from the estate sale company just threw those in, hoping to clear out their own garage under Beasley’s name.

By far the best item for sale in the garage (other than a small football and a baseball glove that probably wasn’t Beasley’s because it was a glove for someone that catches with their left hand… of course, he could just be someone that shoots left-handed and throws right-handed) were the set of 4 Foose Speedster 20″ rims and tires for $1800 (plus 30% off!).

We decided to make our purchases and get out of the way of the estate sellers.

I decided to go with the Yale poster. It was a little alarming because as we were rung up for our items and began walking out of the house with our items, people seemed overly excited that I had decided to get the Yale poster. Four different people commented on me buying it and all of them had a sense of joy in their voices.

Was it a complete ruse to see if some poor sucker would walk away with that? Did he actually ever own it? Was it just a prop the estate sale company puts in to see how desperate people are for a piece of this person’s life? Why were they so excited? WHY WERE THEY SO EXCITED?!

Anyway, if you were ever going to go to an estate sale for Michael Beasley and look down at your ticket at the end of the day, wouldn’t you hope to see something along the lines of “Plate, Duck, Yale picture?” on your itemized receipt?

And doesn’t it kind of look like “YOLO picture” on the receipt? If you’re going to buy a Yale poster from Michael Beasley’s house, aren’t you kind of saying, “YOLO” to yourself as you do it? I know I did.

As you can see, we got these three items for a grand total of $25 and it kind of feels like we got away with robbery. To walk out of an NBA player’s home with a wooden duck that has jewels for eyes, a decorative plate with a buck painted on it, and a Yale poster that’s framing probably cost at least $25 is like hitting the jackpot on any of those Storage Wars shows.

The rest of the day, we spent our last few hours of Graydon’s trip enjoying some brunch and giggling to ourselves about how we had just spent our morning. My lady friend suggested the name Michael Beakley for Graydon’s new duck and the name stuck instantly. Before we took Graydon back to our place so he could grab his stuff before his flight out of town, we took him down to the river for a quick photo shoot with Michael Beakley.

I don’t think it could have been a better sendoff, nor could it have been a better way to spend a Sunday morning.

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