Yahoo Movies Martha Stewart Dishes About Her Tag Sale: Kris Jenner and Blake Lively 'Wanted Every Piece' of Jadeite
Martha Stewart is an "avid tag sale goer," so naturally, the lifestyle expert wanted to host one herself.
In April, Stewart, 80, invited friends and fans to her farm in Katonah, New York, to raise money for Mount Sinai's Martha Stewart Center for Living. Now everyone gets to watch the sophisticated yard sale on May 25 as ABC broadcasts the event in a one-hour special — The Great American Tag Sale with Martha Stewart.
From furniture to kitchenware, the day featured one-of-a-kind items that Stewart has been collecting for decades. "I've been collecting and collecting my whole life," she tells PEOPLE.
Some of the pieces for sale came from her first-ever home on Turkey Hill Road in Connecticut, where her first cookbook Entertaining was shot, while others were from her East Hampton home and her former offices in New York City.
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While "no haggling was allowed," Stewart welcomed friendly competition at the charitable farm event. Her McCoy Jadeite collection in particular was the envy of the sale. Two of the chef's celebrity friends managed to snag the valuable green glassware.
"Different people bought it, but it was pretty evenly distributed between Blake Lively and Kris Jenner. They loved it. They wanted every piece," she says.
Eric Liebowitz/ABC
Getting their hands on the collection was no small feat. Stewart says Jenner, who makes an appearance in the ABC special via FaceTime, even flew one of her assistants out to buy it.
"Those are hard to part with because collecting all those rare pieces of McCoy, it took years. And I had my East Hampton house for more than 30 years and that house was filled with McCoy," says the lifestyle expert, who recently partnered up with another precious glassware company for her Baccarat collection.
Stewart's daughter, Alexis, has also been collecting jadeite, also called fire king, for years. She made sure her pieces, which Stewart stores in her Maine house, weren't sold in the tag sale. "She called me before the tag sale and said, 'You're not selling my fire king, are you?' And I said, 'No, that's in Maine,'" she hilariously recounts of the mother-daughter moment.
However, Stewart reveals that there were some items she didn't intend to sell over the span of the two-day event. "My beautiful green garden cart, I'll miss that. I had two of them and they sold both. They were only supposed to sell one, but somehow both of them got into the sale," she says of the mishap. "And I didn't notice because they were outside of the tent."
Stewart doesn't even know the price they sold for, but she's "sure it's not enough," she laughs.
While some smaller pieces and knickknacks went for as low as $10, one of the most expensive items at the tag sale was a full kitchen priced at $26,000.
Eric Liebowitz/ABC
"It was a Martha-designed kitchen — all the cabinets and the counters and the sink. That was a very nice item," she says. "We also had some very valuable vintage posters — French posters framed — that were between anywhere from $7,000 to $20,000. And some of those sold."
While the hosting expert admits holding her own tag sale was "more complicated and more difficult" than she initially thought, she's happy with the results. "[Tag sales] are a very, very convenient and good way to buy things that are not ordinary. And a sale like this, which you knew was coming from beautiful homes of Martha Stewart, it had a lot of variety and a lot of quality and a lot of really valuable things."
The sale raised over $800,000 for Martha Stewart Center For Living. As health care workers continue to work through the pandemic, Stewart says "they deserve a public display of support and money as do many, many organizations like that."
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Eric Liebowitz/ABC
And while she's not ready for another massive undertaking that is a Martha Stewart-level tag sale, she hopes other celebrities take her lead and host their own sale for charity.
"Wouldn't it be great?" she says of starting the trend.
Without a drop of rain, overall the event was a Stewart-approved success.
"The people love the art of discovery and the art of the find and it's exciting. And everybody, old, young, whatever, they like the excitement of a tag sale because it's first come first serve," she says. "And you have to get in there and you have to grab. And you can't push or shove, as I said in the beginning, but you have to really have a good eye and get the stuff. So it turned out to be a very, very fun event."
The Great American Tag Sale with Martha Stewart airs May 25 at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.
