running dogg wrote in :

I haven't done them, but estate sales are probably the best way to garner
interesting items. Older people, upon passing, may have kept items
hoarded away, either for their keepsake value, or simply since people
from harder times valued their possessions more, even if they fell into
disuse. Also, as a telling sign to modern quality, things made years ago
tended to last a long time. Manufacturers actually believed that people
wanted quality.

As soon as anyone gets hold of an item that they realize will sell on e-
bay for a good sum, there is little chance of seeing these items locally.
Near the area that I live, as little as 15 years ago, a friend was
walking down the sidewalk early one morning. Protruding from the curbside
garbage can from a residence was a rifle. My friend removed the rifle,
knocked, and an old woman came to the door. She had thrown the gun away,
apparently it was her now deceased husband's, she had no use for it. He
asked permission to take it, even though it was officially trash anyway,
and she readily agreed. It's not like it was an AR-15 or something like
that, it was a 30-30. But it was worth something, especially more so than
scrap. (never mind the implications of a child getting hold of the rifle,
she was old and probably didn't understand the ramifications of what she
had done).

Every once in a while, I see someone at work that gets a fantastic deal
on a car from a widow or simply a neighbor that wants to get rid of their
car, perhaps they are in bad health. The amount that they pay is
ludicrously low compared to what the car is really worth. Certainly there
are HAMs and SWLers wives out their that don't know what to do with their
departed hubby's equipment. If I were buying the item for myself, even if
the price is below market, I wouldn't feel too guilty, but I would be
guilt ridden if I habitually bought items for resale at significantly
greater prices. I do realize that business is business, perhaps that is
why I am not a lawyer or businessman.

Dr. Artaud


My strange link of the day:
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/flash/numanuma.html

Then:
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/flash/sup...cillusion.html

From: http://www.ebaumsworld.com

When I was a teenager, I bought a Sony TR-620, a little MW transistor
radio made in about 1961, for 50 cents at a flea market. Six years
later I sold it in an antique radio magazine classified ad for $80. I
didn't do anything special to it, I didn't restore it, I didn't mess
with it. This was long before Ebay, in fact still when few people had
the internet, most people put their phone numbers in their ads and you
had to pay long distance charges to call them. Unfortunately, ever
since the advent of Ebay, great deals like that are increasingly hard
to find. I noted to a friend today that one rarely sees radios, either
tube or transistor, in antique stores nowadays. When I was a teenager
in the early 90s radios were plentiful. I think that most of the tube
radios and probably most of the pre-1963 transistor radios that are
out there have been spoken for. I suppose there's still some baby
boomers holding on to "my first radio", and as they die there will be
a wave of 1950s transistor radios hitting the market, but other than
that most of the radios are stashed away in collections. Finding a
1930s tube radio in some old forgotten barn somewhere is rare
nowadays, IMO. It's about the same odds as finding an Edsel in that
barn, or a Stradivarius violin. In fact, I saw a website a few years
ago that said that the chances of finding an undiscovered pre WW2 TV
set, of either US or UK manufacture, is about the same as finding an
undiscovered Stradivarius violin.