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I didn’t do any scavenging this week outside of my usual cast of eBay characters, but I didn’t spend much or win anything that’s especially notable. A lot of $2 to $10 and $10 to $30 trading cards and memorabilia. That’s how to build a business, but not necessarily always interesting discussion.
So I’ll post a scavenge that’s a few weeks old, a matted autograph and photo of tennis star Vitas Gerulaitis, who died quite young in a freak accident. I paid about $40 for it which may have been a slight overpay. But I’ll be surprised if I can’t find a buyer around $100.
What did you find this week?
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I found an engineer’s hammer by the firm of Holtzapfel, London. The founder of the firm invented a lathe called a “rose engine”, which was used to engrave the backgrounds for postage stamps and banknotes.
I’m presuming it’s an engineer’s hammer because it’s made entirely of iron, and the handle terminates in a wedge.
I looked up Gerulaitis; he died of carbon monoxide poisoning produced by an outside propane heater and drawn into the room he was sleeping in via the aircon.
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Gerulaitis’s death was what convinced me to bid as high as I did, he preceded the sports memorabilia craze so this felt like a unique item for a tennis collector.
I did a Terapeak search on engineer’s hammers since I’d never seen one before, and it’s interesting to see all the different types from vintage to modern. There’s a little antique shop in my small town and another the next town over, and looking at all these hammers made me want to stop by both of them on the next rainy day and browse for a bit.
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Yard sales were a bit disappointing this week. I was about to call it a day and stopped by one last yard sale. It didn’t look like much, but I always at least get out and give it the ol’ once over since I already drove to the sale.
In the middle there was a table with a massive jumbled pile of clothes. I saw new tags in the pile. I inquired and they were all new with tags scrubs. Nice ones too. I asked how much – $2 a piece.
Oh man….this is a rare find…but so much clothes. I asked if they’d do a buck a piece, kinda hoping they’d say no. After pondering it a bit, they said yes. I started to count a few and REALLY didn’t want to count them all. Just eyeballing it I figured there was around a hundred so I said “want to make it a an even hundred so we don’t have to count them all?” They said no as they thought there was alot more than a hundred. Well… they were right. VERY right.
There were 250 pieces!!!
I threw them all in the van and called it a day.
This week I’ll get them all organized, then just create a couple listings with multiples in size and color. The work will just be sorting and organizing, which I’ll pay my kids to do. The actual photographing and listing will not be too much at all. Total profit once they all sell will be around $3000. It’s definitely a pipeline!
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Did you find out why they were selling 250 new with tags scrubs at a yard sale? Such an inefficient way to move clothing in that quantity…but I always have to remind myself, not everyone is a scavenger or interested in selling things online. Great find!
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Retro I hardy ever get out to garage sales but I did and found them to be disappointing as well. I also went to the smallest and most disappointing church sale I’ve been to before. Still always fun to look.
This week from the piles I found 4 of these unusual art prints on particle board. I should have bought all 8 of them but the others had more nudity and I didn’t want a problem from Ebay. The artist is known, and famous for doing the children’s book Corduroy. These were done at the end of his life when he retired here. https://www.ebay.com/itm/235052844565 https://www.ebay.com/itm/334914832257 I had no comps at all. We’ll see what happens.
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Those prints are very cool, no idea whether they will sell for $91 or $19 but it will be fun to find out. There are enough watchers on other Don Freeman lithographs and drawings that I think you’ll do well. If you had a local auction house like @antique-frog the sale would happen so much quicker and you would have had an outlet to sell the nude ones as well
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@craig-rex They auction “pre-loved” adult magazines as well; I guess this is from house clearances. For example, sale December 2022, they got 270 dollars plus fees for 50 Mayfair magazines from the 1980s and 1990s; the cover price shown was £1.25 (two dollars).
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