Today's Yard Sale Finds

The Find

First Impression: Wasn't expecting to find much at the community yard sales today
What it is: Lots of neat different items, some for keep, some for resale
What I paid: $52
Estimated Value: $~150 ?
Sold For: $pending$

The Story

It was a long hot day of yard-saling today, but it was fun! Woke up at six twenty am, and started hitting the sales around 7:30, and didn't finish until about 2:30. A lot of neat stuff was found and it was great to be able to get to them all on foot. Here's a pic of the day's take:

Kind of hard to see everything in the photo but here's a list of what I bought:

Nice blue pot from Home Depot - $0.50
Pentax K1000 SE SLR camera, with 50mm f2 lens w/ box and manual - $25
'Lettuce thrower' for getting the water off your lettuce - $1
Old records including two RCA Living Stereo -$0.50 to $1 each
R. Good Jr. Denver Colorado insulator + purple Am. Tel. & Tel. Insulator (cracked) - $0.50 each
Insulator book by James L. Hill and Edward Pickett $0.50
Proctor Dual Automatic model 1483 Chrome Toaster - $2
GE 7-4305 flip clock new in the box - $10
Linksys wrt54G wireless router, may not work - $ 1
Caloi Avante Viscount bike saddle - $2
White Rock Ginger Ale bottle circa 1948 - $2 -UPDATE- DIDN"T SELL FOR $10
Souder & Chick Dairy Brunswick MD half pint milk bottle $1 -UPDATE- SOLD FOR $31
Two Twin Elms Farm Dairy Springfield, MO milk bottles $0.50 each -UPDATE- Traded one, the other DIDN'T SELL FOR $10

The lettuce thrower is one of the neatest items, it folds flat or the handles flip around and act like a stand for the basket. The very neat (and very old!) lady gave me a demonstration on how it works, basically you put your lettuce in it and swing it around. She said she hasn't used it much here but back in France she used it all the time as it was the only way to dry out your lettuce after washing and still keep it crisp and fresh. For $1 I just had to try it, and I kind of have a fondness for kitchen gadget. I'm looking forward to trying it out, and I may use it for a fruit basket when I'm not tossing the lettuce around and getting water everywhere ;-)

Other highlights include home made cookies and pink lemonade for 50 cents, not a bad day!

Introduction (and a Neat Find)

Hey everyone, my name's Ryan, and I have great fun looking for vintage or valuable stuff to sell on ebay. This site is just a way to share some of my finds: past, present, and future. I'll be posting pics of all the stuff I find, as well as what I paid for the items, and what they eventually sold for. I'm always going to yard sales (a.ka. garage sales, or if you live in the Eastern U.S. 'tag sales'), auctions, flea markets, thrift stores, antique stores, surfing Craigslist; I pretty much try to go anywhere neat stuff can be found.

If you have any additional information about a particular find, or know of other sites or blogs or just have questions or comments, feel free to post!

Without further ado I had a REALLY GREAT find yesterday:

The Find

First Impression: Looked cool but I had no idea what it was or what it was worth
What it is: WWII German Tank / Anti-aircraft Binoculars
What I paid: $10
Estimated Value: $~100
Sold For: $pending$

The Story

What is it? I had no idea at first. It looks like a huge set of binoculars, but because of the tripod it was on and some of the settings I thought it was perhaps some type of surveying equipment. The tripod said "Use only with Transit No. 15050" in English, but there was German writing on the instrument itself. It was in poor shape, quite heavy (which reduces ebay profit) and I was short on money so wasn't sure I should pay the $10 for it. I had pulled it out and set it up so I could look at it, which drew a lot of attention, so I was afraid if I went home to look it up it would be gone when I came back. (In fact after I purchased it I had a guy tell me if I left it there he was going to get it!). I messed with it and found there were filters inside that would flip down when you turned a knob, (which I thought was really cool). So that feature, plus the German writing and the kind of OD green color made me think or hope it was military and worth something, so I hauled the heavy sucker home.

What is it? Turns out it's a set of German WWII tank or antiaircraft binoculars! Ebay value on nice sets is about $400, but this set is missing some parts and is in poor condition. I would be happy to get $100 for them, and I'll update this entry after they sell. Here's some more pics:


In the above pic you can see the 'snowflake' patterns in the glass. I'm not sure what caused this?




In the pic above you can see the 4 filter settings, "klar", "dunkel", "mittel", and "hell". I found this website helpful in determining these mean "clear", "dark", "medium" and "light" respectively.


Here are the markings which are hard to read, I upped the contrast a good deal for readability in the above pic:

D.F. 10x80
(triangle shape) dkl X
61938

Referencing another helpful website,
I found that D.F. stand for Doppelfernrohr (double telescope)
10x80 is of course the power and field of view.
I'm not sure what the triangle and X mean, but dkl is the code for the manufacturer, in this case Schneider, from Bad Kreuznach Germany.
Also on that latter website is a bunch of info on how to rebuild these and use them for astronomy.

All in all a GREAT find to cap a week of great and interesting finds (more on those later).

Keep looking, you never know what will turn up....