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....