I’m a fan of thrift stores like the Salvation Army, garage sales, and flea markets, because I think their stuff seems to have more character (as silly as that sounds). For example, I found a quite nice leather jacket recently at a swap meet for 10 dollars. What have you found?
I have an awesome blazer I got for a dollar. It’s a patchwork of various plaids (with background and pink or black or yellow or blue bars) and so small the sleeves end up being 3/4 length on me. This *sounds *ridiculous, but with a black camisole it’s so hipster it hurts.
I found a half-carat diamond earring on the ground. Went to great lengths to find the owner, including turning it into the police and placing a classified ad. Ended up getting to keep it and only had to pay a $10 fee to the city. A jeweler appraised it at about $2k.
Back in the 70s I was walking on docks along a river in Florida with my cousin when we noticed a wallet floating in the river. I held his arm while he reached out to get the wallet. We kept quiet about it as my parents drove us back to my house , and then we ran into my bedroom and closed the door (we were both about 16 or 17 at the time) and opened the wallet and took out the wet money and laid it out on the bedroom floor to dry. Turns out there was $628 in the wallet. As we were doing this, my mom opened the door and saw the money and, long story short, we ended up giving the wallet back to its owner, who was actually in jail for a few days at the time. His license was in the wallet, so I guess we had to do that, but damn, for a few minutes there we were RICH!
A bunch of stuff - which happens when you grow up with antique-dealer parents and spend your childhood weekends scouring flea markets and garage sales.
- My parents have found more valuable glass, silver, dolls and art that I know what to do with - they bought hundreds of pieces of Taxco Silver (link to some dealer that sells vintage Taxco) basically for the weight of the silver in pawn shops before it became highly collectible.
- I have found first edition books for next to nothing, like the play version of The Philadelphia Story for ~$25 when it was worth ~$1,000, or a first edition of Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying for about 1/10 of what it was worth at the time.
- I found a 1955 Gretsch Country Club guitarthat I bought for the price the guy bought it in 1955.
Scouting can be really fun if you have the patience for it.
Besides the fact I’ve found most of my furniture, I did help my friends start a gaming store with my find:
Two of my friends wanted to get into terrain making for tabletop miniatures, but were just debating it halfheartedly for awhile, the initial setback being the cost of styrofoam (several dollars for a sheet and you’d need several of those to get a good feel for it,) then I found dozens of styrofoam sheets by the road that had fallen off a truck or something. They weren’t miniature-terrain making quality (being too crumbly), but they perfected their techniques on them, moving to better material and selling their terrain online.
Then, they opened a retail store in concert with the online store, broadening their focus to games as well as terrain. They no longer make the terrain as much anymore, but considering that I now know of a cool place to hang out with my friends that they own, I’d say it was a pretty sweet find.
Ludovic, I’ve found most of my furniture, too. I was looking around my living room the other day and kind of laughed to myself that at least half of all the furniture in there was free: antique desk from ex-husband’s grandmother’s attic, bookshelf found next to the Dumpster across the street, end table from same, wrought iron and glass shelf from same, small wicker table from same, small chest of drawers my parents found sitting at the curb in their upscale neighborhood.
It sounds icky, but I like living across the street from a Dumpster that people from my condo complex and the apartment complex across the street use. And most people put good stuff next to the Dumpster, not in it, so if someone wants it, it’s theirs for the taking.
I also found a heavy gold chain in a parking lot when I lived in NY back in the 80s when those things were “in.” A few years ago I sold it to a jewelry store looking for gold for $80.
Today I lugged home a chair that my Mom told me a doctor’s office was throwing out. It’s one of those big ones with a wicker base that looks like a big saucer. Very comfy.
I found a 1914-D penny in a parking lot. It’s worth a whole lot more than one cent.
I also found a tombstone in the backyard when I was 13. It was being used as a step.
Coin collectors are always looking for buried treasure. I found a bowl full of bronze coins on the back of a dusty shelf in an open market in Mali. They were all 5 franc coins from the years 1938-1940, in mint condition. I bought one of each year from the guy for about 50 cents, took them home, looked them up in the catalog and found that the three together were worth about $90. Went back the next day and bought all the rest from the guy for about $10.
Then there was the time I got a buffalo nickel in change from a vending machine. The value was negligible, but the find made me happy.
An Atari 2600 video game cartridge at a flea market for $1, but it was very rare and worth $100. If I wasn’t a collector I would have never known and kept walking.
PS- The game sucks to play, it’s just the rarity of it that makes it valuable.
I found 100RMB on the ground once while out buying a newspaper. No sooner had I pocketed it did some old man appear out of nowhere looking really agitated and saying that he lost his pocket money. He described some markings on it for proof that it was really his and I gave it back to him. I’m too moral for my own good.
Maybe… but I would have done the same. I’d like to think others would if I were the one to lose something.
I would have to say SDMB’s own Cafe Society. Long ago I bookmarked each forum separately and did not know CS existed for about 18 months after it opened so imagine my joy at a fun new forum to look at afresh.
It was a hairbrush I found on the beach when I was about four or five years old. It was a half round brush with a pink glass handle and black bristles. It seemed very glamorous to me because it was just the type of thing that my mother thought was totally unnecessary for me as she told me that I didn’t look good in ruffles and pink. I longed to be a girly-girl.
That hairbrush gave me great satisfaction for years, even though my mother was right about me and ruffles. I’ve had some great finds since, often books, furniture or pottery but the hairbrush still stands out in my memory.
By chance, was it Chase the Chuck Wagon?
The best thing I ever found was my first puppy. When I was three, I went with my dad to dump our trash at the county dump (we lived way out in the country, no trash service). Someone had abandoned a little black and white mixed breed puppy there. I ran right to her, scooped her up, and named her for her appearance: “Shabby”. Best dog I ever had.
An Indian digging tool about the size of a big paperback book made from Alibates Flint that fits perfectly in the palm of your hand.
I’ve found two different wedding rings. One in a bar bathroom and the other on an ice-skating rink. I was able to match both with their owners. Both took my name and address and promised a reward.
Neither followed through.
When I cleaned out my parent’s home after they had died I found a number of family artifacts which had gone missing. One was a piece of a handmade log cabin that was my grandmother’s first home when she came to America. Another was a gold ring set with fiery opals made from a single nugget. It was the only reward my grandfather had secured after a trip to Alaska during the Gold Rush and a subsequent sinking of his supply raft.
(If you ever have to do this sad task, be sure to look through every paper sack , crumpled tissue, old envelope and other unlikely places. Old people hide things in funny spots.)
I, too, found some tombstones in my parents’ backyard. They were being used as support foundations in the garage, and the base of one was being used as a step. They were dated around 1857 and were put there long before my parents owned the house. Weird stuff…
Somewhere around 1991 I got hooked up with a one-day job by a family friend: this old lady’s husband had died six months prior, and their garage hadn’t been cleaned out in 30 years, so the lady paid me to clean it out and haul everything to the dump. She also told me I could keep anything I wanted. While I was up in the rafters I found some old newspapers rolled up and wrapped in plastic. Wondering what they could be, I took the plastic off and unrolled them: four front pages from local papers, dated 11/22/63 and 11/23/63. Now they’re in a box on a shelf in my closet. 