And it will probably be cold, and damp again today, but maybe the rain will hold off.
It was cold-ish yesterday and certainly damp. I put on a fleece jacket and I was sweating inside buildings and cold outside.
Someone asked a while back if I was still hitting the Goodwill stores. No, not really. I haven’t hit a thrift store in months. I AM still hitting the Goodwill outlet. I mask up, N95, and glove up, and maintain a distance from people. I am hyper aware of what I touch and change gloves as needed. I use the clorox wipes before getting back in the car too. I’ve grabbed some great stuff lately, and it will mostly be going to the auction on Monday. You can’t really beat a men’s Kenneth Cole leather jacket for $3. Especially one that’s in perfect condition. Or a lady’s wool trenchcoat from the mid 80s that still brings $85 on ebay. Or 70 pounds of vinyl LPs that have been averaging 8-12$ apiece on ebay. I’ll send them to my local auction, and get a whole lot less, but won’t have to deal with shipping or returns.
The outlet gets the weirdest things. I’ve found a low power ham radio transceiver kit, arduinos, gun parts, glock 43 magazine extensions- NIB, and today I found a milsurp cold weather sleep system and a watch battery change tool kit. Not expensive, but exactly what I needed. I could have a complete set of the Harvard Classics of literature. I’ve grabbed all the ones I thought I’d personally like. Some of the editions bring $10+ per volume… One day I found a gun guy’s library. A bunch of Paladin Press sort of books, and coffee table gun history books too. “Modifying your MAC-10” kinds of things…. The funniest thing for me, I can find great stuff AFTER the locusts have gone through the bins. They’ll fight over 25c t shirts and leave an ORVIS jacket, new with tags (headed to ebay or the auction this week).
My best estate auction score this week was probably a Western Mountaineering down sleeping bag for $4. Even counting the half bottle of down tech washing soap, that is a stunning value for what was a $400+ bag new. The kids and my wife have used the heck out of the expensive USA made down bags I got at an estate sale 2? years ago for $5. There are certain things that people just don’t seem to recognize the value. That’s where I come in 🙂
And some people do weird things too. I grabbed a couple of fishing poles yesterday, one complete, with the last loop missing, one just the lower half. I didn’t find the top half so I put it back in a bin, and the other one, I’ll just clip 1 inch and the existing loop will be the end one now. 🙂 Later I noticed a couple of young ladies standing to the side with a dozen poles. They were looking up the poles on their phones. They spent a while doing it too. Obviously not experienced resellers. The poles weigh less than a pound. So they will cost $1.20 each. BUY EVERY ONE. There isn’t a new fishing pole with a reel for less than $20 anywhere. These poles were new, still in plastic. Grab them and GO!
The other customers are all masked, some even wearing them correctly. Staff wears masks correctly. As a side benefit, no one out in public is sneezing or coughing. No runny noses either.
Today I’ll be going through stuff getting more ready for the new auctioneer. And if the weather is good, I’ll finally get some Christmas decor up. But that will be after sleeping in.
And then I’ll do my grocery order, and stack some more. Because everything is changing, and we don’t know who will come out the other side. If we’re distracted and weakened by a civil war, declared or not, someone else will have a chance to rise. It might take a generation to recover. Maybe more. Gonna be hard times if that happens. Think about that for a while.
And keep stacking.
nick