Are estate sales as cutthroat where you are as they are here?
The_Hook_Up
8,182 Posts
Ok, today I got to an estate sale an hour early so I could insure I was first in line. There was an old lady and her son behind me. Outside she was milllng about looking at the lawn shit and stuff, could walk quite well. However, when they opened the doors I walked in first and I allowed her to go through the foyer doorway first being that I am a gentleman and nice to old ladies and shit. ALL OF A SUDDEN she is a fucking invalid and is limping along at a snail's pace as her son literally jogs past us and goes straight to the records and starts pulling 2 dollar copies of Metal Machine Music, Stooges and shit. She drops the facade and starts telling her son "oh get that one for me baby" It was fucking unreal. I shoulda punched an old lady in the head. All that was left when dude was finished was Renaissance and Loggins and Messina. I left before I assaulted dude.
Comments
i would have lost my cool on some get out of the way you old bag
what a team of asshats
b/w
the idea of pre-#s before the real #'s are handed out is vexing
Recently I had a day off from work and hit an Estate Sale in an old section of Dallas that advertised records. It was to open at 10:00 ???No Early Birds??? and when I got there at 9:30 there were already 5 people outside waiting to get in(This grew to 20+ by 10:00). Four of the five people were there for records and seemed to all know each other although I didn???t know any of them which I thought was weird after 30+ years of digging in the area. They were discussing other sales and scores they had made and I joined in and asked if they were sellers or collectors. Two claimed to be straight collectors and the other two said they sold on the Internet. I asked if they ever sold to individuals in person and got an adamant ???NO??? from both dealers.
The Sale opened and they all rushed to a pile of 4 Kids records???that was it ???.nothing else vinyl wise. My wife found a couple of cool things and as we were leaving one of the ???collectors??? who seemed like a real nice guy said he had a box of 45???s he had bought and asked if I wanted to flip through them. It was a total box of chud, nothing I would have taken for free, yet he was pretty excited about them.
A couple of weeks later a local Half Price Books advertised a Friday Night 9:00-Midnight Record Blow-Out with all LP???s 4 for a buck??????by 8:30 there were close to 40 people there waiting to buy records???and I only recognized 2 or 3 of them. Middle aged women scooping up Ted Nugent LP???s, almost everyone with a stack of 25-50 LP???s as the employees continuously wheeled out cars of new LP???s, probably 3-4,000 in total.
What blew my mind is that here were all these folks buying complete crap who for the most part fly completely under the radar amongst the dealers/collectors I know. These are the folks who keep the shelves clean of Bobby Goldsboro and Glen Campbell LP???s and allow for HPB to have the amazing turnover that they do. It was a real eye opener that we have probably 100+ people who seriously buy vinyl in the D/FW area that I was not even aware of???..Crazy.
Do sales in other cities start on Fridays? Sometimes I hit one on a friday during my lunch break, but otherwise I feel that dealers have already picked over much of the good stuff by the time I get there. I shop for other stuff- very rarely are there any decent records at most of the sales I go to.
Half the fun is just going through people's houses and looking for weird stuff. You never know what you'll find. I'm usually in competition with gay dudes from Hudson who come up to scarf the MCM furniture (not popular around here, this is McMansionville) and sell for a 2000% markup back home.
At the estate sales you had to sign up hours early, or even the night before. Some of the other record guys in town (remember Hey Joe) were stupid aggressive, physical and rude. But not just the record dudes. Little old ladies would get those elbows going if you got in their way, or looked at hummel. Rummage sales were the worse for aggressive old ladies.
But really I quit going because if I didn't buy records I would always buy a board game, or a toaster or a chair and too much stuff was piling up. Plus weekend mornings are good times to spend with the one you love. Lastly, not finding any good records I was likely to buy a Glen Campbell or Ted Nugent record just so I wouldn't feel like I had wasted my time.
Hi
Whole house for sale.
There's
Furniture of all kinds, Antiques, Crystal,
Brand new unopened linens
Stereo and music equipment. turntables drums
Construction materials
Bosch Dryer
Kitchen stuff.
:roll:
Stereo and music equipment,turntables, and drums?
Does this inherently imply records as well?
went there. found nice clean copies of some ok jazz stuff and some oddball titles. asked the guy if any one else had been buying records. he said they sold about 400 of em up until i got there so i am assuming there was some great stuff based on what i found.
still dunno if it was some cut throat shit though...
ones i have been to in NY were. i hated them! if it says no early birds and the sale starts at 9 expect people to be there at 7 because i would get there at 8 and see people leaving!
Probably wrecked copies.
(at least that's what I tell myself so I can sleep at night)
i've been so tuned out to estate sales after some bad experiences that a friend quizzed me if i had been to an FM radio dj's moving sale back in June. he walked out with 500 white label disco promos and some other choice pulls, and a few other dealers feasted on it. of course 5,000 records were left out of the 6,000 the estate sale lady was purporting to be selling. when i called her out of idle curiosity she gave me a horrible screechy "you need to buy all or make a serious purchase, no more looky-loos". when i asked her if anyone had come through and bought records she tells me "oh no, no one yet, you would be the first to look". fucking nonsense and the guy really screwed himself not taking the cream to a professional buyer at a store.
still, because of that i keep an eye on the automated emails from http://www.estatesales.net/estate-sales/
less of a digging tool and more of a Friday morning "see, i'm not missing anything".
Nah, every record had a plastic sleeve, even the crappy ones. The estate sale companies around here aren't savvy to the record game and the only time you see a record for 10 dollars or more is a Beatles or Elvis...These records were well taken care of. Scooped a mint 1st press Trout Mask last month at an estate sale for which I got 2 bills for...definitely some scores at these things.
Fusk. I would be mad livid then.
No more Mr Nice Guy!
Sayin!