Garage Sale Ramblings................

Today was a good day on the garage sale trail. Right off the bat I found a halogen desk lamp for $5 to replace the one that was my favorite, that is still inop after the new $8 bulb. Our second stop netted a like new furniture dolly for another $5 (you can never have too many rolling platforms!). A few "dud" stops it was the find of the day. Very rarely do I ever find slot car stuff. Today I did. It wasn't great, just some fairly usual HO stuff, but the find itself was somewhat unusual. So I thought I'd share the story. Normally when I find any slot car stuff, it's crammed back into the torn up, broken down box it originally came in. I'm really not even sure why I caught this find. As I walked up the driveway, off to the side was an old suitecase. Let me clarify that, an old crusty dirty suitecase. The suitecase was half open with a plastic supermarket bag full of something sitting on top. For some reason I decided to take a look. Under the plastic bag of stuff was some Aurora A/FX track. It actually looked very clean and unbroken, what I saw of it anyway. A little closer look and.....the usual, no cars. I moved the bag and there behind it was a small old metal recipe box with a paper label masking taped to the top that read "cars". Cool! I opened up the box to find a Tyco HO van body, and an old Tyco body of some sort that had been painted.....yucky! The masking tape price label said $20. No thanks. So I put it down and continued up the driveway. On one of the tables I found some really great clear plastic containers with attached snap on lids. For you guys that know me and have seen my work bench, I get a lot of projects all going at the same time...BIG MESS! These containers were the perfect size for holding each of my current project cars and their respective parts. Thus keeping those parts separated and orderly, until all construction is finished. $3 and I had enough for all my current projects and room for some more! So, down the driveway and past that suitecase again....I'm feelin' pretty good about my finds......that suitecase is callin' to me. OK, I think to myself, I can probably get $10 for that old Aurora A/FX track on Ebay......maybe. Oh well what the heck. I ask the lady if she'll take $10 for all the stuff in the suitecase. She says its not hers, but she'll go ask. Out into the garage comes a guy, probably 10 or so years younger than me. I ask him if he'll take the $10. He pauses like he's planning to say "no", but he says ok. So I grad the stinky old suitecase and throw it in the Toaster (much to my wife's dismay!).
    When I got home and started going through the suitecase I found an old music box jewelery box. Inside the jewelery box there was Aurora HO car parts and some bodies. Again nothing great, but a lot of parts, and some common bodies. Probably 10 or so cars total. All of the track, a stack of 9" curves (of course), and a short stack of 15" straights is in excellent condition (not even any broken "tabs" on the ends of the track pieces). There were "wall wort" power packs and controllers. It looks like there were two complete sets at one time. In the bottom of the suitecase was a well-worn, but complete "Golden Gate Bridge" track accessory. You old HO guys remember these from the Aurora HO racing sets. Some came with the cardboard Golden Gate Bridge you could use to hold up your overpass section. So then I dug through the plasrtic bag of stuff. In with a lot of GI Joe clothes, some kind of cowboy doll clothes, some plastic doll cowboy guns and doll camping stuff, and some crummy HO scale die-cast cars, I found 4 complete A/FX Magnatraction cars., and a couple more bodies. Again common stuff, but hey...............It reminded me of the old days when I used to enjoy collecting and hunting for slot cars and track. Those were the days!!! Now days? Well nothin' I can use for racin'. I'll save one thing from the find, just to remind me..............the rest? Ebay, what else?    ---------------------------Bill