My wife tells me that if I'm looking for something I have to pick things up and not just look. At an antique mall with time to kill this week I was going up and down the cases and aisles carefully (well, guy carefully) looking hoping to run across an old Ideal tool in a rusty tool pile mislabeled goat hoof trimmer or something when I finally picked something up. In an interesting looking booth I picked up a box to see what was under it and found the acorn. It was a boxed Ohaus 5-0-5 balance with all pieces there and wrapped nicely and not a mark on any of them - just like new! The price was $13. Oink!

Awesome! 

Oink?  LOL

local old boy died that had a machine shop no one bought the work benches in the basement. So on the last day of the sale the gal running the sale asks me if I would like the 4 benches with all the  vises and what's left under them. we make a deal most likley for a couple 100 $ moving the benches I find a rusty long old scope I show the gal the scope she tells me you bought whats under and on the benches.  The benches where nice well made 8' long 3/8" steel tops heavy steel legs one nice 4" Wilton vise a couple of lesser vises. Frist day of the sale I find a small box for 4.50 open it and there is a nice Winchester tang sight and a beat up Hart wind gauge front sight.more than one Acorn there. ken

Evidently I need to become a squirrel because I never find any acorns.
Lee Gibbs pres.ASSRA

this was quit a acorn  I get a call from  the local hw  store I have a 1895 schuetzen . I show up and look on the rack no 1895 I hunt Tom down and he tells me it's in the office and he gose and gets it what it is is a nice 1885 special sporting rifle 30" #2  barrel DS triggers very nice wood lots of finsh 60-70% gun and the price was one of those you piss your pants and cant get the Check book fast enought for. storie is GP dies leaves the gun  to the GS. GS tells GM to sell it and send him the $$ . Ken

On one hand, timing is often everything.  On the other, even when I've not been a day late, I've still been a dollar short.

Bill Lawrence

While we are on a roll here: One time a downtown drugstore had a sporting goods section with a full selection of cleaning gear and shotgun shells. Walked in one day at lunch and there was a sign "All sporting goods .10. I questioned what that meant with the manager - was it 10 cents or 10% off or just 10% of the marked price? He said they were closing out that section and it was 10 cents. Well, I wasn't too greedy since I had to carry it back to the office;-) OK, another one: There was a general merchandise store like Value House if you remember those. Looking around I saw that they had CVA muzzleloading kits. I picked up a squirrel rifle marked down to $10. They had another and I called a friend and he came and took the other one. Oh, and a muzzleloader kit with short starter, capper, powder flask etc. for $2. Still have it.

I once was offered a blue, 7 1/2 inch barreled, 1878 Colt in .45 cal. for seventy five bucks. Sold.
But, best of all was a single action Colt in .38 spl. for twenty five bucks. Yep, sold again! Sadly, the rest came more dearly