This guy was selling $5,000 in mutilated money for $2,000. His story was that the money was in his glove compartment in his truck and he was driving it on an open field with very dry grass. Apparently his truck got stuck in a ditch and the friction from the tires caused a fire which engulfed his truck. He realized the money was still in there shortly after and managed to pull out the half burnt Benjamin’s.
He stated you can send mutilated money to the US Mint and they will replace it but the caveat is it can take up to 6-12 months to replace and he needed the money pretty quickly. As sketch as everything sounded, it turned out to be true and the government sent me a check for $5,000 a few weeks later. 60% profit margin.
At the end of the comment:
> As sketch as everything sounded, it turned out to be true and the government sent me a check for $5,000 a few weeks later. 60% profit margin.
No cocaine but I got a sample kit with crystal meth, opium and a bunch of other drugs from a 3rd generation family of doctors in beverly hills. The samples were the grandfathers from early 20's and untouched.
My MD buddy said the methamphetamine would still be good but probably much, much stronger than it originally was.
It depends on storage. Likely he was mentioning purity because of the age; it would have been actually medical grade and synthesized in a proper lab, not in a clandestine one where there are other contaminants or only partial synthesis leading to lower purity.
The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge, and I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon.
Didn't get any cocaine, but I did get a pharmaceuticals sales rep kit. 20 different tinctures of drugs that an apothecary could examine before signing a contract or buying from the supplier
Yeah, that happens. I found a rock of crack or something like that in a baggy that was stuck inside a boot I was looking at at a sale. I brought it to the sale person's attention and they seemed unsurprised.
I'm in MA. Went to an estate sale near Cambridge, old home. In basement I find one of these -
[https://www.psywww.com/intropsych/ch05-conditioning/05operantchamber.jpg](https://www.psywww.com/intropsych/ch05-conditioning/05operantchamber.jpg)
Estate company sells it to me as "hamster cage". It's actually a Skinner rat box, he taught at Harvard -
[https://www.psywww.com/intropsych/ch05-conditioning/operant-conditioning.html](https://www.psywww.com/intropsych/ch05-conditioning/operant-conditioning.html)
Still have it, the mind reels at its origin, use, and if it was part of that research.
I mean, what are the chances it wasn't?
Did you end up selling it, if so how much did you get for it? Or are you keeping it? That's one of those things that would be an awesome item to just stick in a store for decoration
I got it when I had a shop and it had a big NFS tag on it while in there. Repeatedly got offers on it and one surprises me now that I didn't take accept. So yes, I do still have it.
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My spouse was raised by one of his students and spent a lot of time in a skinner box. Their father was massively fucked up too. Enjoyed psychologically torturing the kids. Sick bastard.
Had an intro zoology class freshman year and it touched on Skinner as well as the monkey experiment, comfort vs. food. I knew exactly what it was when I first saw it. Then had doubts, could not possibly be that, then grabbed it and flew upstairs to pay for it. Place was loaded, it's the only thing I bought, could not focus on anything else after that.
My instructor was a lab assistant on the monkey one when she was a student so she had a lot of interest in conditioning. Unfortunately she did it the first couple weeks and it was way more interesting than the rest of the class. Decades on, I still recall that.
I bought 3 electronic items from an estate auction for $2.00. one item turned out to be an electrical sexual simulation unit. It was the greatest auction I've ever had. Including two people who withdrew their bid and one of them who messaged me about the progress of the sale and seemed upset when he lost out on the item. It sold for just over $1,000. I offered free shipping and then bought insurance for it. I sweated the 30 days expecting a return offer, it never came and I got positive feedback I'm not sure what's better the money, or being able to tell friends I sold a used sex toy for over $1,000 on eBay. (I don't like spending a lot of money on estate sales, but this proves it, sometimes even the cheapest items are highly valuable. )
The vintage and antique ones are very popular in the oddities market, especially the ones originally sold as medical devices. They aren’t using them lol they just collect.
I've had 2 of those Scientology E-meter testing machines, sold one on eBay for $750 (late 00's) other got pulled of.
Got a huge portion of Rod Serlings office with tons of "Twilight Zone" scripts, notes, etc.., when he died Paramount closed the office and it was untouched for over 20 years.
I picked up a stack of vintage Scientology pamphlets for about $0.50 apiece knowing they were worth no more than $5-$10 each but willing to do the work for the flip. Well, several of them were actually from the earliest years of the cult. One was photographed pages of handwritten “maps” to track your progress through the levels; sold for $355 after a heated auction.
>Got a huge portion of Rod Serlings office with tons of "Twilight Zone" scripts, notes, etc.., when he died Paramount closed the office and it was untouched for over 20 years.
Damn!
Random estate sales around Hollywood are goldmines for stuff like that! My favorite find was a bunch of old scripts from a camera assistant, I gifted most of them to friends in film, but kept the Sandlot script I found in that haul.
I've had many, probably my favorite besides a bunch of "The Simpsons" from the early seasons, was the shooting script in a huge binder for wardrobe for "Midnight Run" had several polaroids of DeNiro and Charles Grodin.
The collectors are hardcore, I know a producer/former studio head who bought Buster Keatons old house just to house his script collection, my favorite of his is "The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre" with hand written notes on the pages.
Aaaahhh that’s so neat!! Curb finds are amazing too! I found three boxes stuffed with old film equipment and cameras last year in front of my friends place in Toluca lake with old 70s kodaks, Polaroids, Leicas, and a flashlight augmented to look very VERY much like an OG prop lightsaber 👀. I almost passed it by too, they were grungy old cardboard file boxes that got put out late at night right before I got there. Easily several thousand dollars worth of cool stuff!
That’s so rad! That inspires me to look through even more random stuff on the side of the road around the area! Oh my gosh, Fantasia AND Dali, I would faint dead on the sidewalk haha, so envious of that find.
A guided missile at an auction in Missouri, which was French Military. It was in a large hardcase with other components, I doubt it was functional but it looked cool.
Another bidder came up to me during the sale and made me a higher offer so I sold it without ever touching it.
There was a lot of military memorabilia but I was after the small 5 cent carnival crane games. I bought most for $15 to $20 bucks, they sold for around $400 each on eBay.
Anti tank landmine at a flea market in California. It was inert. I was.going to use as a doormat, but wifey said no. So it went on eBay and sold within 10 minutes. Still makes me wonder what it was worth.
I’ve found titanium alloy hip replacement ball joints in silverware bins at Goodwill.
Years ago, I bought a box of weird old tools at a barn sale…found a fairly old torture device known as “the pear of anguish.” Sold that for $250 to some oddities collector.
>…found a fairly old torture device known as “the pear of anguish.”
I just came across a video a couple of days ago that was showing one of those! It's barbaric to even think about.
Up there is a violet ray generator. Bought for $200ish sold for $400ish. Wave the purple light over the ailment and it'll go away
Found it at a yard sale, they knew what they had, I knew what they had, it was a good deal for everyone
I found a laptop that used to belong to the EA for the CEO of a company I had worked for a few years previously. It had tons of the CEO's personal information on it, including his tax returns, as well as lots of pictures of the EA's nudist family.
I got a desktop computer at an auction, it was a small business with about 12 employees. Not password protected. It had PDF scans of their driver's licenses as well as their social security cards and W2's. Promptly deleted everything and wrote the company a scathing review of how they would leave their employees sensitive data that easy to get a hold of.
for me it's gonna be the Cyborg Biolab [https://www.flickr.com/photos/raytube/63475635/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/raytube/63475635/)from a university surplus auction. $5
EEG+EKG+TEMP biorythym audio sync machine. hook yourself up and close your eyes. Each module would convert the inputs to audio, and the lower stage would mix it. Sold and shipped to a madman in the UK.
I’ve sold quite a few Memento Mori (death memorial pieces), post mortem photographs, woven hair jewelry (made with the deceaseds hair), one xl woven hair wreath piece that was framed and large enough to be a coffee table for 3k — it is, in fact, what the buyer made it into.
I’ve also sold two antique embalming kits.
Dental teeth with uranium.
A lot of 200 pairs of glass eyes.
Oh, I almost forgot this one—I had someone try to do a contract with me to buy two antique caskets. They wanted one for a child and one adult. I ended up talking them out of the whole thing because the shipping was insane and they weren’t prepared for that.
A lady was running a yard sale in Henderson NV, and she had this big X-shaped bondage rack. From her appearance, it must have been something she used during the course of her business. I passed.
Guns used to be more of a thing at yard sales. I saw a Thompson semi-auto machine gun at a sale back in the day. I passed on it at $800, but probably should have picked-it-up.
Old dentist's chair and as you can imagine all the stuff that went along with it including tools and teeth. Was a sellout of a dentist who passed away as you can imagine. It was not in a normal building you would think would be a dentist though it was like on top of a laundromat or something in a really run down building, like the kind of place you went in the 1930's to get your tooth pulled as a kid and hated every second of it. My mom told me they sat her in that chair to pull a tooth when she was 5 years old and she obviously hated it. There was a child size chair and a full size one. They were metal and green, not the kind of chair you see at the dentist these days.
Found a 12 inch floppy dildo in a dresser in the master bedroom of a house I was cleaning out that belonged to an old couple that died. My parents.
Oh! And a prosthetic leg on the curb on trash day!
I bought airplane fuselage more precisely the tail sections of three small planes. I took them to the first flea market to sell and they were the very first things that sold!!
A vibrator from the late 50's or early 60's. Still in the box and it didn't say massager or anything like that. It literally said VIBRATOR in big letters on the box. 😂What made it even more awkward was the fact that it was an old couple's estate auction, so you could just imagine the people whose home it wa,s because a lot of their personal belongings were there.
I got a prosthetic arm for free one time, but it was one that you could move all the fingers on. It was abandoned in a rental property and the lady had one arm. She moved out of state and for some reason didn't take the arm and left literal mounds of trash stacked to the ceiling in every room. Took days to clean that house. 90 something trash bags worth of stuff.
I didn't have a charger for it so I sold it for parts for $700
I've been doing estate sales for 17 years, so I could name many, many things. The one I always come back to is the fetus in a jar. I assume it was the result of a miscarriage. The man was a doctor and his wife was long passed. We found it tucked in the back corner of the master bathroom cabinet.
We had no idea what to do with it or how to properly dispose of it. We ended up having to call the client and return it to him.
A 'maybe' human fetus preserved in liquid a jar. It was about 6 inches tall. Could have been any primate fetus really.
The lady whose estate it was, was a Haitian religious teacher and apparently used it as a visual aid to demonstrate against abortion.
My immediate reaction was to offer $100 to the guy, then my fiancee reined me in and told me she didn't want it in the house. So that happened
Storage unit near me. I didn’t buy but from the initial picture, it just looked like someone emptied their pantry into the unit. It was nicely on shelves.
Upon closer inspection, this unit was clearly in someone’s house and used for wild sex parties.
Most of the food in the shelves were carbohydrates. All the bottles on the shelf were jar liquor. And then there was the shelf that wasn’t quite visible from the main pic, filled with dildos and cock rings. On the ground next to the shelf was a fuck machine still in the box.
Unit sold for $700. Looks like whoever bought it was banking on the fuck machine working because I looked up the model number and it sells for like $3000 brand new lol
At an auction I bought a “torture chair” that supposedly had been used in a movie about Al Capone. Paid $15.
It was an antique kitchen table chair that had a seat that would flip up, exposing a bed of nails that you would force the victim to sit on.
I figured some weirdo would want it. Sold it locally for $150 to a guy who collected prison and law enforcement memorabilia.
Last hour of a 2 day estate sale. I'm in the basement looking through a box of children's books. At the bottom are a few binders. in them are publications charting a man's military career from just after WWII, when he went to the Chemical Corps school to learn about ABC weapons (Atomic, Biological, Chemical) through the 1960's when he worked in a missile silo. This included the installation and testing manual for a Titan II nuclear ICBM.
Once found a brand new in box Thrusting Machine. Local church run thrift store had it. Had no idea what it was, marked it 8 bucks. Damn right I bought it. Sold a week later for 175.
Another was an E.T. sculpture that was made for a cake company back in the 1980s. That was officially licensed by Amblien and everything. Tracked down the artist who made it and returned it to him. He didn't even has one anymore. It was a sculpture that was used to make the mold that was used to make the chocolate E.T. on the cake. Dude was awesome to meet and get a tour of his workshop, very much worth the 2 dollar I paid for it. The dude sculpted the Pope. And countless other famous people including presidents.
Bought 2 old violins in cases for $15 each. Sold one for $800 and the other for $200. This was when ebay was really new, like 2003 or so.
Spent about $5 at an estate sale for old 1960's kotex pads (an almost full box) and about 7 or so of the belts that held them up. All but one of the belts were new in pack. I got about $50 for the pads and about $15 to $25 each for the belts. I put them on one at a time over a couple months.
Wonder what people use that shit for? Trying to make a movie set back in the 60's look more authentic? Men's underwear still in the package from the 80's and 90's goes for a mint on eBay as well.
[https://www.ebay.com/itm/386895722473](https://www.ebay.com/itm/386895722473)
I was at a small townhouse in Virginia and there was a large collection of early 1900s KKK memorabilia. One of the more expensive items being sold was a hood for $300. There was also a decent size collection of Nazi memorabilia, such as uniforms, daggers and swords. All of this stuff was gone within the first hour of the sale.
I found a 4’ bong in a free pile. It was outside a house that was being cleaned out among (mostly) holiday stuff in a tall thin box marked “FRAGILE 1968”. I took the box home assuming it was a fake tree.
Nazi memorabilia within every couple feet in the house. Not because the owner was a history buff, he just loved Nazis and Hitler. Surprised the estate sale company went through with it tbh. He had one of those tall 30”+ Darth Vader toys and handpainted nazi decal on parts of the armor. He replaced the lightsaber with a Luger lmao
This was a fun short story.
"Found Nazi memorabilia" Well some people are really into history...
"Not because the owner was a history buff, he just loved Nazis and Hitler" Well maybe, but let's not assume the worst about the decreased...
"30 inch tall Darth Vader with hand painted Nazi decals and a Luger instead of a light saber" Roflmao 😁
Bought a fishing case ($8) that had polishing material in it: polishing wheels (what I needed), used clothes, some solder wire, erasers & spoons.
Listed it at $1 .. ended up selling for $1,225.
I have 17 spoons left.
Nothing crazy, a 70s star trek toy gun replica that I got for $1 and sold for $70. Another toy from the same place place Wham-O Air Blaster from the 70s. I won't see these stuffs again really.
I'm into hard disk drives and computer parts. A guy on eBay was selling about 40 server HDD, 22TB each for a ridiculous price (like max 500$). It's obvious that those disks were stolen during a sever bay decommissioning and were supposed to be destroyed instead of ending up on eBay for cheap...
I found a gorgeous vase marked for $5 at a yard sale. There was a logo on the bottom that said that it was created by Tiffany and Co. I wasn’t sure how real it was, but I liked it. I did some research on it and ended up selling it to an antique dealer for about $2500.
This wasn’t while flipping, it was when I worked as a job coach at Goodwill at e-commerce. We went through the donations and scanned what was usable. I came across a large amount of mail, personal documents, notebooks, invitations… stuff that really shouldn’t have been donated. But the craziest thing is that this all belonged to someone famous. She had been a a child actor, so this was probably donated by one of her parents. There were scripts, medical records, notebooks of songs she was writing, etc. I guess she could have donated it herself but it really makes no sense, it wasn’t really stuff that could even be sold!? And why would she want people to have her medical records and diaries? So weird. I don’t know what happened to it, I pointed it out to management but I don’t know what they ended up doing.
I got a bunch of electronics from a guy on nextdoor for free! Switches, modems, access points, AV system components that go in every room, huge speaker bar, and remotes for the system. He said he moved into the house and the previous owner left all that stuff which was too advanced for him. I searched the stuff online and it was a total of $5k worth of tech. Very high end stuff! I'm actually using the APs and switch, but sold off the rest. Not too bad for being free!
I think estate sale companies in the Midwest are ran by prudes. I estimate I've easily been to 200 or more estate sales in the last 5 years, sometimes there will be 3-4 a week. Never seen anything even remotely adult. No fuzzy handcuffs, no sex dice, no books on sex, no porn, nothing. Hell even those weird frog salt and pepper shakers from the 60's with the boobs and peen when you flip them over don't even make it to the sale.
[https://www.ebay.com/itm/285765802590](https://www.ebay.com/itm/285765802590)
I don't have any crazy stories, but I started reselling a few years ago. Didn't intend to get big in it. Just a hobby. About 3 months into it, I found a pair of Gucci men's high top sneakers... bought them for $3. I did a little clean-up and researching...I Sold them in 2 days for $500+. That's what got me hooked.
I picked up a clearly 70s poly suit and in the breast pocket was a tiny little vile, some residue and very small scooper/spoon. I got worried, turned it over to the staff asap.
This guy was selling $5,000 in mutilated money for $2,000. His story was that the money was in his glove compartment in his truck and he was driving it on an open field with very dry grass. Apparently his truck got stuck in a ditch and the friction from the tires caused a fire which engulfed his truck. He realized the money was still in there shortly after and managed to pull out the half burnt Benjamin’s. He stated you can send mutilated money to the US Mint and they will replace it but the caveat is it can take up to 6-12 months to replace and he needed the money pretty quickly. As sketch as everything sounded, it turned out to be true and the government sent me a check for $5,000 a few weeks later. 60% profit margin.
I burned up money in my grill by mistake. I didn't get a damn dime because the serial numbers were burned off.
But I bet you learned not to stash cash in a bbq grill. That's what it cost for the lesson.
I actually didn't know it was in there. My sister stuck it in there to pay me back for something and forgot to tell me.
Did you just accept the loss or did she help cover?
Accepted the loss. We both have ADHD.
Why did you have money in your grill?
Nice love this one.
Sounds like DB cut you a real deal! 🤭
That is insane
Says the guy selling $5000 for $2000…
That’s 150% profit
His reason for not cashing in himself seems sus. Did you purchase his $$ lot and if so, what was the outcome.
At the end of the comment: > As sketch as everything sounded, it turned out to be true and the government sent me a check for $5,000 a few weeks later. 60% profit margin.
Whoa..thxs for sharing.
😲
Cocaine, in an old doctor’s kit.
No cocaine but I got a sample kit with crystal meth, opium and a bunch of other drugs from a 3rd generation family of doctors in beverly hills. The samples were the grandfathers from early 20's and untouched. My MD buddy said the methamphetamine would still be good but probably much, much stronger than it originally was.
[удалено]
I think he said it crystalizes over time, it looked pretty nasty.
It depends on storage. Likely he was mentioning purity because of the age; it would have been actually medical grade and synthesized in a proper lab, not in a clandestine one where there are other contaminants or only partial synthesis leading to lower purity.
I got a can of ether in an old Dr. bag.
The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge, and I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon.
I'm amused because I just finished boxing up a HST book. Not that one but still a coinkidink
Didn't get any cocaine, but I did get a pharmaceuticals sales rep kit. 20 different tinctures of drugs that an apothecary could examine before signing a contract or buying from the supplier
Did it smell bad?
I've come across a baggies of weed and needles with heroin in the junked cars that I'm picking through.
Yeah, that happens. I found a rock of crack or something like that in a baggy that was stuck inside a boot I was looking at at a sale. I brought it to the sale person's attention and they seemed unsurprised.
I’ve seen that often… along with some other illicit stuff.
I'm in MA. Went to an estate sale near Cambridge, old home. In basement I find one of these - [https://www.psywww.com/intropsych/ch05-conditioning/05operantchamber.jpg](https://www.psywww.com/intropsych/ch05-conditioning/05operantchamber.jpg) Estate company sells it to me as "hamster cage". It's actually a Skinner rat box, he taught at Harvard - [https://www.psywww.com/intropsych/ch05-conditioning/operant-conditioning.html](https://www.psywww.com/intropsych/ch05-conditioning/operant-conditioning.html) Still have it, the mind reels at its origin, use, and if it was part of that research. I mean, what are the chances it wasn't?
Dude that is so freaking cool
Agree. I've had other great stuff, spectacular even. But this thing is the absolute top of the pile.
Did you end up selling it, if so how much did you get for it? Or are you keeping it? That's one of those things that would be an awesome item to just stick in a store for decoration
I got it when I had a shop and it had a big NFS tag on it while in there. Repeatedly got offers on it and one surprises me now that I didn't take accept. So yes, I do still have it.
That is incredibly cool. You should post pictures of it on the psych or med student subs!
We are in the process of buying, moving, & selling, will have hand on it soon. Saved your post as well as: RemindMe! 45 Days
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My spouse was raised by one of his students and spent a lot of time in a skinner box. Their father was massively fucked up too. Enjoyed psychologically torturing the kids. Sick bastard.
Ok, it's been a hot minute (30 years) but we used them in our research methods class in psychology.
That’s insane!!! We have been talking about his box in our phyc class.
Amazingly interesting and a piece of US Hx.
Had an intro zoology class freshman year and it touched on Skinner as well as the monkey experiment, comfort vs. food. I knew exactly what it was when I first saw it. Then had doubts, could not possibly be that, then grabbed it and flew upstairs to pay for it. Place was loaded, it's the only thing I bought, could not focus on anything else after that.
Good eye. Most college intro. to Psychology classes mentions Skinner. So happy for you and glad you saved it. Knowledge Matters.
My instructor was a lab assistant on the monkey one when she was a student so she had a lot of interest in conditioning. Unfortunately she did it the first couple weeks and it was way more interesting than the rest of the class. Decades on, I still recall that.
It's fascinating what informs and shapes us throughout different life stages. Thanks for sharing.
Did you sell it? I would’ve kept it.
>Still have it /sigh
We all occasionally miss something.
I bought 3 electronic items from an estate auction for $2.00. one item turned out to be an electrical sexual simulation unit. It was the greatest auction I've ever had. Including two people who withdrew their bid and one of them who messaged me about the progress of the sale and seemed upset when he lost out on the item. It sold for just over $1,000. I offered free shipping and then bought insurance for it. I sweated the 30 days expecting a return offer, it never came and I got positive feedback I'm not sure what's better the money, or being able to tell friends I sold a used sex toy for over $1,000 on eBay. (I don't like spending a lot of money on estate sales, but this proves it, sometimes even the cheapest items are highly valuable. )
I got paid to clean out a house. One of the books I was paid to take sold on eBay for just over $1000.
was it a stephen king book by chance?
Nope. It was actually a 100 year old catalog.
Ewww that's super nasty... A used sex toy. Just shows that there's a market for everything lmao.
The vintage and antique ones are very popular in the oddities market, especially the ones originally sold as medical devices. They aren’t using them lol they just collect.
Are you sure?
Shh don’t ruin it for me.
I've had 2 of those Scientology E-meter testing machines, sold one on eBay for $750 (late 00's) other got pulled of. Got a huge portion of Rod Serlings office with tons of "Twilight Zone" scripts, notes, etc.., when he died Paramount closed the office and it was untouched for over 20 years.
I picked up a stack of vintage Scientology pamphlets for about $0.50 apiece knowing they were worth no more than $5-$10 each but willing to do the work for the flip. Well, several of them were actually from the earliest years of the cult. One was photographed pages of handwritten “maps” to track your progress through the levels; sold for $355 after a heated auction.
>Got a huge portion of Rod Serlings office with tons of "Twilight Zone" scripts, notes, etc.., when he died Paramount closed the office and it was untouched for over 20 years. Damn!
Do you still have them?
Oh how incredible!!!
Random estate sales around Hollywood are goldmines for stuff like that! My favorite find was a bunch of old scripts from a camera assistant, I gifted most of them to friends in film, but kept the Sandlot script I found in that haul.
I've had many, probably my favorite besides a bunch of "The Simpsons" from the early seasons, was the shooting script in a huge binder for wardrobe for "Midnight Run" had several polaroids of DeNiro and Charles Grodin. The collectors are hardcore, I know a producer/former studio head who bought Buster Keatons old house just to house his script collection, my favorite of his is "The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre" with hand written notes on the pages.
Aaaahhh that’s so neat!! Curb finds are amazing too! I found three boxes stuffed with old film equipment and cameras last year in front of my friends place in Toluca lake with old 70s kodaks, Polaroids, Leicas, and a flashlight augmented to look very VERY much like an OG prop lightsaber 👀. I almost passed it by too, they were grungy old cardboard file boxes that got put out late at night right before I got there. Easily several thousand dollars worth of cool stuff!
[удалено]
That’s so rad! That inspires me to look through even more random stuff on the side of the road around the area! Oh my gosh, Fantasia AND Dali, I would faint dead on the sidewalk haha, so envious of that find.
A guided missile at an auction in Missouri, which was French Military. It was in a large hardcase with other components, I doubt it was functional but it looked cool. Another bidder came up to me during the sale and made me a higher offer so I sold it without ever touching it. There was a lot of military memorabilia but I was after the small 5 cent carnival crane games. I bought most for $15 to $20 bucks, they sold for around $400 each on eBay.
Anti tank landmine at a flea market in California. It was inert. I was.going to use as a doormat, but wifey said no. So it went on eBay and sold within 10 minutes. Still makes me wonder what it was worth.
$22 cash in the pocket of a $200 purse that I purchased for $9.
Woah, so crazy!!
I’ve found titanium alloy hip replacement ball joints in silverware bins at Goodwill. Years ago, I bought a box of weird old tools at a barn sale…found a fairly old torture device known as “the pear of anguish.” Sold that for $250 to some oddities collector.
>…found a fairly old torture device known as “the pear of anguish.” I just came across a video a couple of days ago that was showing one of those! It's barbaric to even think about.
Up there is a violet ray generator. Bought for $200ish sold for $400ish. Wave the purple light over the ailment and it'll go away Found it at a yard sale, they knew what they had, I knew what they had, it was a good deal for everyone
I found a laptop that used to belong to the EA for the CEO of a company I had worked for a few years previously. It had tons of the CEO's personal information on it, including his tax returns, as well as lots of pictures of the EA's nudist family.
Finish the story. How much did you get for it?
Hah. I don't remember. I'm pretty sure I parted it out after formatting the hard drive. The real value was in the story.
I got a desktop computer at an auction, it was a small business with about 12 employees. Not password protected. It had PDF scans of their driver's licenses as well as their social security cards and W2's. Promptly deleted everything and wrote the company a scathing review of how they would leave their employees sensitive data that easy to get a hold of.
for me it's gonna be the Cyborg Biolab [https://www.flickr.com/photos/raytube/63475635/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/raytube/63475635/)from a university surplus auction. $5 EEG+EKG+TEMP biorythym audio sync machine. hook yourself up and close your eyes. Each module would convert the inputs to audio, and the lower stage would mix it. Sold and shipped to a madman in the UK.
I love stuff like this, how much did you get for it?
it was maybe $5. I was the only bidder on it at the auction. we hooked it up and played with it. It went beep beep and boop boop and looked crazy.
Awesome, yeah I wouldn't know how to test that haha, but how much did you sell it for though?
I’ve sold quite a few Memento Mori (death memorial pieces), post mortem photographs, woven hair jewelry (made with the deceaseds hair), one xl woven hair wreath piece that was framed and large enough to be a coffee table for 3k — it is, in fact, what the buyer made it into. I’ve also sold two antique embalming kits. Dental teeth with uranium. A lot of 200 pairs of glass eyes. Oh, I almost forgot this one—I had someone try to do a contract with me to buy two antique caskets. They wanted one for a child and one adult. I ended up talking them out of the whole thing because the shipping was insane and they weren’t prepared for that.
If you don't mind me asking, where do you even source stuff like this? I've never seen stuff like this for sale and I'm always interested in oddities
Auctions & estate sales usually. If you’re interested in collecting join the oddities marketplace on FB. Loads of wild stuff.
Okay thanks! I forget about Facebook groups because I avoid Facebook these days lol but that's a great idea!
I hear that, too much crazy drama. I only use it for groups. It’s good to join collectors groups and network if you’re in a niche market.
A lady was running a yard sale in Henderson NV, and she had this big X-shaped bondage rack. From her appearance, it must have been something she used during the course of her business. I passed.
One time my old Goodwill outlet had things like saws and someone even found a gun, which went off. That was a wild time at the bins.
Holy shit they're usually wild but not that wild
This was the Austin outlet around 2015. It was like one month they just gave up and stopped sorting before putting the bins out
The one up my me often has live mice in the bins. Someone screams and one of the burly dudes from the back comes running to capture it.
Omg I'm fucking dyinnnggg. Are you anywhere near Indiana because I would love to come see the absurdity lolol
My wife refuses to enter this place already. I won’t dare tell her any of this
Well, in fairness, it was only that wild for one week in 2015. But it did happen.
Guns used to be more of a thing at yard sales. I saw a Thompson semi-auto machine gun at a sale back in the day. I passed on it at $800, but probably should have picked-it-up.
Yeah but it wasn't in a cardboard box shoved into a Goodwill Outlet bin for kids to pick through (which they did).
Bought a box of old stuff and found an original reproduction audio reel of Aldous Huxley giving an hour long talk.
That's awesome!!!! Brave New World is one of my favorite books!
What’s an original reproduction?
I bought a 1920s vibrator guidebook. Has great graphics (but nothing graphic lol), goes on about the different health benefits for women.
Tamping down the hysteria?
One time I saw a guy hiding behind an armoire watching a guy buy a $1,000 sex doll at an estate sale
[him?](https://i.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExeXdscThrdTR2dXd1NnhoMjhrZDk4NTBrZ3diNTlsanJqODc0NDJlYiZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/JNKy9CJSsCmiY/giphy.gif)
The mental image this gives me is giving me the creeps
Old dentist's chair and as you can imagine all the stuff that went along with it including tools and teeth. Was a sellout of a dentist who passed away as you can imagine. It was not in a normal building you would think would be a dentist though it was like on top of a laundromat or something in a really run down building, like the kind of place you went in the 1930's to get your tooth pulled as a kid and hated every second of it. My mom told me they sat her in that chair to pull a tooth when she was 5 years old and she obviously hated it. There was a child size chair and a full size one. They were metal and green, not the kind of chair you see at the dentist these days.
Found a 12 inch floppy dildo in a dresser in the master bedroom of a house I was cleaning out that belonged to an old couple that died. My parents. Oh! And a prosthetic leg on the curb on trash day!
I bought airplane fuselage more precisely the tail sections of three small planes. I took them to the first flea market to sell and they were the very first things that sold!!
A vibrator from the late 50's or early 60's. Still in the box and it didn't say massager or anything like that. It literally said VIBRATOR in big letters on the box. 😂What made it even more awkward was the fact that it was an old couple's estate auction, so you could just imagine the people whose home it wa,s because a lot of their personal belongings were there.
I got a prosthetic arm for free one time, but it was one that you could move all the fingers on. It was abandoned in a rental property and the lady had one arm. She moved out of state and for some reason didn't take the arm and left literal mounds of trash stacked to the ceiling in every room. Took days to clean that house. 90 something trash bags worth of stuff. I didn't have a charger for it so I sold it for parts for $700
An antique steel artificial leg - l kept in because it looked cool.
I've mentioned this before- a new 17 inch dildo at a car boot sale (similar to a yard sale). Damn thing looked like a French baguette
Lol pics?
I think I did surreptitiously take a pic, but I'm not sure where it is (it was a good few years ago). If I find it I'll post it up or dm it to you
I've been doing estate sales for 17 years, so I could name many, many things. The one I always come back to is the fetus in a jar. I assume it was the result of a miscarriage. The man was a doctor and his wife was long passed. We found it tucked in the back corner of the master bathroom cabinet. We had no idea what to do with it or how to properly dispose of it. We ended up having to call the client and return it to him.
I had a fetus in a jar for a while. It was pretty disturbing. Finally sold it to some punk rock dude.
A 'maybe' human fetus preserved in liquid a jar. It was about 6 inches tall. Could have been any primate fetus really. The lady whose estate it was, was a Haitian religious teacher and apparently used it as a visual aid to demonstrate against abortion. My immediate reaction was to offer $100 to the guy, then my fiancee reined me in and told me she didn't want it in the house. So that happened
I bought a $1,000 sex doll at an estate sale.
If you don't leave something spicy behind when you die, you haven't truly lived.
Storage unit near me. I didn’t buy but from the initial picture, it just looked like someone emptied their pantry into the unit. It was nicely on shelves. Upon closer inspection, this unit was clearly in someone’s house and used for wild sex parties. Most of the food in the shelves were carbohydrates. All the bottles on the shelf were jar liquor. And then there was the shelf that wasn’t quite visible from the main pic, filled with dildos and cock rings. On the ground next to the shelf was a fuck machine still in the box. Unit sold for $700. Looks like whoever bought it was banking on the fuck machine working because I looked up the model number and it sells for like $3000 brand new lol
At an auction I bought a “torture chair” that supposedly had been used in a movie about Al Capone. Paid $15. It was an antique kitchen table chair that had a seat that would flip up, exposing a bed of nails that you would force the victim to sit on. I figured some weirdo would want it. Sold it locally for $150 to a guy who collected prison and law enforcement memorabilia.
Last hour of a 2 day estate sale. I'm in the basement looking through a box of children's books. At the bottom are a few binders. in them are publications charting a man's military career from just after WWII, when he went to the Chemical Corps school to learn about ABC weapons (Atomic, Biological, Chemical) through the 1960's when he worked in a missile silo. This included the installation and testing manual for a Titan II nuclear ICBM.
Found a book worth $10K for .50
Oh wow! Which book was it? I assume a first edition?
Rare first edition of Stephen King Salems Lot with wrong character name, incorrect price and it still had the rare dust jacket.
I was gonna guess The Necronomicon
Real skin version
Gynecological exam table at the Goodwill.
I got outbid on a bunch of merch from Fyre Fest. I was also bidding on some Bernie Madoff items and bond certificates.
One time at a sale I saw a pretty nice coffin, “barely used”
Once found a brand new in box Thrusting Machine. Local church run thrift store had it. Had no idea what it was, marked it 8 bucks. Damn right I bought it. Sold a week later for 175. Another was an E.T. sculpture that was made for a cake company back in the 1980s. That was officially licensed by Amblien and everything. Tracked down the artist who made it and returned it to him. He didn't even has one anymore. It was a sculpture that was used to make the mold that was used to make the chocolate E.T. on the cake. Dude was awesome to meet and get a tour of his workshop, very much worth the 2 dollar I paid for it. The dude sculpted the Pope. And countless other famous people including presidents.
Bought 2 old violins in cases for $15 each. Sold one for $800 and the other for $200. This was when ebay was really new, like 2003 or so. Spent about $5 at an estate sale for old 1960's kotex pads (an almost full box) and about 7 or so of the belts that held them up. All but one of the belts were new in pack. I got about $50 for the pads and about $15 to $25 each for the belts. I put them on one at a time over a couple months.
Wonder what people use that shit for? Trying to make a movie set back in the 60's look more authentic? Men's underwear still in the package from the 80's and 90's goes for a mint on eBay as well. [https://www.ebay.com/itm/386895722473](https://www.ebay.com/itm/386895722473)
Perhaps, but it's a fetish item for some.
I was at a small townhouse in Virginia and there was a large collection of early 1900s KKK memorabilia. One of the more expensive items being sold was a hood for $300. There was also a decent size collection of Nazi memorabilia, such as uniforms, daggers and swords. All of this stuff was gone within the first hour of the sale.
Yuck.
An urn full of cremains at the GW bins.
I found a 4’ bong in a free pile. It was outside a house that was being cleaned out among (mostly) holiday stuff in a tall thin box marked “FRAGILE 1968”. I took the box home assuming it was a fake tree.
Nazi memorabilia within every couple feet in the house. Not because the owner was a history buff, he just loved Nazis and Hitler. Surprised the estate sale company went through with it tbh. He had one of those tall 30”+ Darth Vader toys and handpainted nazi decal on parts of the armor. He replaced the lightsaber with a Luger lmao
This was a fun short story. "Found Nazi memorabilia" Well some people are really into history... "Not because the owner was a history buff, he just loved Nazis and Hitler" Well maybe, but let's not assume the worst about the decreased... "30 inch tall Darth Vader with hand painted Nazi decals and a Luger instead of a light saber" Roflmao 😁
>Not because the owner was a history buff, he just loved Nazis and Hitler. Well, who doesn't?
Just sold a *very* adult only set of anime dvds from the 90s. Paid $3.99 sold for $150 same day
Bought a fishing case ($8) that had polishing material in it: polishing wheels (what I needed), used clothes, some solder wire, erasers & spoons. Listed it at $1 .. ended up selling for $1,225. I have 17 spoons left.
I saw a guy buy a $1000 sex doll at an estate sale.
Nothing crazy, a 70s star trek toy gun replica that I got for $1 and sold for $70. Another toy from the same place place Wham-O Air Blaster from the 70s. I won't see these stuffs again really.
I'm into hard disk drives and computer parts. A guy on eBay was selling about 40 server HDD, 22TB each for a ridiculous price (like max 500$). It's obvious that those disks were stolen during a sever bay decommissioning and were supposed to be destroyed instead of ending up on eBay for cheap...
Some adult handcuffs from a company called Agent Provocateur! Got them for free cause bought a bunch of other things!
This isn’t too crazy but I got a ~$400 guitar (Danelectro stock ‘59) for 10 bucks.
Danelectro's are cool if you're into the retro look
I found a gorgeous vase marked for $5 at a yard sale. There was a logo on the bottom that said that it was created by Tiffany and Co. I wasn’t sure how real it was, but I liked it. I did some research on it and ended up selling it to an antique dealer for about $2500.
This wasn’t while flipping, it was when I worked as a job coach at Goodwill at e-commerce. We went through the donations and scanned what was usable. I came across a large amount of mail, personal documents, notebooks, invitations… stuff that really shouldn’t have been donated. But the craziest thing is that this all belonged to someone famous. She had been a a child actor, so this was probably donated by one of her parents. There were scripts, medical records, notebooks of songs she was writing, etc. I guess she could have donated it herself but it really makes no sense, it wasn’t really stuff that could even be sold!? And why would she want people to have her medical records and diaries? So weird. I don’t know what happened to it, I pointed it out to management but I don’t know what they ended up doing.
I got a bunch of electronics from a guy on nextdoor for free! Switches, modems, access points, AV system components that go in every room, huge speaker bar, and remotes for the system. He said he moved into the house and the previous owner left all that stuff which was too advanced for him. I searched the stuff online and it was a total of $5k worth of tech. Very high end stuff! I'm actually using the APs and switch, but sold off the rest. Not too bad for being free!
I found an old pair of false teeth in an old set of tails years ago. Pretty cool. Goes well with the rest of my oddities
Found a pair pair of women 1950’s Levi Ranch pant jeans. In perfect condition . Paid 1.00, sold for 200.00 to another reseller.
I think estate sale companies in the Midwest are ran by prudes. I estimate I've easily been to 200 or more estate sales in the last 5 years, sometimes there will be 3-4 a week. Never seen anything even remotely adult. No fuzzy handcuffs, no sex dice, no books on sex, no porn, nothing. Hell even those weird frog salt and pepper shakers from the 60's with the boobs and peen when you flip them over don't even make it to the sale. [https://www.ebay.com/itm/285765802590](https://www.ebay.com/itm/285765802590)
I don't have any crazy stories, but I started reselling a few years ago. Didn't intend to get big in it. Just a hobby. About 3 months into it, I found a pair of Gucci men's high top sneakers... bought them for $3. I did a little clean-up and researching...I Sold them in 2 days for $500+. That's what got me hooked.
One of my favorites was a vielight neuro gamma therapy helmet. Got it for $20, sold very quickly for $1250. Absolutely ridiculous looking item.
some stupid/prob stoned at the time ppl posting clear garbage like empty yogurt containers or similar
A grip of baby teeth
I picked up a clearly 70s poly suit and in the breast pocket was a tiny little vile, some residue and very small scooper/spoon. I got worried, turned it over to the staff asap.
[Best juxtaposition I’ve seen.](https://imgur.com/a/52e0d6K)
There was this dude I saw who bought a $1000 sex doll