Holy Yard Sale Motherload!

OK, I was sort of hoping the people selling didn't just say "Gimmie $10 for the box..." Seems there are two types of yard-sale sellers: charge way too much for junk, or way too little for good stuff! :-)

This is incredible. My wife loves yard sales and drags me along every so often, but I have never seen anything like this. Do you use craiglist to find yard sales? Yakboomer.

I rarely find any goodies at local yard sales or Garage Sales. I'll have to start doing that again this summer! Congrats on your horde!

I have found a few interesting odds and ends at yard sales, but nothing like this. Great score!

Since someone resurrected this thread, I'll add the story about what happened during the weeks after getting this lot.

As mentioned earlier, there was a bunch of cards and letters addressed to a William Suida. I had googled his name and found out he was a rather well known art historian in the early part of the 1900s until his death. I had sent an email to the University of Texas Austin, where his art collection now resides. I got a reply from the university and then a follow up from his actual granddaughter. His granddaughter really wanted to know how I got this collection as it had gone missing in the early 1990s after her mother had passed away. That part didn't come out until about the 15th email back and forth with her. More on that later. It turns out her daughter, Williams great grandaughter is now going to that university and has been doing research on William's life for the museum. I offered to give them back any of the correspondence, post cards, the museum pass, letters and everything else that may have a personal attachment to the family. I asked for nothing in return as I knew it was the right thing to do. She had told me the stamp collection wasn't important. Just the correspondences between William and "the old country" So I spent a couple of evenings going through everything and think I ended up sending her about 150 or so different pieces that may have meant something to the family.

About the collection and how I ended up with it: I had given his grandaughter some other names on pieces in the collection, some going well into the 70s and 80s. None of it made any sense to her at first but to me, it was obviously all joined together by the way things were stored in the books and envelopes. I googled names, addresses and anything I could to try and help her figure out how the collection ended up on Cape Cod. Most of the addresses were NY addresses in the collection BTW. Well, to make a long story a bit shorter cause I have to get back to work now, the person I ended up buying this collection from at the yard sale was their housekeeper's grandson. I guess it's possible that it was stolen and she did mention that but to me, it looked more like it was given to the housekeeper as there were certain items mixed in that were clearly given to them back in 70s. I guess we'll never know for sure though.

What an interesting story! Mike33, you do come up with such interesting finds!

Theres a few of us out sniffing for a good find..i know a couple of guys that do very well at it..but they work their butts off..it does not usually fall in their laps ! Rule #1 never overpay..trying to resell stamps is an art in its own right !

Great find Mike... and wonderful story as well. The penny Black is beeautiful; almost a wash for what you paid for the whole thing!

Cheers & have fun..
Ram

I'm always looking for cool stuff. Whether it be stamps, baseball cards, autographs, whatever. I rarely sell any of it though. Think I've sold 1 stamp in my life and that was on here about a year ago. I've sold a lot of baseball cards on ebay but that's always just to buy more.

Love driving around in the summer on a Saturday morning looking for yard sales. Sometimes, I look in the paper or craigslist but usually just hop in the car and go.

This one I saw in the paper and was there at 8 AM. Happened to be less than a mile from where I live too

Wow ! nice found !

Mike 33, kudos to you for doing the right thing in regards to the personal things in the items you bought. I am sure the granddaughter was thrilled.

yes made me feel real good hearing about you benevolence twards the Granddaughters plight. A heartfelt thank you is in order! THANK YOU!

Wow! What an awesome find. Congratulations and oh yea. The same question. How much did it cost you. It would almost make me want to start collecting WW. Ha!

Thanks guys

TinMan - I paid $175 for the whole lot. He wanted 200, I offered $150 and we met in the middle.

I still haven't really gone through much of it yet. Just took all the US stuff out, and the Penny Black, then sent a bunch of the stuff to the original owner's family.

The rest is supposed to be a winter project for me but haven't even started on it yet :)

I'll ad some more pics whenever I get to it. I'm sure there's some nice stuff in the big album. It's pretty packed. Lots of nice old covers too from Austia. I only kept the ones that didn't have personal notes and things.

Good Buy Mike. That will entertain you for months to come. That was interesting and thoughtful of you to pursue the names and find the Grand-Daughter and return some mementos. Sometimes the background is interesting and brings real meaning to the collection. Even if you don't know any of the people. You did good!