“This is going to be hard”

On Saturday morning, Ella and I took off not too bright and way too early for Cleveland, TN, to pick up the final load of our western memorabilia. The goal was to hit a few yard/estate sales before loading the truck with the cowboy stuff.

It was a good plan, but true to our luck lately, the few sales that seemed promising turned out to be busts. Our final stop, a so-called estate sale, did yield a surprising find, though.

During discussions with the former owner of the western memorabilia two weeks ago, we learned that he had sold a collection of western knives. Obviously, the knives would have been ours had we responded to the Craigslist advertisement a little sooner. C’est la vie.

On Saturday, though, at the so-called estate sale, I saw a collection of, you guessed it, western knives in a small display case. The set of 18 knives, which featured images of movie and TV cowboys, was priced at $125. The seller, noticing our interest, told the story of picking the knives up from a local man who had a huge “man cave” dedicated to western memorabilia, and that the knives were the only thing that he would sell. It would have been a more interesting story had Ella and I not just purchased the entire contents of that “man cave.”

Still, I wanted the knives, but $125 was fairly steep. The seller countered with $100, which, he said, was what he actually paid for the knives.

The only other interesting item at the estate sale was a vintage set of toy cowboy guns in a Gunsmoke/Marshall Dillon gun belt with matching holsters. Given our goal of finding “wow factor” items for our vendor’s booth at the western/cowboy film festival next year, and given that Buck Taylor, who played Newly O'Brien on Gunsmoke, will be at the festival, it seemed to be a perfect find.

Unfortunately, it too was priced at $125, but the seller said he would let it go for $100 as well. I really didn’t want to pay $200 for both items, so I took a page out of the American Pickers’ book, and bundled the two items, and actually got a decent price. Vintage collectibles are still a little out of my league, but I think I can double my money on the items.

We headed home after loading the last of the western memorabilia, which consisted 6 large boxes of VHS tapes, two life-size cardboard stand ups (John Wayne and Hopalong Cassidy), and one large box of framed western pictures.

Of course, I had to unload the truck at home, and our house, which already had boxes from the first haul, was bursting at the seams. Little did I know that it was going to get worse on Sunday.

Late Saturday night, while surfing Craigslist, I found a listing for 1000+ DVDs, including boxed sets, westerns, and science fiction. I responded to the listing, then went to bed.

Late Sunday morning, the owner of the DVDs responded, and Ella and I went to look at the DVDs that afternoon. 

“This is going to be hard,” the owner of the DVDs said while talking about selling them.  “Maybe not,” I responded as I started scanning the titles.

To make a long story short, we got back home with 1400 or so DVDs in the back of the truck.

I know, I’m crazy, but, hopefully, crazy like a fox. To me, it makes sense to buy in bulk, especially given how slow scouting has been recently. Still, it’s become like stuffing a watermelon in a banana peel as we move all this inventory into our house, and we are constantly shuffling boxes around, and stepping over piles of books, DVDs, etc.

I really don’t think I need to buy anything else for the foreseeable future, and I plan to stop scouting until the house looks a bit less like a hoarder’s habitat.

On the other hand, though, I still have my eye on all those clearance toys that are about to be reduced further.

Have a good week everyone.