Getting high on Lego pieces

On Friday night, I decided to sort through all the Lego pieces that I purchased last week, trying to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, but wound up separating the weed from the wheat.

Yes, I found joints amid my Lego bricks.

The Lego collection belonged to my friend’s grandson, who spent more than a year at a Texas ranch for troubled teens.  I never knew exactly what the trouble was, but apparently it was drug related.  The Lego stash must have seemed like a good place for the 14-year-old to hide his drug stash.

Drug paraphernalia aside, it’s a huge amount of Lego bricks and accessories, which are sold by the pound on Ebay.  I just need to parcel out the little bricks and get them ready to sell. I also found a Ziploc bag full of the little Lego Star Wars figures, which can bring $4 to $6 each. 

On Saturday, we attended the World’s Largest Yard Sale, sponsored by a local radio station.  The radio station officials must live in a small world because it only had about 20 vendors, and we had to pay $1 each to get in.  Despite my better judgment, I purchased a Commodore Vic-20 computer with software and a data drive (basically a cassette recorder to store computer programs), all in original boxes, for $25.  The VIC-20 was a state of the art home computer in 1980. From the same vendor, I found a book worth $21, which they included with the computer.  So, using creative bookkeeping, the system only cost a whopping $4.  I love vintage technology, you know.

On Sunday, we took a few items over to our antique booth, and were questioned by the mall’s owner as to where the vintage western memorabilia was that we had promised on our application.  I got the distinct impression that she disapproved of the contents of our booth up to that point.  We assured her that it was coming in June, after we try to sell some of it at the Memphis Film Festival in Tunica, MS.

Later, Ella and I also sorted through all the religious books in our storage unit.  They were remnants of a closed Christian bookstore, and I already had gone through them once.  We pulled out several totes of worthwhile books, but left behind 32 boxes of penny books.  I placed an ad on Craigslist, and hope to let an eager buyer do all the heavy lifting out of my unit.

My favorite sale of the weekend was a pack of expired Polaroid film, not because it was high priced, but because it was a beat-up opened twin-pack box that held only a single pack, and sold within an hour of listing.  Have I ever mentioned that I love vintage technology?

"Come on let's take a picture, the kind you gotta shake" - Automatic by Miranda Lambert

I also had to request an inventory report on Amazon so Ella could sort and shelve my books from February and March.  Thanks to a couple of book sales and the pastor’s library that I purchased, I listed 342 books during that time period.

Before going to bed on Sunday, I looked around at the disaster area that is my house and vowed to avoid thrifting at least for the coming weekend.

Unfortunately, there is a local church already advertising a sale on Saturday.

Crap.