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The Bartering Picker
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: For Sale
- Hits: 1116
Sunday, a couple more pickers through, one, a younger couple that pick up a couple of cheap vintage cameras and a typewriter, and again help me out by taking some bones and crystals.
The other, a low rent picker, handsy, touches everything, asks prices of things that aren't for sale, fortunately he doesn't have much of an eye....
He notes the bronze bell - "From the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" I said in my ad, and he believed it...wants to trade for cheap reproduction sword, various junktiques in his car boot, I'm explaining, I'm downsizing, letting shit go, don't want more, want less, ...end up getting a couple of mint condition $2.00 Bills, $20, on items that I'd valued at around $60, but really, they're low-end and so - as much to get rid of him as to get rid of junk, I make the deal and send him off.
Most of the people, they've been likable, relateable, him, not-so, and finally he's gone and I can get back to whatever it was I was doing. The $2.00 bills will end up in some Barista's jar as a tip.
Lil Miss Wrestle
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 762
Found these in the locker from when the daughter was 6 or 7 years old, she loved to wrestle and the little Miss books. And so I painted her a "Little Miss Wrestle" mug...
Can't sell this, so it'll stay here until I can return it to the locker...
The things I collect...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 790
I mean, everything unto hoarding, but there seem to be a few things in particular. Anything that measures - scientific instruments, telescopes, microscopes, rulers, x-ray, optics, etc. This is a broad interest. Religious iconography, kitsch, juju, Roman Catholic, Buddhist, Etc, quack medicine, clothes - too many, and I've purged these a hundred times, neckties, - easily 1000 (I sorted them today. It took a while...). Cufflinks, Watches, men's accessories, like handkerchiefs, cigarette cases, Stationary, pens, art supplies (oh-man-oh-man-oh-man), rocks, rocks, rocks, sticks, antlers, books, books books, old: lamps, statues, paintings, anything that jogs the imagination or curiosity. Old instruments. I could go on. Collections? Watches. Cufflinks. Neck Ties. Candlesticks. Those are the four major ones. Purge these and I'll be halfway there. Well, no, because these 4 collections take up a very little space comparatively, but those are the ones of interest, the ones I've really gone overboard on, I wonder what - psychologically - that says? Never mind. By the time I figure that one out they'll be gone...
A picker comes through it
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 777
Finally - a long week of holding shit on Kijiji for people that forget or don't come to pick it up, text messages from people who dicker you down and then text "OMW", then disappear, right now there's about a 1/4 response rate. For every four inquiries I sell one item. But a picker came down, got excited, started going through boxes, made a pile, older - my age - Chinese fellow, putting together a pile for best price - a good offer on already good prices but it's gotta go. I liked him, he counter-offers gently, I get him, he's got to make his profit, I don't want to lose my shirt (but there's no profit to be had here, I win on some, lose on others, and - in the end, it's all gotta go). He's a nice guy, and in a lazier world I could see us becoming friends. He discovers my boxes of Dinosaur bones - "Help Yourself", because, after all, I have hundreds, and you can't sell them, and then he discovers boxes of crystals, which haven't been selling, but he takes a couple and I like that we have similar tastes, he spends an hour with my watches, cufflinks, but he doesn't know these and I can't recommend he sell them for profit, I'll move those off on Ebay for the best price, they cost nothing to ship and like the candlesticks there's a better market further afield.
I've got people now emailing me wondering when I'm putting more stuff up for sale - that's gotta be a good sign, especially with rent due in 5 days...and - I get discouraged when I think how much I have left - but I have a year, or so, ahead of me, it will all go by then - and then - today and finally, I sell the decrepit bongoes, which were proof manifest that you never know what people will want or buy, and so there's still a lot of hope yet...
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