What Is Your Best Estate-Sale Find?
Be it an estate, garage, or Storage Wars–like auction sale, there are always deals to be had when shopping for the pre-loved and coveted items of other folks. This past time is getting hotter around the country, especially among younger folks. It’s such a big thing that even retailer TJ Maxx is reaping rewards thanks to its “treasure hunt–like shopping experience.”
Hunting for treasure is part of the thrill, as sometimes we find some great stuff at places like an estate sale. That, of course, depends on the hobbies of the person who created the estate. I haven’t found many hobby-related things I need or want at an estate (or a garage) sale—at least not at a price I could stomach. But one time I learned that a local rental-storage space was being cleared out, because a posting went up on Craigslist to tell the world that everything must go. Remember back when we used Craigslist and not Facebook Marketplace for stuff like this?
I left with a large box of random stuff, and it was all cheaper than dinner at a decent restaurant. The coolest item was a used Passport radar detector from the 1980s, complete with the box, accessories, and owner’s manual. I didn’t know what I was getting until I got home, and this time capsule was a pleasant surprise.
Granted, this radar detector isn’t helpful in our modern age, with traffic monitors, blind spot monitors, and laser speed checkers, but it sure looks cool for Rad Era fans. (And this era now has a name!) So with this modest example of a cool find in a treasure hunt, I punt it back to you, dear reader of Hagerty Media:
What Is Your Best Estate-Sale Find?
I didn’t know the Escorts and PassPorts are collector items. I have one of both with original boxes.
Never see the Escorts anymore they were the thing to have back then.
I don’t do estate sales very often but I did pick up a team photo of the Williams F1 team framed and signed by Damon Hill and Alain Prost. It was the large official team photo with all the crew, factory staff and even the team haulers with the cars.
My old neighbor did get a lot of good hand tools this way at a fair price.
I will stop short of saying they are collector items, because that implies they are valuable. But once and a while I come across a collector of 80s vintage stuff and they love it. I doubt they would pay much for it, however. And they’d have to own vintage 80s cars to want to accessorize, so its a small group of people.
Understand. Not trying to infer value. Like Rad Wood collectable but not get rich trends.
I gave up on these detectors as most speed traps in the area now are plane timed and laser that they hit you when it is too late.
I look for a car going fast and drop back and pace them.
Escort/Passport is still around although they have changed ownership several times. They also now own BEL and Cobra.
I loved my Passport. It lasted about 15 years. Replaced it with a Valentine 1. After over 20 years it still works fine. Only thing a new one does different is filter radar signals from the lane assist feature from GM cars. Only GM cars are on the same frequency. Both have saved me numerous tickets!!!! Great swap meet find!
A few years back V1 did a trade in special for owners with old ones for new ones at a steep discount. I love how few false positives the new one has, but its not as cool looking as the original!
In addition to filtering, many new models now have the ability to use GPS to filter out stationary false sources such as the automated doors at grocery stores.
Why would I be speeding in the vicinity of a grocery store’s front door? 😛
Back in 1999 I bought a 1984 Honda CB700SC Nighthawk with just over 4K miles on it for $1400 dollars at a town wide yard sale . Rode it for a year and sold it for 2500 . Best deal I ever got on a bike save the 1973 Elsinore CR250M that I bought brand new at age 15 for 1133 with no sales tax having bought it in PA coming from NJ after saving up all summer from my job at a local sod farm .The town hated me when I fired that bike up 6:30 am Saturday morning and rode it through the fields to work rooster tailing and digging ruts through the farm roads getting an adrenaline rush before starting the work day .
I believe I mentioned this find just recently, but it’s still in my short-term memory bank, so I’ll toss it in here: at an estate sale this summer, I got a big assortment of old-school clamps. I never seem to have enough clamps, and I put them to almost immediate use on a gluing project.
The discussion of the radar detectors also brought up something in my pea-brain: being an old long-haul trucker, I enjoy a YouTube channel called Twin Sticks Garage, where a guy restores older semis. When he was building a Smokey and the Bandit KW clone, he was searching for a movie-correct CB, calculator and radar detector, and fans provided him with most of what he needed. Now he’s doing a Trans Am and Lemans sheriff’s car to add with his truck and trailer. Although these were ’70s and not ’80s items, the idea is that it’s likely that somewhere, someone wants some obscure (and probably otherwise useless) trinket that one of us probably has and is close to throwing out!
and your last sentence is a ball & chain at my ankles. being a pack rat is bad enough. but keeping stuff because “there’s someone out there that wants it” can be such a burden! notice how i said ‘wants’, not needs. and considering i rarely if ever list any of said stuff for sale, well…
I don’t “list” stuff, but I do make at least two swap meets per year, and lots of that stuff that someone wants OR needs changes hands then.
Several years ago I found a 1960s Heuer Sebring split-second stopwatch mounted to a rally co-driver’s clipboard with period SCCA event plaques from the ’60s-’80s. The clipboard also had a period Lucas map light and a homemade mount for a Curta mechanical calculator. Two $20 bills later it was mine.
That sounds like a VERY cool find!
I bought a lawn tractor easily ten years ago for 7 bucks that I still mow my lawn with
I got a watt meter that is probably 100+ years old that adorned my desk until Covid. It might make it back there one day.
Not the neatest but the weirdest estate sale find for me- and I didn’t want to buy it. I always head to the garage because the ladies who are the usual organizers don’t like that man stuff and price it low. So I once went in the garage and rooting through the boxes found a MIB glass dildo. Whaaaat? My best buys ever weren’t car things: an oriental rug on the basement floor for $50.00 (and they took it to the car for me) and two weeks later a rug dealer gave me $3000 for it.(and marked it up to $10,000 !!). And recently a MIB 60’s Unimat mini-lathe with accessories that I had no idea of worth but paid $20,00 for because it was neat, and put on eBay where it brought $780.00. So go to estate sales and go to the garage but don’t always look at car stuff.
I had to do some googling to realize that Men in Black wasn’t doing some unusual marketing
Mint In Box
He who dies with the most toys has a great garage sale.
No, his heirs have a great garage sale.
He who dies with the most toys is still dead.
I sure hope that “ya can’t take it with ya” saying is true – ’cause if I die and find out I coulda brought it all with me, I’m gonna be chapped!
Back when I had a Superformance Cobra Replica, at a garage sale, picked up a ’63 Populer Mechanic magazine, where Tom McHale (?) who was one of the first auto writers, reviewed the then new Shelby Cobra. Gave it to a Superformance Dealer, Bob Olthoff, who drove them in South Africa.
I found an IR heat gun many years ago at a local garage sale for $15-20 when they were still a new, high-priced tool. Still works great today.
Actually at a church rummage sale. I got (for $2) framed, autographed photo of Jim Clark. It’s the typical winner’s shot in his Lotus at the Indy 500. It hangs next to autographed shots of Phil Hill, Carroll Shelby and Juan Manuel Fangio.
Several interesting things, at least peripherally related to the automotive milieu:
A pair of NIB Trippe headlights (junior versions of the 8″ Trippe driving lights from the 30s) for under $10. Unfortunately I’ve never owned a pre or immediate post-WWII car that would be period correct for them.
A 1918 Weston ohmmeter in its original finger-jointed mahogany case and storage box, porcelain on steel meter face and nickel-plated trim and terminals. It came complete with instructions and the initials of the technician who calibrated the meter, countersigned by his supervisor! $5.
For your camera fans, a 16mm Bolex triple turret movie camera–original box, instructions and accessories, vintage 1958 or so. It was the top of the line amateur movie camera–also used by pros and sold for more than a new Chevy Biscayne when new. $10 at an estate sale, and it made my friend (a camera collector) John’s day.
Finally, at the estate sale of an “eccentric recluse” (so described in the sale announcement!) an album-full of teens and 20s photographs, all laying on the ground. Someone bought the album for its covers, and dumped the pages on the ground. So free. Lots of pictures of the family’s cars, many of which I could identify (a Case touring car, and a Mercury-bodied Model T speedster. Found a few bits of that T speedster in the barn, but not enough to make a car from. Rats!
The CD collection looks pretty interesting there.
A few years ago, picked up a Hurst ‘Mystery Shifter’ with linkage at a garage sale for $1. No documentation as to what car it came out of, tried to find out using part numbers on the shifter linkage but kept hitting a dead end. Put it on the shelf, had plans to install it on my riding lawnmower as a joke. Ha! Never got around to doing that. Cleaning the garage a couple years ago, ‘discovered’ it still on the shelf, sold it for $50 on Craigslist!
More mundane than some of the above, but for $30 got a 63 Pontiac intake, heads, valve covers, & exhaust manifolds. Seller didn’t want to let them go for that, but told him he could either have 30 bucks or all that cast iron to deal with in a couple hours when the sale ended. Six months? later a gentleman with a 63 Grand Prix or two was more than happy to pay $90 for the heads & intake, and couldn’t resist the covers & exhausts for 10 bucks more
Less mundane a collection of 4 Australian state license plates from the 70s that were $10 each or less. The Queensland one hangs on pantry wall along with one from Cuba & one I found in a parts yard from la Republica Dominicana that someone painted a landscape on.