Here are a collection of hauls from the last few weeks.
First haul came from a place that had an arbor press listed on CL, but also a height adjustable GeekDesk. Been wanting one of those for the house, as both the GF and I are both 6'2", and normal craft furniture is too short for things like sewing, or other detail oriented tasks. They were a robotics shop, closing down, so everything was going. Kinda sad. They wanted $950 for the 2-1/2 ton press, which was way outside my budget. But I did pick up the desk, a monitor arm for the shop, and some metal from their scrap bin. I also picked up a 2-3/8" engineers wrench inexpensively. They also had a cool 60's vintage Hardinge lathe, some giant mill, and other goodies, none of which I had the $$, the space, or the skill to take home.
The next sale was a warehouse estate sale, from either a hoarder, or 6 diverse individuals. There was a space for a handyman, a clothes horse, a restaurant owner, and artist and a musician. And the cruft presented was as diverse. There was way too much stuff the first day, and it was layers deep. Not lasagna (someone else's analogy), but more like digging through a landfill, especially the tools. There was lots of crappy modern stuff, quite rusty. Then further down, better stuff, still quite rusty. It was also a little more crowded than I liked, as they paid the local church youth group to move all the stuff around, hustle stuff to cars, etc. Way too loud, way to many people, I grabbed the unused tub of paste wax, the MAPP can, and a box of Irwin bits, about $5 for all of them. The bits are in unused condition, the box is nice, except for a bit of rust on the black metal holding the bits. Grabbed a few other non-tool goodies too.
Another stop on the way home yielded the big blue tub for the GF to use for planting stuff.
Went back late today, and went back in to the tool room. A lot of the stuff had been moved, but not much was missing that I saw. Got to dig deeper, found some rusty SK and MasterXXXX wrenches, nice shiny one one side, horrid rust on the other. Found a few other goodies that I missed the first day.
Couple more tubs of wax to pass on to other friends, an interchangeable element soldering iron, Bonney LD16 1/2" Drive 1/2" Deep socket with the hole, SS scissors, giant Heller triangle file, Brasso bottle, two motion detection LED lights, an old hook, WD external hard drive, Starrett 50' tape in leather covered case, first 15' is rusty, a 1973ish Martin guitar magazine, a sharpening stone, and some old rusty needles, with one curved one which is why I bought them. And an easel for my daughter. Lots of other non tool goodies came home again today.
There was still a lot of stuff when we left 30 minutes prior to closing.