Thanks everybody. I've never appreciated sucking so much in my life. Well, except for one time in college, but we won't get into that.
OMFG, I looked too! Merry Christmas to him!!! Definitely major suckage!
I'm never ignoring those old metal oil cans at estate sales any more, that's for sure.
Yes sir, it was as much of a cautionary tale as it was a subtle brag. I often wonder how many other hundred or thousand dollar bills I (and many of us) have walked right past at garage / estate / etc. sales.
I wonder which of the cans is the "valuable" one, or is it just all of them?
I think the middle can in the picture I posted was the most rare. Second, the other two duplicates on either side of it. If you look at the eBay auction the one curiosity I have is the AllState ATF can. If you look on Google / Ebay / etc...you can't find one like it. At least, I can't...plenty of other AllState cans but not that one. It doesn't mean it's valuable, but I would say it's potentially more rare than the Billups / Your Friend cans.
I would say they were all rare, and what's telling to that point is that the buyer kept three and listed the only duplicate. If the AllState can wasn't rare or desirable, or they already had one, I imagine it would have been resold as well. Because I didn't realize their value initially, and listed them as a lot (expecting $50-$100), I guess I'll never know.
Nine, details, details
Technically I have about 239487. I had one HF dolly before the flood, which was used temporarily by either you or my cousin. That went to my parents shortly after. I bought three more before I dropped that one off to you; one for me, one for my cousin (who flooded on O'Neil in Centurion Place), and one for you. That was intended to be a gift on both of your parts, and I stand by that.
This one actually leaves me with two at my house and two at my parents' (another that I picked up in a trash pile recently), so I may or may not keep this or put it in the attic. Regardless, the blue one at your house is yours...just so long as you agree to store the pallet jack until I have a place for it (indeterminate amount of time) after we move your mill.
The buyer tried selling one of them separately but no one bid, it's now relisted at a lower starting price. I'm sure the bidding war was over one of the other two cans, probably that middle one. I just wonder what Merc would have got $$$ if he listed them all separately.
Man you have to salt the wounds. Somehow, I've made peace with the profit I made...even if there was potentially meat left on the bone. It's still a whole hell of a lot better than the $50 CraigsList ad I originally posted and retracted within an hour.
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So above I mentioned a "subtle brag", which is part of what this thread is about, but I feel it's so much more. I think I've learned more from this thread (and the 2015 / 2016 threads) than I have elsewhere on GJ, which is still a lot. I came into the GJ Garage Sale threads without much of a clue of the value of a lot of things, even things that I owned, had previously bought / sold, looked down on, lusted over, etc.
I can look back over some of my first posts in the 2015 and 2016 GS threads and see that I assigned way too high a value to some things I bought and assigned too low a value to some things I passed on. I was going to create another thread to ask this question, but I figure it's a bit too off topic to do so and everybody who will have good input is already here. So, what have you guys run across that you didn't realize was valuable at the time, but later found out was?
