A few years ago while on the way to get a pizza, the wife and I saw a yard sale. We stopped - a widow was selling her house and getting rid of most the contents. Her late husband had a lot of tools. It was the second day so her daughter told me I had missed a "feeding frenzy" over a lot of the tools the day before. In the driveway there were tables and on one of them were some cardboard boxes with craftsman SAE raised panel combos in a few and a mixed assortment of Proto double open end, Armstrong, Husky (USA), Williams, Craftsman tappet wrenches, etc. in the other boxes. The craftsman boxes were marked $1.00 each and the other boxes $.50. I asked the daughter how they were priced. She told me her husband had gone to the Englishtown Flea Market (well known here in Jersey) and saw that Craftsman were the "most expensive" and the rest were "cheaper" so they priced everything accordingly. Me, I kept my mouth shut, and grabbed a bunch of the "cheap" wrenches (I can only imagine what I missed the day before). In the garage I found a 1/2 Milwaukee magnum drill with a frozen chuck (later at home I kept spraying with penetrating oil and it came loose)- she wanted $20.00 and I got her down to $10. Then I found a Bosch hand planer with a broken knife and belt. She wanted $10 for it. Around then an idiot came in and tried to start a older chainsaw - with each pull he was waving it around while his (I presumed) mother and wife were on each side of him. I had visions of him somehow getting it started and gutting himself and/or the women. After a minute or so even I was getting worried so I told him to put it down on the floor before someone got hurt. At that point he started arguing with the widow and her daughter shouting at them they had to sell it to him. Since they were alone, I stepped over and told him to stop yelling at them or leave. He looked at me for a moment and stomped out. The widow's daughter thanked me and said she was going to "kill her husband" because he had abandoned them a couple of hours earlier even though he promised to stay for the sale.
My wife was outside and found a bunch of lace panels she wanted to use to make curtains - she picked out 12 to do our downstairs windows. The panels were a dollar each. I went outside with the drill and planer (to haggle) and laid out the wrenches I picked to be counted up (I had at least 10). The daughter looked at everything, said thanks again for the help and then said fifteen bucks for everything.
I still get a kick of the son-in-law deciding Craftsman were the most expensive wrenches.
