My Top Two Garage Sale Finds

Since we have the annual Billings' Biggest Garage Sale coming up this Saturday, June 11, I thought I'd share my two greatest Garage Sale finds and hopefully get some of yours.

I'm sure most of us have that fantasy of picking up something for a quarter and finding out it's worth thousands...well, I've never been that lucky, but I've come pretty close.

The most recent treasure I got was this antique, 3 slot payphone.  The picture isn't the greatest, but in person, it's a beauty.  The value on this phone in it's purchased condition is somewhere between 300 and 400 dollars...much higher than the $10 I paid for it.

My greatest success story was something I can almost guarantee you would have passed up; unless of course you are an electronics nerd like me.  It was a huge betamax VCR that a local company had thrown into their office equipment liquidation sale.  This was in 1999, but still well passed the era of Beta VCR's.

I only bought it because there were likely so many project parts available inside...motors, lcd displays, magnets, etc.  I paid $10 for this thing and lugged it home.  Before gutting it, I decided to look it up online to see what I could learn.

I found that this particular model was no consumer VCR.  In fact, it was still in use by TV stations all over the country.  I headed to ebay to see what they were going for (expecting to find maybe some as high as $100).  It turns out that the average price was right around $6,000.  Six Thousand!  Which is exactly what I sold it for.  I listed it as a "Buy It Now" and it sold within an hour - apparently I priced it a little low, but I was in no mood to complain.

I doubt that I'll ever get that lucky again, but I'll damn sure be trying.  To all of you treasure hunters out there, good luck this Saturday!