I Bought A Bottle Of . . . . .

Jerry Busse

Jerry Busse

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water today . . . . Just plain, old, unflavored water.

As I opened the bottle I had a flashback to nearly 50 years ago.

Back then, I was approached by a guy who had tested our well water and he told me that he had NEVER seen water this clean in his many years of testing water for impurities!

He asked if I would be interested in helping him to bottle it for resale.

I was 17 years old at the time and pretty much knew everything.

I couldn't stop laughing at the idea of selling "Bottled Water".

I explained to him that the idea was moronic and that nobody would ever buy "bottled water"!

"What an idiot", I thought . . .

Hmmm . . . Who's the idiot now? . . . Hang on, let me get a mirror. . . . it holds the answer! :eek:

Hindsight is, most assuredly, 20/20

Have any of you ever missed an opportunity that you wish you could hit the rewind button on?

Ever sold a chunk of INFI that you regretted parting with? . . . Or waited too long to make a decision?

Lay it on me!

I need some company! 😂🤣

No Regrets!!!!

Jerry😁



.
 
Never should have sold my first car. It was a 1970 ,V8 ,four speed ,grabber orange ,Mustang Fastback. I paid $600.00 for it in 1975 ( I was 17 years old ).Never realized what I had until about 10 years after I sold it.
 
Jerry - if you could go back in time, would you do so to invest in that bottled water? Sure sounds like it! If someone could easily help you make that happen, would you be be ecstatic about it? I bet you would! (Of course this assumes your current family would still remain your family.)

Well...I missed out on the SAR 8, SARGE 7, and NMFBM as I was a poor college kid when they came out. If you, Jerry, happen to know anyone who could get those back up for sale, even with little tweaks if need be, I'm all ears! :)
 
Another one...after I graduated college with a masters in structural engineering (2009), I bought myself a bottle of Pappy 15 yr for around $70. Just right there on the shelf, easy to get. I drank it all within 2 years. Wish I had saved it!
 
Early 1980’s, I had a run of epic bad luck and lost my shirt as a real estate broker in south Texas. For a couple of years I found myself looking at the world from the bottom of the heap. 1987, I got wind of a runaway flood of foreclosures in Denver due to the simultaneous collapse of both the Savings & Loan industry and the wildcat shale oil boom. I threw what I had left in the trunk of my car and drove to Colorado, bought a study guide for the Colorado Real Estate Broker Exam, read it, took the test and got my license.

Saw some crazy wild deals over the next five years and managed to get well financially myself, but there was one deal I passed on that still haunts me.

It was a block of ten 2-story Victorian-style townhouses built in the 1920’s near the heart of the city in a high-end neighborhood called Five Points. Only problem was, the area was no longer high end. That part of Denver had become a skid-row slum and property values were deeply in the tank. The whole block of ten houses had been foreclosed on and was offered in one lot at auction. I still remember walking through those gorgeous old homes, decrepit and in need of serious help, but great bones, structurally sound, and some potentially elegant curb appeal if you squinted just right and used your imagination. But there was just no market that would support that kind of renovation. The whole block of ten sold for $57,000.

Fast forward to 1991. Major League Baseball announced the creation of the Colorado Rockies, and in an accompanying major urban renewal project, Denver announced that the new stadium, Coors Field, would be built in the long-derelict district known as, you guessed it, Five Points. About six blocks from that same block of townhouses.

Easy millions for someone—sadly not me.
 
Yeah Jerry, I just experienced nearly the same thing.

A random dude came out from around the back of my local Best Buy wanting me to help provide capital for his start up for "capsules of clean country air."

It's ingenious, really. Here's his pitch, "When you feel like you can't take one more breath of polluted city/suburban air, just hold a sheet under your nose and squeeze a capsule until you hear a little "POP!" then take in a deep relaxing breath."

For me, it's kinda reminded me of those smelling salts coach used to give me when I got my bell rung at jr. high football practice. Lemme tell ya, I had the best Coach-- what a guy!!! Sometimes Coach Carson would have the QB hand the ball off to me and tell the O-Line to not even block, just to show how good I was! Coach was always helping me out like that. He said those kind of hits were "character builders" and you know, he was right. I wouldn't be the man I am today without all those "trips to the astral gridiron" as I called them.

Anyways, I know what I have here in my hands and I'm not gonna miss out on this moneymaker...Coach would be so proud!

Here's what my $200 got me, a sheet of "Mini Pops" and a sheet of "Extended Release" and I get a 10% stake in the company. Sharktank, schmarktank....

LKUeX4m.jpg
 
Last edited:
Jerry Busse said:
Hindsight is, most assuredly, 20/20

Have any of you ever missed an opportunity that you wish you could hit the rewind button on?

Ever sold a chunk of INFI that you regretted parting with? . . . Or waited too long to make a decision?

Lay it on me!

I need some company! 😂🤣

No Regrets!!!!

Jerry😁



.
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Yes, Yes, Yes, every single year. My motto is buy hi, sell lo. A day late and a dollar short always applies to me as well. In 2010, I had a chance to buy a 55 year macallan for 12k, discounted from 15k. I didn't think that it would ever be worth much because in those days, nothing was selling well. They had two bottles. I thought about it and decided against it. The bottles eventually sold. In 2016 I was hanging out talking with my local whisky retailer and we remembered those bottles, so he looked them up to see what happened. One had sold at auction the year before for 155k. The other was in a private collection. Oh well.
There are many more stories. I have been much luckier with knives.
 
MattinLA said:
There was one I saw that looked sweet , but it's in my new "I'm not paying that much for a knife " price zone.
Maybe I should get rid of price zones 🤷😉
Click to expand...

Whats the difference between the new and old "I'm not paying that much for a knife" zones when they both kept you from getting the knife that you obviously wanted.
 
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