eisman
Platinum Member
- Joined
- Sep 9, 2009
- Messages
- 6,999
Every now and then I'll go to an Estate Auction. They're fairly popular here; with three houses doing them on a regular basis. There's one place I prefer, and I've found a few knives, but mostly it's been other stuff. A month or so ago they had hundreds of woodworking tools; damascus chisels, Japanese saws, etc from someone with a serious passion and deep pockets. This week it was mostly dolls; hundreds of them, but they had a couple pieces of furniture I was hoping would go cheep enough I could get interested. No such luck...
There was a small collection of pocket knives, four in a box, with a Winchester Coke Bottle being the primary piece. (The others were a KampKing, and a couple Japanese pens.) The Winchester had a bad chip in the pen blade, and whoever sharpened it did a poor job, so I dropped out of the bidding fairly early.
At the halfway point most of the dolls were gone, and so was half the crowd. Prices started to get interesting. I picked up a WWII US Army Aircraft Sextant (still boxed) that I hadn't even planned on.
One small box had a large number of Chinese flash cards that they had mislabeled as game pieces. Now this crowd was not the one for these, and the auctioneer couldn't get a starting bid, so the assistant pulled out some of the cards to fan them and show them off. As he was doing that he exclaimed, "Looks like there's a knife here in the box too!", and there was the familier guise of a Barlow showing. So I bid, and nobody else jumped in, and I got a nice little knife.
This little Imperial has a couple dark spots on the blade, and was so stiff I doubt it's seen any lube in decades. Still a good deal at a nice price.
But then it got better...
At the bottom of the box (and it was only 6"x6"x4") I found a really nice suprise. A Schrade Scout Leaders pen knife still in the box.
I don't think this has ever been out of the box; it's that pristine.
At first I thought it was just stuck in a plastic case to keep it, but the kicker came when I turned it over to see the factory label.
It's pretty obvious this was a gift (notice the price peeled off), put away, and forgotten. I love finding stuff like this.
There was a small collection of pocket knives, four in a box, with a Winchester Coke Bottle being the primary piece. (The others were a KampKing, and a couple Japanese pens.) The Winchester had a bad chip in the pen blade, and whoever sharpened it did a poor job, so I dropped out of the bidding fairly early.
At the halfway point most of the dolls were gone, and so was half the crowd. Prices started to get interesting. I picked up a WWII US Army Aircraft Sextant (still boxed) that I hadn't even planned on.
One small box had a large number of Chinese flash cards that they had mislabeled as game pieces. Now this crowd was not the one for these, and the auctioneer couldn't get a starting bid, so the assistant pulled out some of the cards to fan them and show them off. As he was doing that he exclaimed, "Looks like there's a knife here in the box too!", and there was the familier guise of a Barlow showing. So I bid, and nobody else jumped in, and I got a nice little knife.
This little Imperial has a couple dark spots on the blade, and was so stiff I doubt it's seen any lube in decades. Still a good deal at a nice price.
But then it got better...
At the bottom of the box (and it was only 6"x6"x4") I found a really nice suprise. A Schrade Scout Leaders pen knife still in the box.
I don't think this has ever been out of the box; it's that pristine.
At first I thought it was just stuck in a plastic case to keep it, but the kicker came when I turned it over to see the factory label.
It's pretty obvious this was a gift (notice the price peeled off), put away, and forgotten. I love finding stuff like this.
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