Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/10/29

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Subject: RE: [Leica] Garage sales
From: Jeremy Kime <jeremy.kime@bbc.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 16:02:20 -0000

Over here in 'Blighty' we don't have 'garage sales' so much as 'car boot
sales'. These are events where many peopole gather and supposedly sell their
extraneous wares from their car boots (trunks). In practise they usually put
the junk onto wallpaper pasting tables not realising how flimsy they can be!

So, they often start at 6am on Sunday mornings, I sometimes think its the
new consumer religion of the late 20th C.! And as you can imagine each new
vendor is surrounded, like bees to a honey pot, when they arrive as they
untip the contents of their boot out. Going at 8 o'clock you don't get the
best deals so imagine my surprise to see a Leica poking out it's little eyes
at me, about as awake as I was at 8 am! I enquired about 'the camera',
(didn't want to sound too knowledgable...) and was told it was 30 GBP. I
picked it up, listened to the slow speeds and found them sluggish so
remarked on this. The seller said that the last person who'd looked at it
had also said the same thing (WHAT! and they hadn't bought it!!!) so he'd
drop the price to 25.
It was an awkward situation, I'd less cash than that and so had to persude
him to take 10 pounds cash and the rest as a cheque, for that he insisted on
hiking the price back up to 30 pounds as insurance against the cheque
bouncing, (strange logic but I didn't wish to argue...) and so I handed over
the paper promises and became the owner of a dirty but pristine IIIF red
dial.
That afternoon I happened to be going to a camera fair and before I could
become too attached to the camera (but after I'd cleaned it up and sat it on
the boiler to help warm the lubricants inside) I sold it to a dealer for 295
GBP, this was about 6 years ago now. Quite a memory!

Jem

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Robert Beaudoin [SMTP:bussbearm@cedep.com]
>   So I was thinking about garage sales last night and wondering, has any
> lugger ever come across a true Leica bargain at such sales?  I don t know
> about all luggers, but I d be one interested to read about great finds at
> yard sales on the LUG.
> 
> Robert (Un chevalier sans blason).
>