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Posted by D Sherman [72.47.9.228] on Monday, December 12, 2011 at 15:05:55 :
There's an old fellow in town who I always used to talk to when I went by his house. Like many old timer's he'd done a lot of things in his life. He had a small house and the basement was crammed with more stuff, neatly organized, than I've ever seen in a basement before. He was a locksmith and had at least 4 key machines of various vintages, and hundreds of boxes of key blanks. He also had a fair amount of electronic stuff, including maybe 200 vacuum tubes in boxes. He was willing to sell this stuff, but had a very rich idea of what it was all worth. As much as I'd like to have a key machine and a stock of blanks, I'd rather be on friendly terms with the old guy than have bad feelings trying to make a deal that I knew we couldn't make. So, I quit thinking about business and just said hi when I walked by.
I hadn't seen him for a while and last summer the sons had a yard sale. I bought a fair bit of stuff from the sale, which was cheap. They told me the old guy was in the nursing home and didn't know what was going on any more. I hoped that was the case. I talked to the sons about the tubes and the locksmith stuff, but they shared their father's opinion that it was Very Valuable. They'd heard that tubes were worth a lot of money on ebay. I had offered them $40 for the lot and tried to explain that only a very few tubes, which he didn't have, were worth more than $1 apiece, and that's if they're in good condition and you can find the guy who wants them. On the key stuff, they said they had a guy coming to look at it, that they didn't know what they were going to do with it, that they might keep it, etc, etc.
So 6 months have gone by and I see a big dumpster in the alley behind the house. There in the dumpster are hundreds of empty boxes of key blanks. The sons must have decided to sell the blanks for scrap. Rummaging around more I find all the tubes, now in soggy blurred boxes.
So much for selling them for lots of money on ebay. So much for the "guy coming to look" at the locksmith stuff.
My point is that when you get old and you know you won't be using your good stuff any more, sell it or give it to your friends while you still have enough wits about you to do it. Don't wait for your kids to do the "estate cleanout".
I saw the same thing last year with a man who had been a well-known close-up magician and jazz pianist. The kids flew up from wherever to "clean out" his house and filled up three dumpsters with his stuff, which was everything from electronic keyboards and reel-to-reel live recordings of famous jazz musicians to boxes and boxes of magic tricks and books including several bricks of Jerry's Golden Nugget "Oil Well" playing cards that WERE worth $150/pack on ebay if they hadn't gotten rained on in the dumpster. I asked one of the daughters why they didn't at least try to give his stuff away and she said they only had 3 days off work and had to "get the house on the market". The house itself is a dump and has been sitting ever since with a home-made "for sale" sign in the window.
Maybe it doesn't matter once you're dead, but I think both of these old guys would be dismayed if they saw what their kids did with their cherished stuff. Bottom line is the kids never cherish it like their old man did, so don't imagine they will.
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