The $400 Box of Pictures

Before I tell you this tale, I’m going to show you some of the best finds in my $400 box of pictures.

Looks like Melody was a lucky, world traveler.

And finally, my favorite, because this is so clearly one of my own cat’s ancestors:

Anyway, a few weeks ago, Erin and I stopped by a sale on a Tuesday. This was really abnormal for us, but we were prepping for our garage sale and the sale was right down the street from the Mexican restaurant where we ate lunch. It was advertised as being the last day, and it was 75% off.

When we got there, I recognized the company as the same one that ran that sale where we found the giant Santa for Timmy. The sale was really picked over, but I stumbled upon two huge boxes of pictures in the basement. I got really super excited, because I figured that at 75% off, these would be a steal. Turns out I was wrong. I got up to the cashier and told her I wanted all of the pictures. There were at least 500 snapshots in the boxes, and then a ton of old portraits and cabinet cards. I really don’t care about either of the latter two things, because I mostly just enjoy sifting through snapshots. But again, I figured that two hours before closing on the last day of a sale would mean that you’d be thrilled to get rid of two boxes of crap.

Anyway, the woman proceeded to tell me that yes, I could have all of the pictures, but that each of the pictures in the boxes was individually priced, and they would have to add them all up. I tried to explain that that defeated the purpose of me buying all of them–I only wanted the whole lot because I did not have the patience to sort through that many pictures at an estate sale. Eventually the owner, who Erin and I had complimented in the past for his fair prices, came over and I instantly felt relieved. Surely, this man was going to bring a sense of reason to the situation at hand. As it turns out, though, Homeboy was not feeling reasonable. He told me that he would value the boxes of photographs at $100 total. I said, “Ok, so 75% off would be $25?” and he said, “NO, that’s after the 75%.” So what he was telling me, was that those pictures would have cost FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS under normal circumstances. Exsqueeze me?

In the end, I told him that if he was going to be such a stickler, I didn’t want any cabinet cards or portraits, and that I was willing to give him $40. He would only take $50 and so I caved and high-tailed it outta there. I grumbled about this the whole way home.

The silver lining is that it ended up being a decent price because there were a lot of cool photographs in the lot. I’ll share more soon!

-Sarah