Fleamarket: Land of the Weird

[andyfromdenver]

I'll bet I can go to the flea market every weekend for the rest of my life and never come across a baggie filled with new Orange drops, sprague and vishay parts again for $5. Not all usable values, but mostly!
Weird.
What's the strangest thing you've found?

[Platefire]

Once I found a box of old caps years ago for $5.00 and have used some and still got some of them. At another flea market I picked up a lot of NOS carbon comp resistors and also capacitors. I mostly use new resistors/caps in my new builds but every now and then I need something on the spot and pull one out and use it. I also got about 500 tubes one time for $10.00 that came from an old Trade School that when transistors replaced tubes they got rid of them but---they were mostly radio and TV tube---some were applicable to tube amps. Platefire

[andyfromdenver]

Awesome! It's scores like that that keep you going back, even through the extreme dry spells.
It's a shame I'm never looking for: pocket knives, questionably stored packaged goods, burned CDs, VHS movies, opened bags of diapers, clothes that smell like urine, girls gone wild...well... erm never mind.

[jhundt]

I found a complete Fender reverb chassis - the old brown-face stand-alone version. I paid $14, took it home and it worked. Also I bought a Vox bass for $1.50, it had been crushed and mice were living inside...

[BobbyZ]

I never find anything worth a dang.
One of my brothers could have bought an MG motor and tranny for 50 bucks. He didn't know I had an MG !
Still should have bought it and sold it on CL or ebay.

[guitaradelic]

A little flea barn near my house had a guy selling old tubes, I got a NOS RCA 6V6 in the box for a quarter!

[andyfromdenver]

Originally Posted by guitaradelic

A little flea barn near my house had a guy selling old tubes, I got a NOS RCA 6V6 in the box for a quarter!

Aww yeah :)

[Flakey]

A narrow panel tweed Fender Pro that and been covered in vinyl, many caps shot and missing the original 15 inch speaker. Bought it for $50.00 and had it re-tweed, re-capped and found a Jensen P15 for it. The results were less than I hoped for sonically so I sold it for $500.00. This was in the mid 1990s so I broke even on it.

[andyfromdenver]

Something told me to head out for a second day of fleamarket-ing.
Two separate vendors which is rare: nos looking ge 6l6 pair, 6k6, RCA 5y3, and a 12au7. $1 a piece!
Plus the 6l6 seller was a kid and said his neighbor has hundreds of tubes and he'll call me, he brought those for him on a whim.
Oh yeah and a creepy rubber rat, Lefty bowling wrist support (so I can beat muchxs' girlfriend's high game!), and a gigantoid drill bit for panel mount xlrs.

[Hiker]

I've snagged Guitar straps, not exactly a rare find.

[Jimmyspaz]

Got a working VTVM for $25.00 at a lawn sale a few years ago, had to replace the probes, use it all the time.

[StarliteDeVille]

No real great finds that I can recall, but usually interesting. Several years ago, I was there (I assume you are talking about J and J), and we saw a lady with a ferret in a stroller looking at a table full of caged birds that some one was trying to sell. The lady was yelling at her husband and pointing at the ferret saying, "Look at him. He is lazy. He won't even look at the birds."

[DuncanAngus]

Got an "Art Deco Guitar Amp" at a flea market once. While that's what the selled had as a sign on the thing, it was actually a Gibson EH-150 circa 1939 amp in awesome condition. $85.00 later I got it home, plugged it in and have been truely impressed to this day. I usually never find anything and after scoring this thing, I don't expect to find anything else. Kinda had my day...

[muchxs]

I'm always getting tubes where I wouldn't expect them.

Someone was hauling an antique Atwater-Kent radio in the back of a truck last summer. It must have been in the back of a truck because it ended up spread all over a quarter mile of interstate. The median had just been mowed and it spit its tubes into the median as it skidded down the road. How many old amps have road rash?

Yesterday's dumpster dive: I'm fortunate to live in a town where we have half a dozen high end cabinet shops. Several build custom kitchen cabients, couple more build kiosks and store fixtures. They toss a lot of scrap wood. Yesterday's bin had a nice piece of cabinet grade plywood with birdseye veneer. Also enough grille cloth standoff strips to last me a year. Super high grade stuff.

Sometimes I get chunks of mahogany large enough to make guitar bodies. That's from the shop that makes patterns for metal castings.

It would be nice to find exactly what I need excactly when I need it.

[gypsyseven]

Best flea market find was a Leslie model 16 (1970er) for 50,- dollars ...Unfortunately i sold it for almost 500,- dollars...good deal, but i miss that thing....

[telex76]

Never found anything good.

[acalan]

The flea market here, has mostly new junk!!!

[Paul in Colorado]

A long time ago I traded $20.00 in Food Stamps for a working AKG vocal mic. I think it was a D-100. I got a lot of use out ot it. Don't know why I sold it.

I got a couple of working pedals for little cash at a yard sale once. An Ibanez DE-7 delay and some kind of compressor? I flipped them both not long after.

[andyfromdenver]

Oh. Em. Gee.

Scary looking country guy with a giant box with different resistor values.
Start exploring and about 30 NOS 9pin and octal tube sockets and an arsenal of Allen Bradley and cheapo resistors. Switches, inpt jacks...
"Will you take $15?"
"Ok"
Yes!!!

*pics won't upload for some reason, will later*

[Mike SS]

My wife is nuts for flea markets, yard sales, and thrift stores. I am amazed at all the cool things she finds. You have to spend a lot of time sifting through all the crap to find the gems. I don't have the patience for browsing that she does.