WHAT IS THE BEST THING YOU EVER BOUGHT AT A YARD SALE THAT TURNED OUT TO BE WORTH BIG BUCKS

nothing worth anything, but i find cool stuff in used books from time to time

the best was a ticket from a tour of the united states capital

it's about the size of a business card, on the front it says

Souvenir of Tour of the United States Capitol, Washington D.C.
Conducted by the Capital Guide service
No. 317255

on the back is a list of rules of the tour

i laminated it and use it as a book mark

I'm always on the lookout for books on Hawaiiana.

that's kinda funny deej.

ain't ever found much at the book shops, but found an 1888 copy of Les Miserables at a country yard sale for $10 a while back.

don't care what it's worth or not, ain't sellin' it.

that's pretty cool.

i sent a photo of the inset illustration in the book to mizzIzz when i got it, mebbe she will post it when she returns...

on the front was a drawing of the capital building in a pale blue, but even being laminated it's faded away so you can barely see it, and the scan didn't pick it up at all

I did pick up some really cool rusty iron sunflowers about 5 feet tall made from implement pieces for the garden a while back for $3 each. (country yard sales are the best)

funny what treasure is to different folks.

Best thing I found in a used book was a bookmark from Freddie's Read and Feed in Missoula, Montana. Part of the logo was Freddie the Pig, which I recognized as the lead character in a series I read back when I was much younger. Freddie (or maybe Freddy) was a detective. I live in New Mexico; one can only speculate to the travels of that bookmark, but if I happen to be in Missoula, I'm sure I'll stop in, if only to see the place that inspired the name.

That is cool. I did a Christmas Eve candlelight tour of the White house about 25 years ago. It's one of those events you never forget. I don't think that we paid for it. Unless standing in freezing cold for four hours to get in was the price we paid.

When I was a kid, there used to be two great book sales in my town--one at School Day in the gym of my elementary school (along with games and bake sales and all the usual stuff), and the other at the Detroit Edison building, which they turned over to AAUW for a fundraiser one weekend a year. At the school one, when I was about ten , I got a copy of "Ripley's Big Book of Believe It or Not" for a dime, and i spent years reading credulously about the Indian fakirs who as a sign of devotion held one arm above their head for so long the joints atrophied and they couldn't lower the arm anymore, and then a bird came along ande built a nest in the upraised palm. Magic, sheer magic, to a 10-year-old.

At the Detroit Edison one, a couple years later, they let me go down in the basement to plow thru the boxes of books they hadn't yet brought up to sell, and way back in a pile of them I found a copy of the Works of Vergil, published by the House of Christopher Plantin of Antwerp, one of the early great publishers of the 1500s. We'd just read "At the Sign of the Golden Compass" by Eric Kelly in school, the story of a young printer's apprentice in thge 1500s at the shop of, yes, Christopher Plantin, whose logo was a golden compass (the circle drawing kind, not the north south kind), and there the logo was on the title page. History came alive for me. I think it cost me a quarter. It was battered, no cover, no back cover, just a leather spine with 1672 on it, Christopher long dead, probably not worth more than a couple bucks But I still have it in my library decades later, and I just googled the Kelly book and it's still in print, and I think I'm going to have to buy it.

I once bought a beautifully constructed bamboo fly rod set all in a tin tube . It was a very exclusive Irish made flyrod with a reel and an attached carrier at the tube bottom. I paid like 5 bucks after hagglin the owner down. It was a woman whose husband died and she wanted to clean out all his stuff. I use this fly rod and its really a nice action and will take on a salmon if I asked it. It shall remain in my possession .

i have an 1910 copy of The Girl I loved by James Whitcomb Riley

http://www.librarything.com/work/1207187

I go to yard sales with an auction buddy and we like to make up the lifes story of the yard sales we visit that day. It can be some excellent story line material.
We saw one this past friday where there were some really good "guy thiings". (Bow and arrows, tree stand,spotting scope tools etc) My friend and I scarfed up our individual tastes in **** and while he was just cruisin the sale, I was standing next to the woman who was on a cell phone talking to a friend about how she "cleaned out all his stuff that was cluttering up her life".
From her tone, it was the rank effluvia of a marriage gone waaay bad. Poor guy lost a lot of **** that day and his wife sold most of it for doodly.

Dont piss off the little woman, she will lock you out and sell your stuff and then go out and get her nails airbrushed with the proceeds