God give me strength...

[doczinn]

Living through the Great Depression could do that to a person...

When my grandmother died, we found boxes and boxes (some twenty in all) of wire hangers in her attic.

[K Frame]

Anyone need the troubleshooting manual to the 1931 lineup of Buick automocarriages?

I just found a partial one in the basement.

Unfortunately, it's pretty brittle. Damned fine illustrations, though.

Then there's the box of aluminum L-channel... No piece more than 4" long, and probably 100 pieces.

My Grandfather was a pain in the ass.

[doczinn]

Anyone need the troubleshooting manual to the 1931 lineup of Buick automocarriages?

I bet someone on Ebay does....

[K Frame]

"I bet someone on Ebay does...."

My mother is probably going to cut it up for the illustrations. Some of them are in really good shape.

Unfortunately, the back of the book, which shows Buick 6-cylinder engine of the time, is in really bad shape.

And I made a mistake. It's from 1921, not 1931.

[280plus]

My father's mother in law bought canned veggies by the case whenever they went on special. We threw away countless old cases of bulging corroded canned veggies. My one good find from that episode was a "campfire" book of 1891 published by the "New York Commandery" commemorating the 25th anniversary of the end of the Civil War. A compilation of numerous wartime stories. Quite a read. It has the only account I've ever seen of the "Mortar Flotilla" where they lashed those big chowder pot mortars to the deck up on the bows of schooners and sent them up the Mississippi to bombard forts. I've mentioned this to several big experts on the war and none had ever heard of this before.

(We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread...)

[280plus]

Research that auto book on EBAY before you cut it up Mike. Some of that stuff WILL bring good money even if it's a little tattered. I used to do pretty good selling old car manual type stuff and old knitting magazines with all the patterns in them. I'd buy boxes of them for nothing at auctions and sell them for $2-$3 a book. I'd sell them in lots of 5 usually. They were pretty hot. I liked the paper stuff becasue it was pretty hard to break during shipment. After a couple of breakage fiascos I now steer far away from anything fragile.

[280plus]

Separate all your metals and off to the scrap yard to cash in. I'll bet you can get $ for all that copper wire you mentioned. Copper is hot now too! All metals are. Don't throw any containers or closed buckets away. Open them all and look inside first. Sometimes people stash coinage in them and stuff them in a corner somewhere. I had a friend who tossed an unknown number of 5 gallon buckets until he discovered they were full of coins. He has no idea how much money he threw away.

[K Frame]

I simply don't have time to sort through all of the odd wire pieces and all. I'm not kidding. If I tried to sort everything by metal (iron, aluminum, etc.) it would take me far longer than the week I've got. I'm not kidding, there is that much stuff in the basement.

I did find another something interesting, though.

I'm pretty sure it's a starter motor to a 1948 Pontiac.

[K Frame]

As for the Buick book, my mother sells rare and antique books and paper. She knows what the stuff is worth.

The room I'm sitting in as I type this is her office.

My feet are resting beside a pile of about a half dozen books that are worth, combined, probably about $3,300.

Trust me, she knows what she's doing.

[280plus]

Okie dokie! That makes her a rare one!

[Guest]

Am I the only one thinking of George Carlin's "Stuff" ?

Mike,
good luck.

I have tin of Winchester Gun oil I snagged with permission from Ex-Grandmother-in-law's basement. Seems the Rich Grandpa - deceased, never got around to cleaning up the basement before he died. "Too busy making the $8 million + he left me". -Tightwad GM-in-law.  Word is the Lawyer book cases, with etched glass fronts, and made with hand fitted joints...fetched $10K.  Been sitting down there collecting dust for who knows how long...

I could not get "over" to some places to look around.

I went down there to get $90K in cash from a barrel. GM-in-law flew the fella in to pay him cash for her grandson's college tuiton. Same barrel " I called the Mercedes Place and told them to bring me a car and I would pay for it when it was delivered. She made the guy drive back with cash change. "Checks are such a hassle, and I just hate plastic anything period".

*sigh*

Divorced that one for good reason. Heard often from all the family was "when is the bitty gonna croak so we can get at the money and the goodies?".

If was such a 'favorite' even after the divorce - nevermind, she never spelled my name right anyway...

I would have settled for the Model 12 in 28 ga I was allowed to handle, and wipe down on visits....didn't happen.

[Perd Hapley]

Am I the only one thinking of George Carlin's "Stuff" ?

I try not to think about him.

We had to clean out my great-uncle John's bachelor pad.  He had notebooks going back for decades, recording every dime he'd spent, and what he'd done that day, how his garden was doing, etc.  I got his 1910 edition Julius Caeser (Shakespeare), with his notes from when he'd studied it in school.

[Iain]

Apparently when my grandmother died they found tins and tins of baked goods. She never stopped making the quantities necessary to feed her family of seven.

[280plus]

Oh,,,screw the iron just make piles of brass, copper and aluminum as you go along. Got any five gallon buckets? Then at the end of your "vacation" make a run to the nearest scrap yard. I used to scrap out a lot of places in my younger days, it's hard to get it out of your system. I got a bucket or so of scrap copper laying around here right now. It might be time to go turn it in.

[280plus]

Yea Iain, my granny is 97, she says, "I don't want you to be disappointed but I didn't make so many cookies this year for Christmas." She had to have made 30 dozen easy. All different kinds. She's like a machine. Apparently she left out a couple varieties. I couldn't tell, she was all worried and apologetic about it.

[Parker Dean]

Some years ago when my Grandfather died it became apparent the my grandmother would be unable to live there on her own as the work required in just mowing the property was outrageous, let alone it's isolated location not being a good thing for an elderly person.

So when it came to moving her, my father pretty much left everything behind other than a suitcase a some personal items. That meant there was 40+ years of crap in the basement, garage, two outbuildings, and a barn, all packed to the gills. He despaired of the task, particularly knowing that 99.999% would be broken junk, so he sold the property lock, stock, and barrel, and let the new owner, a contractor, do his own treasure hunting.

Don't you wish you'd done the same thing?  

Of course my father still gets grief from relatives who weren't there, and hadn't been there for years (snakes, ya know. In the living room.) swearing up and down there had to be valuable stuff in all that mess. Yeah, whatever.

[280plus]

Yea, you really find out who the family vultures are when it's time to clean up after the deceased. What I like are the ones who don't want to do any of the work but want a piece of the pie anyways. I call it the "Little Red Hen Syndrome".

[charby]

Yea, you really find out who the family vultures are when it's time to clean up after the deceased. What I like are the ones who don't want to do any of the work but want a piece of the pie anyways. I call it the "Little Red Hen Syndrome".

I wish you could just shoot those blood suckers, I watched the mother of an ex g/f sell off the family farm that she and her siblings owned colletively because the eldest wanted cash, this was like 10 years after the estate was settled. I guess the income from renting each year wasn't enough for her.

[K Frame]

"I want the mother of an ex g/f sell off the family farm that she and her siblings owned colletively because the eldest wanted cash, this was like 10 years after the estate was settled."

Sounds like my Aunt and the house whose basement I'm cleaning out right now.

Her worthless spawn cleaned out some of the best of my Grandparent's stuff, vultures that they are.

The ONLY thing that I wanted was a reading chair covered in red velvet. It's been my favorite chair since I was old enough to sit on my own. My Aunt knew that; my Grandmother made sure everyone knew I wanted that chair.

I came by to help get the stuff that my cousins had left ready for auction. Luckily I walked in just as my Aunt was telling the auctioneer that the chair was part of what was to be auctioned.

When I objected, my Aunt started to say something about Grandma needing the money for the home she was in, and before my parents could do anything (they walked in behind me) I went apeshit in an extremely UNpolite way. I made it very clear that if Grandma needed the money, her whelps should bring back all of the good furniture and other items that they had methodically stripped from the house over the preceding year or two.

I don't think my Aunt knew what hit her, but she agreed that I could have my chair.

A few days later I visited Grandma at the home. My Aunt was there. The first words out of Grandma's mouth were "Michael, did you get your chair from the house before the sale?"

Ah, sometimes the best revenge is served up by someone else...

[Sindawe]

He has no idea how much money he threw away.

Well, if you are ever feeling cruel just recall this.  Last weekend I took my my 3/4 full 2 gallon bucket of pennies (none rare, I checked) and 1/8 full 2 gallon bucket of nickels and dimes (also checked for rare or Ag coins) to the bank for exchange.  $275 in loose change.

As a ball park estimate, I think several 5 gallon buckets full of coins would be a couple of thousand dollars.

[Strings]

>Yea, you really find out who the family vultures are when it's time to clean up after the deceased. What I like are the ones who don't want to do any of the work but want a piece of the pie anyways. I call it the "Little Red Hen Syndrome".<

I could speak volumes on this...

 mom died in '03. Dad expatted to Thailand the following year. When we were cleaning out the house, LOTS of people came by to help: friends from over a half-hour away, my mother in law (same drive), even one frined from 6+ hours. My brother (who lived a 10 mintue WALK away) couldn't be bothered: he asked me if I would bring by "anything I didn't want from the house"... :banghead:

 I'm with SM's idea: I fired most of my family. Haven't seen all but one since mom's funeral, and have been MUCH happier for it!

[280plus]

I've got a step brother who hasn't spoken to me since 1998 because in his cocaine riddled mind he figured my father had scrounged something on the order of $500,000 from his side of the family in leftovers after his mother (my father's second wife) died. Never mind she was bedridden for a year and a half before she died. I was my father's Administrator. I showed brother her social security report where she showed no income for 2 years prior to her death. I said, "THIS is where all the money went." He couldn't put 2 and 2 together. Last time I saw him was a few years back at the funeral of a mutual friend. He walked right by me and didn't say a word. His brother, prior to my father's death, had THREATENED my father over the stuff in the house, to which my father told him to come anytime and take what he wanted. My father slept with a loaded Colt Woodsman under his pillow after that. They came and got nothing for four years before my father died. I got to sort it all out. There were brothers that did not show up to help. They did not get a cut of the auction money. That's all OK. A certain previously mentioned Leica camera ith all the trimmings? It was their grandfather's. Every dog has his day.

[Strings]

hmmm... is it just normal for shooters to have twits for family, or something?

[mtnbkr]

hmmm... is it just normal for shooters to have twits for family, or something?

Dunno.  My family's pretty normal...or does that mean "I" am the twit?

Chris

[K Frame]

"My family's pretty normal...or does that mean "I" am the twit?"

I've met your parents and your brother...

Can I field that one? Please?