Estate Sale WTF?

[shred]

So there's an estate sale a couple houses down. It's a madhouse with lines out the door-- the widow's relatives have hired a company to handle everything and they put ads and signs out for miles around. We wander by out of curiosity. See the garage doesn't have a line. So I go in and notice a nice little v-block with a broken corner. There's never machining stuff at sales around here. Snag it up and start looking around with a lot more interest. Fishing around in the 'everything $1' box, I find two brand new full-size balanced mill handles. Wow.. so I spend the next ten minutes looking everywhere in the garage and find nothing of interest. Suck it up and stand in line for 20 minutes to get in the house proper. Nothing (well, a bunch of furniture and stuff I didn't want). Who has a broken V-block and two balanced handles and nothing else remotely machining-related? ??? ???

Ah well, at least these parts will find a good home.

 

[Deanofid]

The company handling the sale might have called a used machinery company and sold the equipment as a lot. The same thing happens with farm sales. The auction company will spot out the antique tractors and hit 'n miss engines, and call known collectors who will buy the stuff before anyone else can get to it.

Some times you get lucky at these estate sales though. I once found a Starret wiggler and center finder kit, brand new, in the box, at a sale. One dollar.

 

[shred]

Yeah, that's possible, but I sort of doubt it as there wasn't anything else remotely related; no books, papers, tools, stock or anything. I suspect the husband was a machinist and he must have passed on quite a while back (I never saw him) and these were left in a box or drawer somewhere forgotten until time came to clean out everything.