Official “I found this at a yard sale/flea market/pawn store” thread.

DNADave

Please post your finds from flea markets, yard sales, and pawn stores.
I may be the only one that adds posts, but I’ll put in what I find fairly regularly.

These are from a flea market in Ohio from last year. $20 each. Some had problems, but I was happy to have them.

This is from a local pawn store. I picked it up this Monday.

braddick

Nice finds!
Mine is this at a local swap meet:

Does the "5" look too big to you?

BillDugan1959

Unusual that somebody had that Culiacan 8 Reales slabbed...

Cougar1978

Super pickup

JRocco

Couple neat finds at a flea market in MA

thebeav

I used to get up to the Thousand Islands quite a bit. There was always a nice Summer coin show in Clayton.
I would hit yard sales and shops while traveling around up there.
The best times were pre-internet (you mean at one time there was NO internet?). At an antique shop I found a Pan Am silk, like this one.
It was nicely framed and cost me 40 bucks.
At a yard sale, I bought a cigar box full of Liberty nickels. Hundreds of them. They were all junk, but I tripled my money.
It's been some time since I stopped at a yard sale. I kinda feel that unless you're there first, forget it.......

keets

if I posted pictures of everything I've snagged from a local Pawn Shop we'd be here all day. here are a few, all were raw.

Inverted MM.

OMM.

Meltdown

Estate sale purchase from a few years ago... got the proof sets for melt (at the time) and this watch makers repair box for $85

fastfreddie

Any tools in the watchmakers repair box? Very cool! I love mechanical clocks and watch parts.

Treashunt

Last big buy at a garage sale was a set of cufflinks & tie bar for $10.

They were 14Kt, nearly an ounce of melt.

This was about 20 years ago.

SiriusBlack

@Meltdown This was my grandpa’s chest. It sat on his work bench for longer than I’ve been alive. He was an appliance repair man and many of the tools in it are old screw drivers and things he ground down and modified into specialty tools for his work. When he passed away I inherited the chest. It now sits on my dresser in my room with every tool in the place he left it, unchanged.

asheland

Antique mall for less than $25:
London, 1788 sterling dish cross.

ricko

No real finds lately....last was a set of salt and pepper shakers.... the glass containers are encased in sterling.... not sure of weight since they cannot be separated. I have been remiss in yard sales this year, too busy now. Cheers, RickO

CoinNovice

Not coins but I did fine some fine (.999) pine. Rather interesting too! Very neat!

Pickwickjr

Walking sticks from my elderly neighbor that passed. Her family gave them to me for always helping her out over the years.

mannie gray

I have never had any success at yard sales/garage sales.
Flea markets...that's a different deal.
I really enjoy going to flea markets.
I have snagged so many good deals at flea markets over the years I don't think I could recall all of them...or even some of them....

Kliao

@DNADave
If you’ll sell me a bust half, I’ll let you double your money on one (or more) don’t have any bust coins yet

Nice finds everyone

DCW

I always dream of hitting it big at yard sales. There is monthly flea market near where I live that I've been going to once or twice a year since I was a child. Never found anything worth purchasing in the realm of coins, just cleaned overpriced indian cents.
I have made out on some antique mining lamps and headgear, though I kept them so I've got no idea what the resale is.

DNADave

@DCW said:
I always dream of hitting it big at yard sales. There is monthly flea market near where I live that I've been going to once or twice a year since I was a child. Never found anything worth purchasing in the realm of coins, just cleaned overpriced indian cents.
I have made out on some antique mining lamps and headgear, though I kept them so I've got no idea what the resale is.

I have a good collection of coal mining items including coal scrip and tool checks. I also wonder why scatter tags are not considered exonumia. They are to me.
Virtually all of that is from the local flea market.

Raybo

Very cool and very well displayed DNA. (thumbs up icon)

MaineJim

A Bridgestone MB-2 bike for $10. Worth quite a few bucks more than that. Must have been sitting in a garage for 20 years untouched. All it needed was air in tires and ready to go.

Jim

koynekwest

A fine '37-D 3 legged marked as "counterfeit" that wasn't; a 1943-S DDO-01 25c that graded MS64; and an 1857 half cent in AU58 for $15 come to mind. There were plenty of others that I can't recall at the moment. This was years ago.

jdimmick

Several years ago, I had a guy come in the shop claiming he found a 1 oz Proof American eagle at a yard sale, along with some other coins. Later in the week, after a homicide detective stopped in to visit, I found out he not only didn't find the coins at a yard sale, but instead stole them from an ex coworker, and killed the guy to boot when the guy caught him in the act, then tried to burn his body in a pile of leaves. Lets say he is in jail for life.

tyler267

@jdimmick said:
Several years ago, I had a guy come in the shop claiming he found a 1 oz Proof American eagle at a yard sale, along with some other coins. Later in the week, after a homicide detective stopped in to visit, I found out he not only didn't find the coins at a yard sale, but instead stole them from an ex coworker, and killed the guy to boot when the guy caught him in the act, then tried to burn his body in a pile of leaves. Lets say he is in jail for life.

That's awful

ChopmarkedTrades

My best finds at shops, auctions and the like have been non-numismatic for the most part. I was very fortunate to grow up a few miles away from a huge auction barn that held weekly sales, and ran the gamut from fine antiques to used furniture. It was my absolute favorite place in the world from age 8 to when I ultimately headed off for school. Every week was a new treasure hunt. There was a dedicated coin section, but most of it was melt stuff: 90%, common date gold, buckets of misc. foreign, Morgans in large trays. One of my favorite finds from those years was a box of early NASA memorabilia, including these Committee Prints of Congressional reports on NASA activities from the golden age of space exploration.

Off the top of my head, I also remember a great estate sale (not in the rules of the post but whatever) that turned out to be the preserved estate of Samuel Eliot Morison, Harvard professor of American history and Pultizer Prize-winning authority on the naval history of WW2; he gained his perspective not just through research, but by directly petitioning FDR to allow him to serve aboard active vessels to understand the true history on deck. The manuscript version of his article about the legacy of JFK that was published in TIME after the assassination was there, along with a large chunk of his research library. I scored a few photos of the Japanese surrender signed by Admiral Nimitz, which ended up on Heritage. I kept a large, framed pennant, the command pennant of Destroyer Squadron 13, flown on the _USS Buck _and presented to Morison at the end of his tour aboard the vessel. The _Buck _ended up going down with all hands several months later, during Patton's invasion of Sicily.

bsshog40

Pawn shop $14.99

mannie gray

@bsshog40 said:
Pawn shop $14.99

Wow......

Leroy

A few months ago I was coming home from work and saw a yard sale sign on a Tuesday afternoon which was kind of odd because people usually hold these on a weekend. It was the usual dishes, baby clothes...and then I asked my yard sale question, "Do you have any old guns or coins"?
The guy went inside and came back with a Mason jar about 3/4 full of foreign coins. Without dumping them out I paid his asking price of $20. I'm thinking that even if there's nothing in there, it's worth $20 for the fun of going through it. When I got home I dumped them out on a towel and counted almost $19 in U.S. change. So that was pretty much a freebie jar of coins.

DNADave

That’s really a good find Leroy. And you’re right. Very fun to find what’s in something like that.

Here’s my find from the flea market this morning. A few scatter tags, the first I’ve ever owned. I think they’re exonumia. These were $1 each.

USMarine6

Here is an antique shop find that I was happy to find.


These garded 65 and 63 respectively. It was a great payday

MaineJim

Got this for free today out of the junk pile at recycling. !973 Harman Kardon 330 B amplifier worth about $150. Had a blown fuse. Not quite a yard sale find but the person who dumped it said it was yard sale leftovers. I can turn it into coin money in about a week via Craig's List.

Jim

Timbuk3

Picked this up recently for $30 !!!

Kliao

A lighter......

Downtown1974

@DNADave I have a couple of locks like yours. Mine are from the old Boston and Maine Railroad. I like how you have your keys displayed as well.

DNADave

I like the keys in the tobacco tin. Do any of them fit the locks?

Downtown1974

@DNADave said:
I like the keys in the tobacco tin. Do any of them fit the locks?

The key to the lock on the left is in the tin. I don’t recall 100%, but I don’t believe I have the key to the other lock.

toyz4geo

I need to get out more! Nice finds.

CoinNovice

I know you guys love my swap meet finds!
This weekend in a junk bin!
And it has the “states if America”

rln_14

great finds everyone, congrats

seanq

Wasn't a coin but I saved this from the local transfer station, I knew from watching American Pickers that it didn't belong in a scrap pile.

I still kick myself about twice a year for not buying the damaged but very reasonably priced off center Buffalo and Liberty nickels I saw at a flea market in the late 1990s.

Sean Reynolds

asheland

Great thread! 👍

Meltdown

I bought these 2 1920's trucks this summer at a yard sale. I paid $150 each and sold both to a dealer friend a week later for $900.

Kliao

@Meltdown said:
I bought these 2 1920's trucks this summer at a yard sale. I paid $150 each and sold both to a dealer friend a week later for $900.

How? What makes them worth so much?

Meltdown

They're big, all original, no missing or broken parts and still widely collected... Buddy L trucks are very popular

JeffersonFrog

$1 pawn shop purchase. In a beat-up flip with rusted staples. Free RS 90% grading. 1/4 of shipping both ways, say $7. So $8.
MS66 R40

MaineJim

This was a fun pick-up. WWII Military Field Cook Set - another yard sale recycle center pickup. The man dropping it off said it was used in Germany during the war by his grand father and had been sitting in the attic forever. I looked at it, turned it over and noted the military markings. I kept it for a while then sold on ebay for a couple hundred.

Jim

ricko

Obviously I need to get back out to yard sales and flea markets... have not gone for a couple of years now...Cheers, RickO

DNADave

Today: I stopped at my local pawn shop and found a few goodies.

1st. This has to go down in history as one of the ugliest, most ill conceived commemorative designs ever made. It’s the WV 150 anniversary medal of which only 1863 were made. They sold out immediately and were selling for over 100 within in a week back in 2013. I haven’t seen one come on the market since then. This one was $33.00 and I bought it right up.

Next was a whole pile of V nickels 750 oF them for 40 cents each. I’ll have fun looking the them and sell them for 25 a roll in my booth in the antique mall

Last, and this one is sad to me, is a whole bag of medals from a full bird colonel in the Air Force. There are four sets of sterling wings all kinds of other medals and ribbons. This was 100 for the lot. All day long I’ll do that.

DNADave

Well today was ok. I found one estate sale and picked up a 5x9 48 star sewn flag, a really old Charleston police patch, some local tokens and a 1924 Peace Dollar that’s been in the holder since they were worth $4.85. A few other things too.

mannie gray

Cool....rusty staples sometimes = good deals

Sometimes not....

DNADave

A couple of good pickups from my local pawn shop. this morning. The sterling pistol expert medal is not common at all.

I think the half dime is wholesomeness