Best deal you ever got.

[Egon]

The best deal is always the next deal!

 

[BruceR]

I found a L&JG Stickley chair in the back room of an antique store in Kerrville, TX a few years ago. I asked a clerk about it and she said she thought it was a Stickley and would be expensive. I replied "Ya, Ya, they all think they are Stickleys, I don't see any marks". Clerk comes back and says I can have it for $435. I almost broke my neck getting it into the truck.

I sat in it for a few years and traded it to a local dealer for $500 and another chair. I sat in that chair for a few years and then when I needed money to move my then future wife from Canada to TX, I sold it for $1750.

My printer at the office was having problems and I had to hand feed the sheets. I finally got tired of jacking with it and picked up a $300 HP printer on Ebay for $152.50 plus $20 shipping. Two days later the printer arrives Straight from HP with an invoice for$300 and $25 shipping. I swapped the invoice to my employer for a check. Couple weeks later, I get an email from Ebay saying the seller of the printer had been tagged as a scam artist and removed from Ebay and not to pay them if I had had any transactions with them. I had already paid and made money on the deal, so I was happy. Couple days after that, I get a notice from PayPal that the seller had not finished signing up for PayPal and hadn't claimed the payment so it was being refunded to me. FREE printer & $325.

But then, lets don't get started on all those deals I didn't do so well on.

Bruce

 

[jinman]

When I retired from the US Navy, I was single and didn't know for sure where I wanted to live. I was staying with my parents for a couple of weeks when my brother told me he had a coworker with a camper for sale. It was a 21' Coachmen Cadet and in nearly perfect condition. It had been sitting under a tree and was covered with sap. It looked horrible on the outside. They wanted $2500, so I bought it.

After washing off the sap and waxing it, it looked like new. I moved it into an RV park and lived in it for a year until I found a house. After moving into the house, I sold the camper for $3800. Not a bad deal at all and the folks who bought it were really happy with their purchase too.

 

[Dyer retired]

My wife insists that my motto is: "Buy high, sell low." "Why pay less, when you can pay more?" etc. etc. I never feel like I've lucked across any deals and had to always search for my bargains....only to find out that when I buy something, someone ineviditably tells me of where I could have gotten the same thing cheaper. Well, I was at my Kubota dealer one day and saw a "worksaver" brand 6 foot blade sitting in some tall grass and covered with a fair amount of surface rust. The dealer sells some nicer, more expensive, blades, so I asked how much he wanted for the worksaver and he quoted a price between $250 and $300 bucks. I didn't think I needed a blade at the time, had a minor idea of what I'd do with it, so didn't care if he took the offer or not, so I offered him $125.00, but only if they delivered it. He jumped at it, which scared me a little. I've used that blade for 3 years for just about everything! It was scraped, brushed, repainted by the end of the next day (it's going to get marred up anyway, but I wanted it to look good for bragging purposes...like I'm doing now,) so I feel like I got my first real deal in 54 years. I'm hoping it's not the last and blades are generally pretty easy to find and fix up like I did, but I have had no complaints and use the blade for nearly everything now.

Now for the weather report: 20 degrees F. in central Maine and raining hard....freezing the minute it hits the ground. I'll probably keep the blade off the ground today and not create any more of a skating rink than is already naturally forming out there. Predicted to be in the 40's over the next two days, so it's that time of year. Dyer, retired

 

[MossRoad]

I forgot about my '76 GMC 3/4 ton pickup that I bought for $1000, drove for 4-5 years and sold for $1100. No repairs, tires, etc...

 

[Tig]

After I wrote off a car in an accident, the insurance company paid me $1000 more than I had paid for the car including tax and license. Can't say I was happy though. I really like that car and I could not find another like it.
I bought a Limeliter model guitar by Vega for $5 at a yard sale once. Worth every penny.

 

[L4400]

Probably the best deal I ever got was on a 3 pt. hitch mounted leaf blower. I was down in the barn and I had a welder I was looking to get rid of. It was a Sunday so I went back up to the house to check about putting an ad in the paper for it. As I scanned the different sections to see where to place the ad, I came across a 3 pt. hitch mounted leaf blower for $150. I called the guy up and he said he still had it. It is a 36" diameter (wheel) leaf blower. I went to his house and he had two of them! Two guys were already there and bought the first one, which was in better shape than the one I got. I had just priced these and at the time they were $3600 new (about 6 years ago now). Granted, mine's pretty rusty, but it works great and the couple times I use it a year, it will last a lifetime being stored in the barn.

 

[mahlers]

A few years back, during the dot-com boom, I ordered a LOT of stuff from Carparts.com because they always had great prices. They also always messed up orders. I ordered two very high-end oil filters, and they sent me two cases of them... Same thing when I ordered eight quarts of race oil - they sent eight cases. I emailed them to tell them they made a mistake, and guess what - they sent MORE. I guess that's why they're not around anymore...

Another mistake like that was with another dot-com that specialized in building materials. I ordered an entire chimney system for a new wood burning stove, and all of a sudden UPS just kept delivering boxes and boxes of stuff to me from them. They had double-shipped everything. I contacted them to tell them what they did, and they responded to say they'd be in touch with me to fix it - and the next thing I knew they credited my card and sent an appology email!?!?! I tried again to let them know they messed up, and then I started getting boxes of stuff delivered from them again - this time it was a bunch of low-voltage outdoor lighting equipment that had similar part numbers to the chimney parts. I've still got a storage room full of stuff that I'm trying to find uses for...

 

[mjarrels]

Lots and lots of FREE airplane rides all around the US and world over and over thanks to the Navy. Can still fly for about $10.00 a hop using space A.

"Go Navy"

mark

 

[TMcD_in_MI]

I was working for a local commercial garden in 1980 and they had an older Merry Tiller Professional walk-behind rototiller sitting out behind a barn. It had a newish replacement engine, but the tiller shaft seals were shot to the point where it wouldn't hold oil. They had just pumped the chain case full of grease and kept on going until they retired it. Got it for fifty bucks, and it's still going. The tines on it are the beefiest I've ever seen on a small tiller, and I know I'll never wear them out. The chain did break once, but that's it for repairs - never did put new seals in it. Someday the tiller shaft will probably just drop out of the machine, but it doesn't owe me a dime now, and it won't then. Best fifty bucks I ever spent.

Tom