Ahh the funny web we weave

It's still cold and still wet. STILL! What happened to the ol "it's Texas, don't like the weather? Give it a minute" chestnut.

Went to an estate this morning.

I don't generally do estates. There is a scam for every transaction in life and one of the estate scams is for someone who likes a particular era to place a bunch of ads in the yellow pages advertising estate sales(with their favorite items as their "specialty"), they come out, they cherry pick your goods and palm you off on someone else who actually runs estates. It's sleazy.

Word of advice: In general, a store owner cannot run an honest estate sale for you. It's a conflict of interest. It just doesn't work.

This particular estate was run by REAL estate sale ladies, they are honest and do nothing but handle estate sales. I'd recommend them to anyone who needed estate sale services. They are very motivated to make money for the estate and don't play favorites.

It's cold, it's wet, I have cabin fever and I'm not in a rush to open today so I stopped by their estate sale for giggles and a little socializing. The usual cast of characters stood around in the rain waiting for opening. I like that these ladies used to allow a preview before the opening. Note the use of the word USED TO.
Apparently some jackheaded idiot tried an annoying little scam before opening. It's not unusual for there to be several people who can't just tow the line.
For example:
There is the lady who has been known to snatch all the pieces of costume jewelry and crouch over them on the floor so she can go through them first.. There are several who will always show up the night before an advertised sale and try to talk their way in because they are "going out of town early the next day" etc etc There is the psycho who will LOCK herself in a back bedroom with all the vintage clothing so she can sort through it at her leisure. The nut who stashes stuff under beds so he can retrieve it on last day at 50% off. The list goes on and ON.
Sadly this list can probably apply to any group of hardcore estate salers in the US.

Petty BS. I've been known to fume over someone who consistently scams their way through estates, but what can you do? I wait my turn and take my chances like (almost) everyone else.

So back to the estate. Someone had pulled price tags off of several items and had stashed the unmarked items in 'hiding places' all over the place. I'm sure I really cheesed someone off when I walked through 5 minutes before preview ended and found the easter eggs and asked that they be priced before the sale started. By the third item, they realized that there was a ton of stuff that had 'lost' it's tag or had been moved across the house.
What did I care, I was 45th in line and probably didn't have a snowballs chance at it anyways.

Sometimes luck works in mysterious ways. Who ever did the tag removing and the stashing, and I have a good idea of who it was, had selected a bunch of items I myself would have selected. So when Barbara came outside and announced to the assembled crew that there would be no more previews in the future due to the stashing of items... I guess the guilty party then felt that they couldn't pick up the items that had been set aside, lest they implicate themselves. Leaving them all for me. Yeah!

So even though most estates sales are for the birds or the hardcore, this one turned out to be a rather good one for me.