Recently, a buddy bought an old wreck of a house to be gutted and remodeled. The place was a mess—leaking pipes, moldy carpets reeking of dog piss and garbage piled high in the basement. I asked if I could sift through before he hired a hauler. He was dumbfounded. “Why?” he asked. “It’s all junk.” He gave me a quick tour to prove his point. Right off I spotted an Impala fender atop one of the basement piles, and a scattering of 50s-era hubcaps. Cool stuff, totally invisible to my buddy. “You and I have a different definition of junk,” I told him. Upshot was, he gave me a set of keys and said I had a couple days to grab whatever I wanted. Donning N-95 masks and Nitril gloves, my wife and I plunged in. This was not the sanitized picking of television. This was rat turds, a Rubbermaid garbage can catching toilet seepage from upstairs, and boxes and boxes of damp, 60s-era porn. In addition to the fender and hubcaps, I turned up a Packard hood ornament, Desoto steering wheel, set of ’59 Caddy taillights, various switches and mirrors, and two sets of early 16-inch Ford wheels (plus one lone artillery). Junk my ass. While this was going on, my wife was poking around a big pile of crumpled and rolled up papers shoved up dangerously against the water heater. Unrolling a corner, she read the word “Paramount” and called me over. Holy Box Office, Batman! We’d stumbled on a pile of 1950s movie posters. Original movie posters, more than 150. Most are cheesy horror and film noir, but also some very collectible (Marilyn Monroe, John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart). Here’s a look at the two Hamb-friendly ones, which are obviously my favorites. (Sadly, they are among the more damaged): Obviously, these are in rough shape after half a century in a damp basement. But they are savable, and we found a local restorer who will do the work in exchange for some of the more marketable posters. Some will be restored for us, and some for my buddy who is now eager to display this “worthless junk” on the walls of his new home. The funny thing is, I was just after a few decent trade goods, and wound up finding something of actual value and completely unexpected. So, who else has plunged into a parts hoard and come up with something cool and entirely different? (And no, I’m not talking about men’s magazines…)
Tap tap tap, is this thing on ? You know dude, if you would have gotten that cool mystery rig off of your trailer, you could have had the trailer over there, at that pile of great stuff, and hauled a lot more home, that would be ultra mega cool ! Just sayin !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Grinning to myself, you know you are going to have to fess up about this, because Danny @HOTRODPRIMER will bug you to death, about it ! So you know that you are going to have to sit down at that " NOS " Mystery pull start keyboard, and tell us a good story !
Yep, it has been quite the month for me and unexpected treasures, and your zombie hit-and-miss corpse is right up there at the top of the list, alongside Hot Rod Girl! But as you know, it weighs 500 lbs! Whereas Hot Rod Girl comes in at a few ounces. So the fabulous industrial yard art waits patiently on the trailer until I can borrow my brother's engine hoist, which I also need for the truck project.
Also in the basement hoard was this stack of 8x10 race car pics. Haven't had a chance for a close look, but appears to be amateur snapshots from Evergreen Speedway, '60s I'm guessing.
You forgot to mention my sweet econoline!!! (I am not the new house owner, but I do consider him a friend after all the help he gave extracting the 53 dodge pickup and the econoline parts rig I am dragging home....which is I guess helpful to him too...)
The last house I helped clean out had trash at least a foot deep covering every floor surface, a chest freezer full of meat that hadn't been turned on for the last year or more, and some ungodly smells from that + more... we threw armloads of "stuff" out a 2nd story window into the back of a borrowed garbage truck (I have no idea how that was arranged, but it saved us from doing hundreds of sets of stairs that day). No old racing photos, cool movie posters, or shiny car parts though . Nice score(s)!
Fantastic story. Great scores on the posters! Curious if your buddy ended up paying more for a hauler because you had pre-picked the house of valuables? The haulers here are very well versed in all types of antiques, collectables, tools, etc. and bid the hauling job according to not just trash volume, but by how much they can salvage/sell from the gems in the trash. Sometimes they'll bid the job next to nothing if there's a lot of value in the non trash items. They all sell online and at the local swap meet.
Cool...last one I went to was actually to look at an early CJ-2 Jeep and lord knows what had already been hauled off by the scrapper the family had working the place. Ended up with the Jeep and some 1965 HiPo Mopar stuff and some 65 C -body stuff I dropped off at Jeff's place.
I've told this story before... A while back I helped a buddy drag home a $100 farm fresh rusty junky '59 Ford Station Wagon. It was a 3 speed car and he needed the pedals & linkage to convert his Ranchero to a 4 speed. The Wagon was filled to the windows with junk & garbage, so as he's pulling shit out of the car (a metal pile & a burn pile) he tossed a box into the burn pile...that as a toy collector, I immediately recognized. A 1966 Hess Voyager Ship in the box. The box was dirty & moldy, but the ship was in beautiful condition. Told him I'd sell it for him and we would split the profit. Got $900 for it. He shit his pants when I handed him $450
The job was inspected and bid after I was done, so we'll never know. My buddy later asked if I wanted to make a final pass, and I said no, because it could screw up his arrangement. To be honest, what I really wanted to do was dump a bunch of my own junk into the load. I love stories of a car-buy that ends up paying you! I actually found something else in that basement that I haven't mentioned yet. I don't want to jinx it. Could be a hit, could be a miss. Not car-related. Here's a more recent poster from the pile. Not as cool as the 50s stuff; just showing it for the Dodge, which will bring a smile to the face of @41 GMC K-18. @Hitchhiker too.
That’s a score !!!! Years ago up in the town where my parents cottage is at they cleared out the contents of an old shop in town. boxes and boxes of carb for a buck a box, and old black and decker valve seat grinder and guide knurler kit for 5 bucks There where 2 boxes with odd ball tools and pictures etc one with a snap on hub puller and one with a snap on bearing puller I was bidding against an older - ish lady and the bidding went high I walked over and asked her what was in these boxes of mixed matched junk she wanted, she told me there where a few old pictures of the town in there she wanted for the historical society . I told her to stop bidding against me and I’ll give her the pictures got both boxes for 75 bucks, thought I made out like a bandit. she took a few of the old black and white pics said thanks and left. as I was carting all my boxes of treasures into my dads trailer the auctioneer came over and told me those pics I so generously gave to the old lady where worth upwards of $1000.00 bucks to the town historical society and she was not part of dais society but heading over there to sell them !!!!!! got Damn I was pissed !!! But in all honesty those pics may of gotten hung up in the cottage garage but most likely tossed out with the old crumbled gasket sets and rusted beyond use parts that where in the boxes I bought. Defiantly one mans junk is another’s treasure !!!!!!
LOL.How many of you aging Baby Boomers ( like me ) remember coming home from school, getting a snack, and turnnng on the TV and tuning into those laughably campy American International Sci fi and horror movies? "I was a Teenage Werewolf", " The Giant Gila Monster", etc. Some of them had cool hot rods ...."The Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow".
I get the feeling that in your explorations of various unpublished piles of treasures, that just maybe, you are holding out on us, as to all of the recent acquisitions? So whats the story on the mystery prop, did someone just leave it out on a porch ? Whats up with that ? ( GRIN ) And yes, the poster with the Dodge on it, did make me smile !
Well, I have a love for all things transportation, and the cool drone prop and even cooler hit-and-miss you very kindly gave me will take place of prominance in the collection. Along with the antique railroad semaphore my wife turned up at a garage sale a few weeks ago. But this non-automotive stuff is best saved for The Antiquated, and I'll keep this thread focused more or less on automotive scores. To that end, here's a pic of the Packard ornament. It was literally wrapped in moldy old movie posters.
Patience and perseverance pays off, if the time is taken to unravel all piles of moldy old movie poster paper, Bravo Sir, well played ! Great score indeed !
The best part of the story is that a large amount of really neat old stuff was saved from the trash, I wonder what percentage of these old hoards of treasures is saved. Thankfully this one was!
Still wish the other seat to that econoline showed up. That hood ornament is sweet! Any ideas what year it is off of?
Great scores. What year was the fender? I have done way more than my share of digging through animal shit and moldy basements in search of stuff, although I don't know if I've ever documented it like you did here. The posters are great, I'm a little jealous. Closest I can come to that is a set of 60's racing posters from Road America at a thrift store for $1.
As a teenager I explored (mostly with permission) a number of crumbling old farmhouses and barns in my area, all of which are now gone. I saved some interesting stuff, but I still wonder how much cool shit I left to rot, not knowing to look twice at it. Wish I could do it again. I never minded the gross stuff, it all washes off.
The Jalopy Journal
