Projects How long do you hold onto parts before you finally decide it's time?

4 years, if it hasn't had a use, or was for a car that was sold, then its sold... I used to hang on to everything, now I want to walk around my shop and building without tripping.

 

I'm selling everything except a pile to build the next car. I no longer feel the need to own 5 pairs of the same spindles. Plus might as well let people get the parts on cars while there's anyone out there still building them.

 

I buy and sell regularly but I'll go through and sell off doubles/triples of stuff once a year.. usually around Hershey time. I've found doing one big swap meet a year will help you come-to-terms with what you should sell haha. I definitely buy and keep a lot more than I sell...

 

I buy stuff for myself with a definite idea in mind but somewhere along the way, the plan changes and the definite idea becomes a vague, " Wonder what I was thinking when I bought this ?". I don't buy stuff with the idea of " making a killing " on it but to use.

I'm not rich but I live fairly comfortably and don't need to rely on selling parts for that living. ​

If I have something that someone else can or will use, I would rather trade or give it away. Just the other day, another HAMBer who was not building a T gave me a very nice set of sill plates for my roadster. He had more than he could use. Right now, I'm taking stock of what I have personally and what I may actually use in however much time I have left allotted to me. I don't want to see usable stuff thrown away but, if I don't manage these things myself, my wife and children will undoubtedly scrap it all. I don't mean any offense to @mr.chevrolet but if I had shelves stacked with parts like that and made the comment " it's ALL for sale ", I would flood the classifieds with ads. Most of the things I've sold here on the HAMB belong to another fellow who has hoarded flathead parts since 1966 and really never gotten rid of any of it until I convinced him to start unloading the parts he has multiples of. Some of you have benefitted from it. Just the other day, I sold a rare Thickstun PM-6 manifold to a fellow HAMBer at what I considered a reasonable price. He seemed very happy with it as it will mate up with the extremely rare Thickstun supercharger he has. It gives me a feeling of continuity knowing that I had a part in making that happen.

 

Understood olscrounger And My Flat Head Collection And Guns Are Methodically Going To New Homes...

 

I don't want you two talking to my wife, EVER! LOL
Reminds me of a fellow in Seattle in the 55-6-7 Chevy Club. He was telling me what it cost him to build his Sport Coupe, about twice what you would expect. Turns out that for every dollar he spent on the car his wife got a dollar! I made sure to keep my wife far away from those two also.
Like the older fellow said : my biggest fear is that after I'm gone my wife will sell the stuff for what I told her I paid.

1 more car I promise, Rex Winter
Dry n windy Lubbock TX

 

I do the same as Butch/56sedandelivery. All money from sale of items goes to my wife but if I want to buy something substantial she has no issue with the funds. Has worked well for 40+ years.

 

I quit building Corvairs several years ago, but still have a really nice collection of parts, NOS, some racey stuff, etc. I should sell it, but I'm busy collecting more stuff for my current obsession. I've moved the Corvair crap like 10 times, and still have it. Genius!

I also have parts from my first car, and am using some of them on my current build. It is pretty cool to finally use those few things I saved 30 years ago... it makes my car a bit more sentimental.

 

Sometimes I look through my stashed stuff for something, find a suitable part , then put it back because it's too good to use for that purpose, or that I have had it for too long to use it on the particular project, so I have to look further through the stuff to find one more suited to the job at hand.
I have some pre 1920 Indian parts and Model T stuff and also some 1917 ScrippsBooth parts my Dad gave me , that he got from my grandfather who stashed them before my Dad was born in 1933. I might see if my daughter wants them , but she will have to wait until I am ready to give up.

 

I guess Im the odd guy. I sell it a week before I need it for half of what I have to replace it for. Sort of how my life has worked out

 

JUNK-stuff i get rid of, STUFF- junk i keep, few years ago i sold my flt. head collect, 60 int. manifolds, 30 sets heads, funny, i don't miss them, still saved a few. today was looking at other STUFF i need to get rid of, i'm 78 and my boy's aren't interested in STUFF that i have saved from back in the 50's. going to a 3 day swap meet next week in webster fl., friend and i loaded our trailer in 1981 and have never unloaded it just add to it every year, getting harder to get rid of things now. at least we have a good camp out, started in Tampa 1975, then to Zypher hills till 2000, then Webster till ????. mango seasons shure fly by fast now....

 

I will let you know as soon as I get rid of something, maybe 50+ years is long enough

 

My biggest problem is finding good homes for things. A lot of items don't have much value, yet they are very old, well made and modern equivalents, if made, are not the same.

Even new nuts and bolts (probably off shore made) are not as nicely made, and look crappy compared to the old ones.

 

We seem to get a lot of STUFF for "someday". Then every time we take a step forward "someday" takes one back, sometimes two.

 

Lately I have been unloading everything that I am not going to use on the current, and the very next project.

In almost every case, my parts are going to a young person, who is just getting into the hobby, and needs some help.

Why? It's tradition. Tradition is passing down to the next generation.

A whole lot of you guys have forgotten this. I hear of old men passing all of the time, and their collections going to a scrapper. Often already painfully rare parts, at that.

This is further reinforced by the threads hear complaint that kids aren't interested, and that prices are too high.

You are artificially throttling the supply, and discouraging demand.

You are actively preventing joy.

My goal is to leave this world with nothing, same way I came in.

That way, I have the say is where it all goes.

"I'll tell you something, baby, that's a fact
Never see a hearse with a luggage rack
All your money, your hard earned pay
It don't mean shit, babe, at the end of the day

Can't take it with you"

 

Till the grandkids are sufficiently grown up, that I know whether or not..........

 

I picked up a shelving unit to put in the downstairs bathroom so I can better organize parts and maybe widen the goat path through the living room.

 

I’m guilty of holding on to stuff, thinking I am going to use it. But at 72 and tripping over it all the time I finally have sold some pieces to a fellow hamber and given him some also.

 

I usually get rid of stuff about a week before I need it.

 

I'm not qualified to answer that question . As I'm surrounded by at least 3 generations before me of stuff .

 

This might explain it.

 

Amen


Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

The tall camper shell I made into a shed needs to come down since the roof leaks and the parts are turning to junk so 95 percent that I have stored in it are going in the back of the truck and to the scrap yard this week. While cleaning it out I need to see if I still have a crank pulley I need for my recent Mercury purchase that came off the original engine for a wagon I had that I do not remember throwing it away.

 

I suppose if you have to ask the original question then its probably time to let it go.

 

I've been cleaning out and organizing since the covid thing hit.....some stuff went to the dump, some in the scrap pile.
I sold my 324 Olds engine yesterday to a local hot rodder, it went to a good home!

 

For decades I never sold any old parts. Either they stayed in storage, or they went in a car, or the scrap pile. Then last year I started my '39 Chev coupe project, and began using up a lot of spare parts. I eventually got to the point my spare parts storage looked noticeably emptier, which was something I hadn't seen in a long time!
Knowing I might not have very few builds left at my age, I decided to take what was left to a swap meet here in January. It was a one day meet, and I put decent prices on everything, as I wanted to not haul much (or anything!) home. I sold a bunch Sat. during setup, and by 11:30 the next morning my space was empty!!
I packed up my tables and chair, and paid a kid $5 to haul them out to my truck, and headed home! Funny thing was after I got home, and got back to building my project, I found more parts I'd hoarded away, that should have gone to the swap meet too!

 

The last couple of months I have been selling off my collection and I am just starting to come to terms that it’s okay. My thoughts are after I sell off what I don’t plan to use , I’ll regress thinking the shelves look to bare or something cool comes along.

 

The parts are loaded and will go through it before its gets dropped off at the scrap yard,since animals made nests in the shed I had to take everything out trying to find a crank pulley I thought I still had.

 

That looks like good swap meet material, if priced low. What's the intake from?

 

I have started selling off automotive parts and other keen non-automotive stuff, and unloaded enough to make a significant hole in my garage clutter. I intend to keep listing stuff until I get to a point that I am happy with the stuff I am keeping.
I just turned 77 today, and know I am not going to take on any new projects. Most of the engines I have, are now going to be sold off, but I am going to downsize at a rate where I feel the time I am devoting to this is such that it doesn't feel like it is the only thing I am doing.
Bob