History What was your best swap meet score?

Very first Chickasha "old times" swap meet.

Went to two Chickasha meets, and never sold a single item, but buying made the trips worthwhile.

Dad was minding our vendor space, and I walked around; finally visiting the inside booths. Old gentleman (maybe younger then than I am now) had two tables with mostly Model T Ford carbs at what I thought were dream prices. But on one of the tables, disassociated from the Ford carbs, he had two carbs listed as "not-Ford, $1.00 each". I grabbed my wallet, and didn't even try to offer him less. The first was a new old stock Marvel for a 1930 Pontiac; the second was a new old stock Zenith type 105DC for a 1930 Stutz Blackhawk. He was right, they were not Ford

Jon.

 

Can't, the jokes write their selves. Besides, it was before you moved out here. But think about it. An Auburn insert with vintage gauges just sitting in plain sight and a field of so called car folks had no clue. Sold a Lathe fast that day and scored a 9" also from Bob Watkins, a fine gentleman in his own right.

 

Probably about 30 years ago; I was looking at an old aftermarket B & M bell-housing at the Puyallup Fairgrounds swap meet. The vendor says to me, "bet you don't know what it's for". Told him it was a B & M adapter bell-housing to install an old, cast iron, 4 speed, Hydra-Matic into a Tri-Five Chevrolet (had the side mounts). The guy had probably asked a bunch of people the same thing he had asked me, and I finally burst his bubble; he looked really disappointed. I got his name and number, and called him a few days later. Bought it, and he delivered it to a local rest area on the I-5 freeway in Everett from Bellingham. I am Butch/56sedandelivery.

 

Back in the 80s, we were at a small Lion's Club car show in Rye, NH. Couple of flea market vendors too. Picked up an odd looking magneto that sure looked like a SBC. Had "Pounden" cast into the aluminum housing. Paid $35 for it. Looking in Hemmings the next month I saw an adv for magneto repair in Sebastapol, CA and the name "George Pounden". So I called and said "I think I have a magneto made by your father". Guy says "Father hell, I made that magneto in '57, I know because I went in hospital with TB and didn't make Chevy model mags after that". I sent him the mag, he refurbished it (WICO tractor mag guts, brass gear, fiber gear in custom housing for SBC). I ran it on my '48 Chev couple with a complete manafre setup I had gotten about the same time at Stafford Springs, CT for $150. Made one hell of interesting motor. Manafre ran 16mpg with just a cleaning.. In the 90s sold the intake and the mag together for $1000 to a NE guy from Topsfield, MA who I believe was going to put it on his deuce coupe.

 

I have thought about it. You cant pay the asking price. The guy cuts you an even better break. I might consider thanking him and not calling him an idiot behind his back. Sooner or later that catches up with a guy

 

Didn't say anyone was an idiot. The guy that sold it to me was a good guy. He had a price, I had money in my pocket and we agreed on the price. Thats how swap meets work. Sure it was an odd rare piece for sale in Western SD. But, there was no guarantee I was going to hit a homerun with it. In fact I sat on it for the better part of a year if I remember right. It took a HAMBer building a 33 roadster in San Diego to finally be the right guy for it. And guess what? He made me an offer far less than what I had it advertised for. I was happy with his offer and took it. Just like the gent that sold it to me.

 

Big bucks? Have you priced those Edelbrock heads, and all the components that came with them?
And I thought 4 nearly new 15" tires and 4 ET Torq Thrust type wheels for $350 was a pretty good deal? Guess I'm just throwing money away.

 

I was riding my Shovelhead and rode by where they were crushing out an old salvage yard. Out front they had placed three old Ford rear ends for sale. I stopped and asked how much? The man said $10 apiece, your choice. So I took the one on the end.... the one with some bludges around the housing and a vacuum can bolted to it. Hehe....






Bones

 

Wasn't a swap meet but takeoff parts from my friends chassis shop. He had a customer with a nice open drive banjo out of a pickup. Typical guy updating to a 9". Asked what the guy was going to do with it and he had no plan. It wasn't free but I feel I paid a great price for it $40? I don't remember. Now I am tripping over it in my shed until it finds a home.

 

Nope you took it all wrong . Only meant that while you are finding all these parts , I would follow along and buy the crumbs that that cost less than a $10 bill . Just tongue in cheek humor.

 

Right after I got my Austin gasser I was looking at the grille and disappointed to see that someone had scabbed together a few broken bars to make the grille look complete. I called around to find that no one was repopping Austin A40 grilles and they are pricey if you can find someone who will part with one. So I was telling the wife how I’m never going to find a good one to make the car look right.
A week or so later we were at a local swap meet and was standing in line to pay for a nice ‘56 Chevy speaker grille and I see something under his table. It’s a complete Austin grille with the center bar and two extra pieces. “how much for this?” I asked him. “You know what it’s for?” He says. “Not sure but it looks like it’ll fit my car”. Ok, six pieces, how bout $10 per piece? $60 for one and a half Austin grilles in perfectly useable as-is condition! Hell yes. “Oh, take these too they go with it” center bars, screws, clips, everything.
The perfect part, at the perfect price, at the perfect time!
The latest swap meet score was a clean take-off Holley 4 bbl in the box, marked list 1850. $10. I get it home, check the number on the airhorn and it’s a 390 cfm. I was disappointed at first but a new 390 is like $500! and it will work nicely on my 215 Buick in place of the 600 Edelbrock.


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Not about "best" swap meet score - more about dumb swap meet score. Somehow, Brian who usually has a table or two at the swap meet heard about my '34 Austin and my plan to stuff a Geo Metro 3 cylinder engine into it. He just happened to have a Suzuki Samurai transmission with him at the swap meet and said that it would bolt right up since a Samurai has its transfer case divorced from the transmission. Good information but instead of buying his transmission, I figure that I should get a junk Geo Tracker with an automatic since my wife refuses to even try driving something with a manny tranny. I find one and since it is sitting in the dirt on flat tires, I just go and buy it without looking under it. Get this thing home and discover that not only does the automatic have a transfer case attached to it, the bell housing bolt pattern is wrong also. Next year at the swap meet, Brian is there again with his transmission so I buy it for $50. Take my prize home only to find out that it too does not bolt up to my engine. The Hamb isn't the only place I look up on the internet. I have run across this Geo Metro / Suzuki Samurai combination and Brian is a stand up kind of guy. If he says it came from a Samurai - it did. Finally I manage to score the proper transmission on Kijiji for $75. Just more parts for the "mistake" pile.

 

Jalopyrama #6 in 2009... We called this the Hemi Holly Grail..

Yes... Those are real deal SP Tops on a Hemi X-3 intake..

We did very well on resale..

 

We picked these up at the Long Beach swap meet in the mid 90’s for cheap!


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Another comes to mind....I picked up a set of '37-'38 Chevy original Chevrolet metal fender skirts at the Dunkirk., NY swap meet in the late '90's, complete and in good condition with the proper trim, for $75.00.

37chev2a by TagMan, on Flickr

 

Actually $5.75 at Summit. Very spendy

 

I've gotten some great buys at swap meets and flea markets in the past, but these days it's a lot harder. A little searching on the internet and the seller can find out what it is and what it's worth...

 

https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/what-would-you-do-with-a-3d-printer.998987/page-2#post-13643036

Hello,

Since I had two 1940 Ford Sedan Delivery vehicles, they both had the same problem. The nice looking hood latch snapped off at the most inopportune time during the ownership period. In the first time, the Flathead powered sedan delivery during high school, I bought one at the local swap meet and it worked fine. It was the last one I bought since I sold it in 1964. It was wrapped, but the label was plain… N.O.S.??? who knows, it looked chrome, felt fine and worked for the next 4 years until the sedan delivery was sold.

Then in our 20 something times, I had the same hood latch on our second SBC powered,1940 Ford Sedan Delivery, break off. This time I bought one from a certified old Ford parts dealer in the city of Orange. For some reason, that one lasted about a year. There was a nice label and tag on it. Then finally, we went to the local, Swap Meet at the Veteran’s Memorial Stadium parking lot. This time, the bag was labeled N.O.S. That one was less expensive than the one from the old Ford parts dealer and it lasted longer than all of them. Of course, from all of that experience, we had a great time at the huge swap meet.


Jnaki

At the time of the second 40 Ford Sedan Delivery, there were different lifting handle versions available at just about any automotive swap meet in bags of all kinds, some labeled, N.O.S.

Of course, my wife kept telling me not to be the gorilla power hands and not be in a hurry when opening the hood. Words from a wise woman, the last one worked well for three years and counting. It was the last one we ever bought, then we sold the sedan delivery in 1976. (for a growing family reason)

https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum...ard-to-find-part.1088429/page-2#post-12347346 hood latch

 

BEST score? It's hard to say, but one that always comes to mind is the Carter AFB that I bought at Maple Grove a few years back, I.D. number 4969S. Asked the vendor how much, and he said "ten bucks". Rear carb from a '71 426 hemi. Sold for $1,400.00.

 

Mechanical fuel pump for a '58 Super Marauder Mercury. $25.00 As usual, the seller had no idea what it was from. Probably never built like that again. It had 1 inlet and 3 outlets, for the tri-power carbs. It sat on the front of the engine, on top. Priceless, so I gave it to a friend.

 

I've had a few good scores lately:
EAB heads for $15
Set of 4, '40 Ford ribbed wheel trim rings in great shape for $20
3 Model A Twolight headlights in good shape for $20

 

$15, years ago at a garage sale, for the y -block intake! These 3x2 carbs were in a box on a shelf that we bought for $50! We didn’t know they were there, we bought the shelf of stuff for other things!





Bones

 

I'm probably the guy who a few others got a great swapmeet score off. Sold a pair of NOS aftermarket Tear drop fender skirts that had sat up in the attic of a local parts house for decades until I bought them for pocket change along with some other pieces for 75 in the mid 80's when they would probably have brought 200 at the Portland swapmeet then.

I wanted 57 Cad hubcaps for my 51 Merc and at the time I wanted them they were going for about 100 a set. Hunted around at the Portland Swapmeet that year and found two singles for about 20 each and a wrecking yard about 10 miles from me had a 57 out back and when I dug around in it I found two nice ones. Bought those for 15 for the pair and the guy who owned the yard most likely thought he had gotten over on me. I lost one going down the road and had to pay about 30 for the replacement for it though.
I was at the Tri-Cities swapmeet about 12 years ago and two guys had pulled their trailer out of the swapmeet at the end of the aftertnoon and were trying to figure out how to tie some stuff down, they had a set of boat trailer tires and wheels and I asked about them. They gave me a good price then I asked about the Chevy AD truck doors, fender hood and some other pieces and they sold me the whole lot and helped me load it for 50 bucks so they didn't have to tie it down. Some guy hunting parts showed up and paid the 50 for the hood a few months later.

 

Driving by a neighborhood garage sale and spotted a interesting possibly antique lamp. I stop, but the lamp is junk. But sitting on the ground are two MINT 64' Corvette wheelcovers. Lady says five bucks each. Done!
I didn't need them, but I didn't want them to go in a dumpster when no-one bought them, and I kinda thought they would be cool on something eventually. Went under the bench, and I forgot about them.

Fast forward a few years and a friend who does a lot of Vette's is standing in my garage lamenting that he just bought a 64" Vette that had some crappy jap mags on it. It came with the four stock wheels, but only two wheelcovers. He'd been looking, but hadn't found any, and didn't want to use repros. The light went off in my head (which can often be dim!) - I walked over to the bench, pulled out the box, and handed it to him. He about fell over.

No big score though. It's a guy who has helped and taught me a lot over the years. Even with the wheelcovers I feel like I will never repay him. But it was a nice coincidence.

 

I have one of those, it spent many years on the stick in my old F250 Highboy- the little girlies all wanted to shift the truck- then would look at the knob and giggle n wiggle

 

In the early 90's, I found my black 500XL Sunliner, that matched my 406 hardtop, at the early Pleasanton meet. It had a set of kinda funky slot mags, uni-lugs so maybe ETs, 6" wide with 4 different brands of ragtag tires. So I pulled them off and drug them to the Petaluma swap in May and put them out for $400. Then I saw a set of Torque Thrust style wheels right across, with nice matching tires and knock offs. Went over and they were Internationals in nice shape, 7's and 8.5's, and the tires were almost new, and the best part, he wanted $375- Rocket Wallet! Just as I got them to my space, a guy was interested in the funkies, and offered $350, I say $375 and we're done. These are the ones I got for even money

 

Pomona…long time ago…Nicson cast iron exhaust manifolds for a GMC..$25.00. Finally found a use for them.

 

I’ve got some good deals at swap meets, yard sales, garage sales and I have sold things at pretty good prices to the buyers at swap meets, yard sales and garage sales. hope I come out ahead at the end. still have a 32 Buick hood hanging around along with some other stuff…

 

Blue metalflake 4 hole Superior wheel. $5 at a flea market.

Gary

 

Sometimes it's not what you paid, but just the fact that you found them.

Although I was quite happy with the price.