At a swap meet several years ago I bought a very clean 35 spline Dana 60 Power-lok center section for $25. Carried it back to my swap space and then disassembled it to check the clutch plates - you know, had plenty of time to monkey around with it... shoulda seen the look on my friends faces when they saw it had NEW clutches in it as well
I bought a set of 66-67 Aussie Falcon GT hubcaps for $40 after failing to beat the guy down to $30, ran them on my Falcon for a couple of years, yanked em when I sold the car and sat em in the shed for a while, tossed them on our local auction website and got $ 700 or so for em.... still gutted I couldnt talk the prick down to $30.00
429 cobra jet motor with about 5k miles on it (rebuilt of course!!) still waintn to be put in my crewcab. someday!
a friend of my dad's was having a yard sale after the state bought their mom & dad's house......hanging in the rafter , were a pair of nos 67-72 chevy suburban quarter panels.....for those 3 door units......gave him a 100 for the pair....sold them for 1000 a week later....also scored a fresh (well back in 73 anyway) 301 short block with new standard bore gm 302 pistons....and a white sheet gm off road cam .....for 100 ....and this stuff was the left over junk ....a lot of good stuff was shuffled out days before......brandon
At the last swap meet I was at a guy had 2 borg warner 4 speed trannys for $40 each, I bought 1 for my project and brought it back to my swap space, It wasnt there for 5 minutes and a guy offers me $75 for it so I sell it and go back and buy the other one, Now I have $5 invested. Another time I bought a speed boat for $1500 it had a 392 hemi in it so I pull the motor and clean up the boat , put it on ebay and it sells for $1500 = FREE HEMI!!!
how 'bout an NOS 1951 - 52 chevy deluxe heater for $75.00, got $405.00 for it..... Cal Custom pontiac 400-455 valve covers paid $20.00 got $255.00 ..... bought a box of 40 chevy stuff from a guy for $75.00, figured I could double my money.. sold over $800.00 out of that box! ..... just recently I got a "model A" windsheld frame for $25.00. (looked like a 32 or 34 to me). sold it for $125.00 it was a 34.
scored a 26 T body for 300$ had a50s ford tailgate welded across the back 6" or so behind the doors gonna be my next build
scored an old edelbrock tunnel ram, 2- 430 hollys and an old butterfly bug catcher today for the knowledge of "frenching headlights" killer score.
I bought a virtually NOS 1958 Cadillac instrument cluster for $20. Still don't have the right car to build around it. I bought an NOS pair of rear doors at Hershy one year for $75. On the way back to the motorhome I sold them for $500. At a garage sale I bouthg a box of car parts for $15. Odds and ends kind of stuff. Lady says "Want more of that junk" I said SURE. In the garage she had 8 more boxes of stuff. Said $15 a box. Most were full of 50-54 NOS Chevy parts. Traded the lot to a guy for an NOS tailgate and 2 NOS rear fenders for a '36 truck I was restoring.
At this year's Iola swap I bought a 26-27 T roadster windshield post for $1, and some other shit, too.
Last january in turlock, I scored an old jubilee wolf whistle for four bucks, ( I offered $5 he thought it was too much and said $4), Same swap 2 years earlier i got a real nice dixco half sweep tach that looked like it had never been used, for 12 bucks-wish I still had it!
I found a Bell steering wheel from the 40's and 6 original chrome pot metal carb scoops from the 50's at a swap I paid $75 for all of it, then I put the scoops on my 6x2 Dragster and took the Bell to Fathers Day Pamona got hooked up with a guy at the Hop Up booth and sold it to a collector for $1,200 needless to say I had a great Fathers Day.
It's been a couple of years ago but I was taking my aluminum Chevy bellhousing that I had aquired at another swap to a guy at the long Beach swap meet for him to weld repair a crack I had paid $25 for the Bell housing a couple weeks before that. I threw it in my wagon as we went into the swap this guy comes up at 7:00 a.m. in the morning and he is drinking a beer he says he wants to buy the bellhousing. I tell no cause I had been looking for a while and they were hard to find. This guy keeps bugging me to sell it to him for an hour. I ended up selling it to him for $100. I went two spaces over and bought a good one plus a 348 Ansen NHRA scatter sheild for $20 bucks each. So I made a total of $35 bucks plus two Bellhousings. I am still running the Ansen on my 64 Nova.
super clean grill and lower chrome piece of the grill for my '56 for $20 ($500 at Danchuk) and $50 for 2 rust free tri-five chevy sedan doors
got a free 31 A radiator shell, someone was throwin it out. got a free brake pedal (yeah, im a dumpster diver), model A front axle for 20 bucks, saw a 32 shell for 50 bucks but i didnt buy it, cus someone was alreddy payin' for it when i saw it, 10 dollar 29 rad. shell, chrome was perfect, 100 dollar model t frame, did buy that either. free sbc (not from a swapmeet) free dodge rad. shell
I bought a complete set of 4 rebuilt 40 Ford brakes for $100, maroon colored shift arm for a 40 column shifter $7, front 36 wishbones $10, 46-48 steering box and shaft plus column and mast jacket $15, lower rear shock mounts for 47-48 Ford with shocks $30, 2 Stewart Warner gauges circa 1948 $20 ea, LZ carb $10, 1928 Sparton Model A horn $5, and Model A rear spring free.
Last year at the Joliet Motor Speedyway swap, I bought a complete 32 front axle (heavy) drum to drum with the wishbone. He was asking $125.00, I offered $100.00 and we settled for $110.00. Matt
32 hood at an auction for $5 thats aussie! and 32 axle for $50 aussie. many more but their the first to pop into my head.
Not a swap meet story, but rather a farm auction story..... bought a model A truck box for $10.00... nobody else bid, bought a '28 sport coupe body for $5.00... nobody else bid, bought a '28 tudor body with doors and three fenders on a frame for $1.00, and a '28 tudor body with one door for $0.50. The sport coupe was missing it's trunk lid so I was asking an old guy I knew at the auction if he had one. He said he did but it was still attached to a body, he said I could have it for $50. Two weeks later, he brought me the lid and the '28 roadster body it was still attached to. Years back, I bought a '33 3w body on a Friday night for $450, sold it the next day at a swap meet for $2000. I thought I had robbed the bank....yet now I wish I still had it.
Coming from the Netherlands, the one and only time I've been to a smal swapmeet in the US, I almost tripped over a set of Chrysler Long Ram-intakes. Didn't get a 'real' bargain on it with talking the guy down from $400,- to $350,-, but what are the odds of being a Mopar-guy and finding a set of these intakes the first time out visiting the US?
I bought a Cities Service - Crew Levick gas pump globe at the fall Hershey swap meet several years ago for $40.00. It was dirty and laying in the mud. Cleaned it up in an hour or two and sold it for $1100.00 on Ebay !! I also had a "Whiz" car wash can - cute little bugger with graphics showing three or four 30's sedans hung on a clothesline, dripping water. I tried selling it at local meets for $20 and never had any interest shown for it. I carried it around for 3 years, finally listed it on Ebay and got $157 for it. Guy that won it, owned a chain of car washes in Nevada. This year, I scored a set of four Cal Custom 15" mini-trim rings at a local swap meet for $10.00.
Factory rebuilt Stromberg 81 with the sticker still on it for $40 at Nashville. Pair of nice steel 34 coupe rear fenders (NO rust) for $100, same place Pair of Offy finned heads and 3 carb intake for $150, " " One nice steel 34 front fender (no rust/small bead tear) for $75 " " Pair of pristine 68-72 Chevy p/u rams horns for $20, ditto N'ville. Pair of 45 fin Buford drums for $75. Ditto But the killer is the ex-sprint car B motor with pop-up pistons, front-mounted oil pump, mag side drive, circle track style oil pan, AR multi-disc clutch with cutdown flywheel can and tranny plus a B tranny for $400. Same place! For my $750 Dreyer aluminum sprint car body and nose! I LUV the Nashville swap meet! Oops, forgot the WICO Jem mag for $20, with 6 NOS cap for $4 each.
That,s real funny. Probably only known to Aussies & Kiwi,s but the Falcon GT hubcap was a full 14 inch chrome disc that had the appearance of a chrome wheel. Absolutely useless item but hard to find these days i guess.
man.......i cant WAIT for the next swapmeet!!! there's only 2 left here that are really big (both cars and parts swapmeets) and i know i could personally spend all day (or two!) going over people's old junk! creepy
Same swap meet different year scored a 50 chev business coupe for $250, and drove it home (no glass though, he was asking $300) Not a swap meet find but a friend that retired from the post office, his life long dream was to own a junk yard....he called me and my pop up (still living at home 15 years ago or so) drunk off his ass....at 4am, told me and my dad to get our asses here (the yard) and we could buy anything we wanted in the yard for scrap price, he was crushing the entire yard, buying a RV and travelin the country....the crusher was to be there at 8AM. we loaded up the trailer and got to the yard, bought every BBC, SBC, SBF, BBF, a 440 and a 472 for $10 each for the small blocks, $15 each for the big blocks, also scored two 58 fury's (what was bad on one was good on the other type deal) for $150 for the pair, one chevy luv p/u for $40 and a datsun P/U for $40. ended up with 5 SBC, 4 BBC 3 SBF, 6 BBF, the 440 and the 472. total of $530 bucks, one of the SBC was a 71 vette motor and is what resides in my 49 chevy now, the small pick ups were pro-streeted and turned into drag trucks (one with a 440 and one with a 472) and sold for profit (sold each one for $4K turn key) dad sold the furys, not sure what he got for them....still got a 396 and a 454 under the bench...unfortunatly the BBF got sold for way too cheap (15 years ago they wernt pulling what they are now, still made a tidy profit though) and there was quite a bit left we didnt have the time to haul out or get unbolted fast enough that we left.....boy was mom pissed last one was a alston chassisworks framed pinto pro street drag car, no eng or trans that I picked up set up for a 460 (had a narrowed 9", twas all done and previously raced briefly before the guy got divorced) the engine had gone to the shop for a full rebuild when the divorce went in, the car was sold to me for $1200....I slapped one of the $15 460's in it and raced the crap out of it for three years fore I sold it (for way too cheap) $6K turn key (ran low 11's on a stock low end) wish I still had that one as well.... I cant wait for the next swap meet as well though folks at the daytona turkey run (for the most part) think their crap is gold....lotsa neat stuff to look at but the prices are a bit high for the used stuff....the thing to buy at the turkey run is the new components from vendors if you need em, I sourced my EZ wire kit for $90 bucks on a military discount...
The Jalopy Journal
