Im not sure if anyone has been lured to wilkberre PA from an add in a car magazine, but i sure was. Last year i saw a cl***ified advertising a 55 ford fairlane. i called the guy up. His name was marvin and he was 81. Needless to say that conversation about the cars was very brutal. Long story short, he told me he has 13 cars up at his house, all garage kept with no rot, but they might need some help starting up. Well i grabbed some cash and took my dad and a friend and headed 3 and a half hours to Wilksbarre PA! Finding his house was the first omnious sign of bad fate. Marvin did not have an address and lived in a small shack surround by junk and a ww2 pickup in the middle of the woods. Upon meeting 81 year old Marvin on his birthday, he was wearing full ww2 military fatigue and apparently out of his mind. And remember those 13 cars that he told me were in amazing shape with no rot? well all 13 of those cars were ****tered on his property threw the woods, damn near rotted to the ground. Every single car was garbage. Just for laughs i asked how much he wanted for a totally rotted and grotesque 41 buick 4 door. and his response... "Ohh that car, mmmm!!! Prewar!!! Well i couldnt let that go for any less than 8,000.00...that ones a reaaaal cl***ic." And thats about the time i relized i had chased a dream and woke up to reality...its not everyday you find a barnfind... Anybody else ever meet Marvin??? haha id love to know! -ryan "your heaterbox is in dyer need of some rubbergloves and silicone!"
Gee, so basicly IF IT SOUNDS TO BE TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, IT PROBABLY IS........ You REALLY thought you would find 13 PRISTINE cars in PA? Have you ever looked at most cars from PA? You ask for pictures? Are you really THAT gullible? Want to buy a bridge? No? How about some fine AZ beachfront property?
Well, it's possible to find nice cars in PA, but to someone spoiled by the southwest, they'll be junky even if they look showroom fresh. You shoulda offered the guy some play money, what the hell, tell him it's newly minted -
Marvin sounds like a real nut. In his mind those cars are mint. They probably were, when he parked them there 40 years ago! It's too bad you had to go so far to find out he was an escapee from the funny farm. You've got to chase these wild goose stories because once in a while they turn out to be true. At least you got a good story to tell.
People who always say that are the same ones who will only 'read' about someone else's barnfinds. I agree 90 out of a 100 times, cars are usually way worse then you hoped for. But it's those 1 in a 100 finds that sometimes can be the real treasures, and you'll won't find these by sitting on thy *** all day.
I go on the wild goose chases all the time too. You know how many times "this guy has a car just like yours and he only wants,,,,,yea". All rodders do it. Difference is, I don't come online to 50k+ people and try to make the guy sound like a quack. Maybe he is, don't know. If I posted about every goose chase I had where cars weren't as hoped, my fingers would be sore from typing.
I once chased up a lead on a '17 Harley Davidson here in the UK. Perfect unrestored never ridden since 1931 when it was laid up. Guy said, "Since I got it I've kept it oiled up. Yes, I'll swap you for the 1935 Scott and sidecar you have". I loaded up..... Arrived at his house. Just as he described, all true. I came away with it, had the magneto rewound got new tyres and rode it just like it was. Wonderful.... Chase dreams, sometimes just sometimes they come true!
I know of plenty of pristine cars in PA. Problem is most of them are not for sale. They are up there. I have a friend from high school, his dad owned a trucking company not far from Wilkes Barre. He has a building full of them. And he's not the only one up there... The people who have them up there know what they are and what they're worth so it won't be a free lunch when they go up for sale. Then again I had a friend look at a supposed light rust car for me in AZ, it was a piece of rotten junk... I found a better one in NJ for half the price...
I've been on many such goose chases, but last march when a freind told me about a rust free California 62 Falcon on graigs list, I almost didn't go. But it was march and I was bored so I went. For once the car was as stated and well worth the trip. It now set in my barn waiting for me to finish my 54F100 project.
Get outraged fool. Yeah I'm sure ol 81 year old Marvin who lives in the woods will just go out and snap some pics on his digital SLR and upload them on his high speed connection, host em on photobucket and send em right over. Idiot. ****s your time got wasted, but BigBlock has it right, you never know if you don't try. My last garage sale in the HOOD (awful area) netted a Merc Monterey wheel in a stack of newspapers for $30. I would have taken a stabbing with that, maybe worth it! Haha.
i was in cal. working and saw a ad: 68' camaro conv. not stock but nice car. called the guy and drove 2 hours to check it out, someone had chopped the top off a coupe. boy was i pissed!
Amazing how many "pristine car owners" like this there are out there. BTW- this thread ***le sounds like an H. P. Lovecraft story...
Welcome to the HAMB. MARVIN lives,...everywhere. But,...If you don't visit him, you will never know. I didn't visit my local "Marvin" & someone else got the 331 & 354 Industrial Chryslers. They hauled them over the $#&%*ing scales! I'm still not over it. Visit Marvin, take him a can of coffee! What do you have to loose? Lucky667
Then it came here from somewhere else more then likely. We don't have a lot of fields with gr*** growing up through the floorboards,,,,,,,, it's a desert, we have dirt and rocks. Our annual rainfall is like a WEEK for Portland and even with carpet SOAKED from a rain, it will dry in a day.
Actually, as long as no one aimed a shotgun at you and told you to squeal like a pig, boy... what are you complaining about? If you don't go look you'll never know what's there.
Some of the best times I had when I was younger was going to find some cars that "this guys I work with whos uncle wants rid of them" trips. My Grandpa, my Dad and me all driving along looking for that one yard full of cars... The best we came away with was a good lunch and some time together. I miss those days.
Go hunt the wild goose. Edison never put sound to movies because he THOUGHT it couldnt be done. They're STILL out there. 100 trips for the 1 trip,aint bad odds. Dont be afraid of Marvin. Just be able to get away.
Now, more that ever, you have to check out every lead. It's like the lottery; buying a ticket doesn't guarantee that you'll win anything, but not buying one definitely guarantees that you won't.
Supposedly it has sat in the same place in Phoenix for 30+ years. I will say it was complete, beat up, more rust than I've seen on an AZ car but maybe it was brought there to sit 30 years ago.
A few year ago I bought a '48 Ford truck on eBay for $700. The ad said "runs great". The truck's body looked decent and it had a stock radio, which is extremely rare. I drove 400 miles to get the truck. When I got there, after a rather convoluted trip into the the middle of nowhere, I found the truck sitting in the woods closely surrounded by 6" thick trees. I open the hood to check out the engine and saw it needed a battery. I asked the guy if he had a battery so I could hear it run. He answered, "Hell, that thing hasn't run since I parked it there 8-9 years ago." I reminded him the eBay ad said it "runs great!". "Yeah," he said, "It did when I parked it". Turned out the flat six engine was froze solid. He then tells me, "Yeah, all it'll take is a little diesel oil and it'll free right up." I told him I'd give him $400 for it, I really wanted the radio and the body was pretty decent. He said to forget, that he could get more for it junk. I told him to keep it and started to walk back to my truck. By the time I reached my truck he called me back and agreed on the $400. He had to cut down three of the trees to get the truck out of the woods. I again won another truck on eBay last year for $500. It was about 30 miles from my house. I could see it was a beater but the ad said it had new tires and tubes so I bought it for the tires and the few good parts that might be on it. I wrote the seller a couple of times before bidding to make sure the tires were new, and he wrote back each time ***uring me they had "0" miles, and were brand new. I drove out to his house, backed my trailer up to the truck and got out of my truck. As I walked up to the truck I could see the tires were severely dry rotted. When the guy came out I asked if those were the tires he said were new. He said, "Yeah, brand new" I then pointed out the severe dry rot cracks and told him the tires were junk. He then tells me that I must have some really good eyes because he couldn't see anything wrong with them. He got rather belligerent and I told him I had better tires on my truck than the rotted pieces of junk he had and told him as politely as possible what he could do with his **** and left. If nothing else, these wasted trips make for good stories.
When I was in high school, I was out in the driveway one Sat morning climbing into my 50 Olds fastback with loud exhaust and plenty of primer spots. The newspaper kid asked if I like "old cars". I ***ured him that I was. He said that there was an old car on his route - he saw it because the side 'man' door to the garage was open. He gave me an idea of which house it was (few blocks away). I drove over there....garage door was shut....I knocked on the house door - old guy answered. I pretty much related my short story. He said his brother left it there as collateral for $150 dollar loan. That was ten years ago. Hadn't been started since that time, although there was a key in the switch. Asked him if I could look at it. We walked into the garage, and found a lovely 46 Merc convertible, light blue, leather interior, V8 of course. Want to sell it?, I asked. Sure - you give me $250 and its yours. I asked him if he could wait till Monday - he could, so I gave him $20 and told him I'd be back Monday after school with a can of gas and a new battery. I did that...he gave me a bill of sale....I pumped up the tires a little bit (bicycle tire pump) - I was in much better shape then than now. It took a little doing to coax it to fire up, but when it did, it settled into a nice idle, warmed up good - and I drove it home. Gave the newspaper boy $25 the next time I saw him. In the ensuing years, I have followed up dozens, maybe scores of 'leads' from people that have seen something or know about something. Sometimes they pan out (you find something you like, or something a buddy might want). Sometimes it's not so good. But you always get to talk to people, and sometimes they may not sell you what you went there to look for, but they give you some information that leads you to the next potential treasure or treat (or not). If you don't go, you won't have any stories to tell anyone - except the tired old story that "all the good cars are gone" as you sit on your *** whining to some other drugstore cowboy. dj
I went to go look at a 64 chev truck on craigs list asked all the right questions about rust and misc items and asked are you sure? Oh yeah drove it 2 weeks ago blah blah. Went to see it doors rusted through along with the floors and not to mention 5 year old ax holes in the roof and no radiator and he tried to look surprised when i pointed this stuff out.......... 2 weeks later went to go look at another one and it was better than described and the guy hauled it for me fo cheap ! MORAL IS they are out there but sometimes so are the sellers!!!
I just found a 48 Ford Thames 1/2 ton panel delivery for $300 because I followed up on a lead. And the last truck I built, a 37 chevy, I got for free because I followed a lead and in both cases I have great stories to tell and made some new friends. I have had 13 or 14 cars in the last ten years that cost me less the $500 not one of them newer then '65. I will follow every lead I get. Hell, if nothing else you have a nice day out in the country side. Jaysin
The Jalopy Journal
