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I shop the wrong yard sales. We don't have an attic. Otherwise, we'd be rich.
Look at the evidence. Last week, yet another giddy person yammered on about the 50-cent yard sale find that turned out to be worth thousands of dollars.
When I spend 50 cents at a yard sale, I find out I've just acquired goods worth a dime. Or a nickel. So far, Donald Trump hasn't called to hire me as an investments adviser. Or maybe he tried. We bought our phones at a yard sale.
The latest trash-to-treasure tale popped up last week out of Batesville, Ind., where a guy named Jesse Ronnebaum told of buying a tattered old painting at a yard sale for 50 cents and hanging it on his living room wall. Even when his house was burgled, nobody bothered the yard sale painting.
Then Ronnebaum poked around online and traced the thing to Chicago's famous Palette and Chisel Academy of Fine Arts. The piece by well-known artists from 1910 is up for auction in May, when Ronnebaum expects it to fetch about $10,000.
My mom recently found some crumpled artwork stashed in her house. It turned out to be mine. The auction house said it'll file harassment charges if I don't stop calling.
I don't get it. The newspapers are full of wealth-wrangling wonders.
A New York family bought a little china bowl for $3 at a garage sale in 2007. It sat on the mantle -- until someone recognized it as the 10th century Ding bowl from China's Northern Song dynasty. In March 2013, it sold at auction for $2.2 million.
A New Jersey teacher bought a castoff card table for 25 bucks at a garage sale. She used it for 30 years or so. Then an appraiser told her it was built in the late 1700s by John Seymour & Son of Boston. She sold it at auction for $541,500.
A Tennessee guy bought salt and pepper shakers and a reproduction of the Declaration of Independence for $2.48. The document turned out to be one of 200 William J. Stone reproductions commissioned by Congress in 1820. It sold at auction for $477,650.
I bought an eight-track tape at a yard sale for 50 cents to play in the $2 eight-track player from a barn sale. The player ate the tape. The auction house laughed before hanging up on me.
Other people gain outrageous fortune from odds and ends they discover in their attics, like old sports trading cards.
We don't have an attic. I kept my old sports trading cards in the garage. I tried to cash them in once for thousands of dollars. The dealer wouldn't even offer a penny.
"You shouldn't have written on them," he said.
"But this guy changed his name from Lew to Kareem, and he was traded from Milwaukee to Los Angeles. So I used my Bic to fix the card."
He threw me out. I bet it wouldn't have happened had I kept those cards in a proper attic.
I suppose my luck at yard sales isn't all bad. I once sold a bunch of used coloring books for 50 cents.
I figured 50 cents was a good deal for used coloring books. But if I see a story in next week's newspaper about some kid auctioning off a batch of used coloring books for $5 million, I'm gonna … see if she'll spot me enough money to add an attic. I'll furnish it with mirrors and bowls and card tables from yard sales.
— Poke through Cole's collection at the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook or write him at burtseyeview@tribtoday.com.