Best Deal You Ever Got

Bought an Mf-104M, MF-108M, MF-107 & a Midi-Murf, grouped for 1100€ in 2020. Guitar Center ex-demos...

Got a vintage fender champ for like 300 bux back in the early 2000’s before the prices skyrocketed on vintage amps. Still my number 1 recording amp! Also have this custom fender/partscaster p bass that looked a hot mess at Sam ash for 150 bux. Got it cleaned up, replaced the nut, and it plays and sounds just as good as any expensive p bass I’ve ever picked up.

Hmm…probably a blue stripe 1176 for $1000. Sold it and it paid for my wedding.

I worked at a music store in the late 90s to 2003. I got a virtually new Mexican Strat for $65 and a Mesa 2x12 for $65 both brought in as trades. I think I paid less than $100 for a blackface Bassman, also a trade from the original owner.

My BEST score ever was a made in Turkey K Zildjian ride that I got for $50 because the pawn shop thought it was an old, never cleaned cymbal. I got one over on them, but they must have really got one over one whoever brought it in.

My dad was at a yard sale and saw an old set of drums with no badges. It looked like a 60s/70s Ludwig set in Butcher Block Cortex to me, they wanted $150 and dad talked them down to $100. I said go for it. They ended up giving him a bag with some random drum stuff in it, had all the badges in there. Cleaned it up and sold it for almost $800 a few days later. That was fun. I used to do that a lot and was constantly flipping stuff online in the early 2000's. Made some good money, can't really do that anymore though. I miss it...

This isn't technically "gear", but lived in Moscow in the mid 90's as a kid. My dad and I got into collecting old Soviet war medals. Really cool history with them, beautiful works of art, the nicer ones came with documentation that would tell you who got the medal and why. We did that for 2 years for fun, Dad guessed we probably spent well under $2000 total on everything over that period. About 2010 or so, I saw some pop up on eBay for insane amounts of money. We ended up selling them all for over $20k. A lot of them ended up being extremely good fakes, which was too bad because that would have ended up being "retirement" money. That's probably the most I've ever come out on top.

Let’s see the 68 Bassman for $50?
A bunch of the Sony C535’s were less than $200 ea eBay asking these. Days is around $1K.
The Quested H208’s were free because of UPS Damage to the tweeters and Midrange, they paid for “ Quested drivers”. Just needed Morel & Vifa Diaphragms.
The AMPEX 440-8 & 440-1/4in were basically free at $400 but they included a console that I sold for $400.

A bunch of Stuff I have pulled out of old installs and flipped.

The 2 guitar pawnshop finds that were lost in Ike
68 les Paul Studio $500 Alembic California Special $169.

Lots of mics that have come & gone probably the 2 best were 3 Steadman N90’s for 50ea and the MBHO Omni lollipop for $179.

So many, but a standout was a radio station that was about to be bulldozed, there was a shelf full of RCA tubes, floor to ceiling, that the guy took $100 for. He got impatient and ran me off before I was done frantically sweeping off the shelves into cardboard boxes, so about half were still there and he took $50 instead. Probably got 200+ tubes.

I did score a very well built radio station home made tube remote preamp (think OP-6) from the late 1930's on eBay for $20 in the last 4 years. Not a buy it now, just the only bidder!

I was doing a project for the woman that created Dora The Explorer...and we were out at dinner and I was showing someone on my phone a Collings I was thinking about buying...she said, "let me see that...how much is it?" I told her it was listed at $3800. She put the phone down, reached in her purse, pulled out her checkbook and wrote me a check for $3800. Unbelievable. I then paid an extra $1200 and bought a Martin D-28 Authentic. Can't say I'm not lucky lol.

Be interesting to hear some stories about some of Dan Alexanders best dealings. If that was a show on Netflix, I would certainly watch that.
Really enjoy watching those American Pickers shows.

It’s an interesting adventure, I have to buy his book!