Yesterday (Saturday) we decided to buy a San Fernando Valley Recycler to look
for something else, and last night Jennifer sat down to scan the Musical
Accessories category.
All of a sudden she went "Wha ... what the Hell?!?!". She'd seen this ad:
ROLAND TB-303 bass synthesizer/controller,
$100; Fender Strat neck, $150 or trade for Tele neck
(Yes, that really *does* say "$100")
I said "Dude, that thing's GONE, I bet it was gone first thing on Thursday
morning!".
She couldn't resist calling anyway, just to find out when it went. She got off
the phone nearly peeing her pants with laughter.
Turned out that it was an older Jazzman who was really into guitars, and he had
this thing lying around. "I just thought it was an ugly piece of junk", he
said. "Made all these dumb little bass sounds!" :-) :-) :-)
The Recycler comes out at the crack of dawn on Thursday mornings.
The calls started coming in at 7:00 AM. :-)
After a while, he left the answering machine to answer them. And still they
came in. Every 10 minutes, on average.
Some of them were classic:
(An English guy; insert appropriate accent) "I will top any bid. Any."
Others were like: (Jazzman) "Hello?" "Do you have it?"
Or: (Jazzman) "Hello?" "Hey! Who'd you sell it to?!? Dennis? Yo-yo? Ike?"
And: "I've got the cash. Right now." (Lots of these obvious "I'll buy it and
resell it for mega-profits" types, he said. He filtered all of those out from
the answering machine messages.)
After the first hundred (yup) or so calls, he realized that selling it for a
mere $100 was not his smartest possible move, so he opened it up for bids. He
eventually sold it for $350. When asked how many total calls he'd gotten, he
said "Oh, man. Hundreds. Hundreds."
He finally chose some kid who sounded sincere and who begged him for it because
he "needed it for [his] show". The kid showed up at his house - in full-on
Techno garb, natch - and when the guy brought it out and showed it to him, "the
kid started jumping up and down and making funny squealing noises" - "This is
it!! It's it! It *is* it!".
Anyway, this was too funny not to share it with y'all :-)
- Greg