/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>810692
>be 16, avid garage saler, with older brother during townwide garage sales in small city
>2007, garage sales are still decent, everyone takes part
>play guitar as hobby, but the hobby is mostly because I liked the idea of building guitars/amps/pedals
>both of us on lookout for any tube amps or radios that can be converted for guitar
>never had luck finding anything like it ever
>get to a nice enough house with an old very small house next to it, looks almost like a converted garage house
>not much of anything exciting
>one box of junk metal stuff with this transformer sitting on the top.
>ask the lady how much and she dumbfoundly goes "are you serious right now?, gonna have to ask my dad"
>she says that when she asked her father for garage sale stuff, all he gave her was the box and said that "people are gonna be fighting over this" referring to the transformer
>she goes and gets an old decrepit man out of the small house
>I buy the transformer and we kinda give him a short spiel about how we are looking for tube amp stuff, hoping he has more stuff
>he invites us inside his small house
>walk in, shelves built into the walls filled with tons of tube radio chassis
>handwrapped antennas, speakers, tubes and tools just laying around.
>lights up a tobacco pipe and goes on giving us a little tour
>he was an old radio repairman whose hobby was to build them
>he invented something and got a page in popular mechanics years ago, he showed us the page

Ended up spending close to 3 hours with this guy, because he was interesting and at same time you couldnt understand what he was saying.
Missed the rest of the garage sales because of it.
I went back one other time but nobody answered the door, felt weird so I never went again. Guy is dead by now for sure.

I had forgotten about this thing for years sitting in a box, but I had lunch with brother for his birthday recently and somehow it came up.
If it its not nice, ill just keep it around for sentimental value