Iron Trap Garage Podcast
The definition of a "Iron Trap" is a trap from which there is no escape and for us that's traditional hot rods and customs. Matt of Iron Trap Garage sits down with people that have their own "Iron Trap" and get to know more about how they got hooked. Contact us with possible Podcast guests - irontrapgarage@gmail.com
Iron Trap Garage Podcast
Two Great East Coast Swap Meets!! - 2025 Fall Carlisle & Hershey
Cold mornings, warm afternoons, and a full-on sprint through two of the best swap meets in the country. We dive into Fall Carlisle and Hershey with real numbers, real buys, and no fluff—how we scored rare early Ford parts in bulk, why a flood-saved stash of ’34 pickup pieces turned into a nail-biter negotiation, and what actually sells when you’ve only got two hands and a wagon. From fair pricing to honest haggling, we share the playbook that keeps buyers happy and inventory moving.
We talk strategy before we talk scores: why weather shifts your best shopping day, how Facebook vendor groups can save you miles of walking, and the simple rule that “carriables” beat trailer queens when it’s time to pack up. Then it’s into the finds—Packard senior headlights you can’t fake, a killer ’32 grille with the right bones, flathead intakes at old-school money, and a Columbia surprise that checked off a friend’s entire shopping list. We also get candid about the current market: sign dealers flooding the fields, ENJ headlight prices swinging from sensible to wild, and the frustration of unpriced booths that send buyers chasing “the one person” with authority.
Underneath the parts stories is the community that makes these meets special. A curved-dash Olds giving rides past rows of vendors. A Swedish container crew coordinating across fields. A UK collector geeking out over porcelain Ford signs. That mix is why we keep telling people to show up, set up, and help keep these events alive. If you care about Hershey and Carlisle, the best way to protect them is to participate—vend a table, bring your extras, shop fairly, and share what you learn.
Hit play for tactics, trends, and the finds we’ll be talking about all winter. If you enjoyed this, subscribe, leave a quick review, and tell a friend who needs a Hershey push. What was your best score—or your biggest miss—this year
Check out our website!! - www.irontrapgarage.com
Don't forget to listen to our weekly podcast!! - https://open.spotify.com/show/09WnyHe97uUrMkeXF6dQIL?si=dObfWrBKTyqP42qwrO5vjw
- Get 10% Off Your Eastwood Order With The Coupon Code ITG10 At Checkout * Some Products Excluded - https://glnk.io/73rnx/irontrap
Wanna send us something?
Iron Trap Garage
PO Box 6
New Berlinville, PA
19545
Matt's Instagram - @irontrap - https://www.instagram.com/irontrap/
Mike's Instagram - @mhammsteak - https://www.instagram.com/mhammsteak/
Iron Trap Parts Instagram - @irontrapfinds - https://www.instagram.com/irontrapfinds/
Iron Trap eBay - https://www.ebay.com/usr/irontrapgarage/
Email us - irontrapgarage@gmail.com
Hey everybody, welcome to the Iron Trap Podcast.
SPEAKER_01:What's up everyone?
SPEAKER_00:We're here on a little chilly this morning.
SPEAKER_01:Chilly.
SPEAKER_00:Uh a little bit chilly. Winter fall is definitely here or coming, and winter is right behind it.
SPEAKER_01:It might be one of those things that we get in Pennsylvania called false fall, though. It'll be cold this week and then next week it'll be like 80 degrees for a week. True, yeah. That's how it always happens.
SPEAKER_00:Our spring is like that, you know, everything. So we never we never really know. But uh it's it's nice, good weather. It's it's uh like that almost perfect weather where it's like hoodie weather in the morning, t-shirts in the afternoon. You can wear shorts or you can wear jeans. Yeah. You know, it's kind of like that.
SPEAKER_01:In between Nate's been wearing uh shorts to school every day. Like, dude, you gotta start wearing pants. It's gonna be really cold one of these days, you're gonna be miserable.
SPEAKER_00:Yep. Yeah, so it's also slightly annoying because I've been wor as the same old story, I've been working at the mill a bunch. Yeah. And it's like you're if you're working, you're sweating, you take the sweatshirt off, and then if you're like standing looking at something, trying to m measure or make a decision, then it's like, oh now I'm cold.
SPEAKER_01:Or you move five foot over and you're in the shade, all of a sudden you're like, God, why does it get so cold all of a sudden? Yep.
SPEAKER_00:So um, as far as news or things happening, uh Black Friday's almost coming.
SPEAKER_01:Um, we just placed a merch order, so we should be fully stocked for all of that. Um started working on the calendar, so that'll be ready. Cool. Um, I we haven't figured out if we're doing a pre-order order short pre-order, I couldn't pronounce that, shirt for Black Friday or not, if we're gonna release an old design like we did last year. Um there's a possibility.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we're gonna decide on that.
SPEAKER_01:Um as you can tell, everything's done by the seat of our pants here at Iron Trap.
SPEAKER_00:Things things fall through the cracks.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:But we uh may do another shirt design, we may not. If not, we'll we'll probably do we'll definitely do one for uh for the spring, some kind of new shirt design like we've been doing. So it's um definitely uh trying to get new designs out, but just some of the designs are like when the inspiration strikes us. So like the parts shirt was flipping through an old you know, Ford tractor catalog and found you know the inspiration for that. So you never know when what's gotta find the the right inspiration. That's right.
SPEAKER_01:Um but Black Friday be 15% off the website, merch parts, whatever.
SPEAKER_00:So yeah, so we it's a good chance, even you know, a lot of people when you see YouTube channels, they're doing t-shirts, but we're actually also giving a discount on the parts on the website. So that's pretty cool if you're you know buying something or if somebody's searching searching for a gift for you, they will get a uh small discount off of the item.
SPEAKER_01:I gotta see if we can set up gift cards on our website.
SPEAKER_00:Should there's I believe there's a way to do it.
SPEAKER_01:We should we should look figure out how to do that.
SPEAKER_00:We'll we'll work on that. Yeah. Maybe next podcast we'll say it's done.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we have gift cards now available.
SPEAKER_00:You can buy a$10,000 gift card for that significant other. We won't be mad at all. Not at all. That would be great.
SPEAKER_01:Um, we have to send them$10,000 worth of parts. Over like five five years later, we're still sending them stuff. It's like this is terrible.
SPEAKER_00:Um otherwise, uh, you know, the event stuff is as far as swap meets and things that we officially do um is winding to a a close. Um we did a podcast recently about you know projects and plans for the winter, so that's kind of what the general thing is around here. Um trying to get work done at the mill before it's like full blown winter, so I've been been on that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you basically spent all week over there.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I spent the whole week. Uh we had a we had a friend that was helping us, you know, on and off, and he wasn't able to help this week. Um, and I had a lot planned. I always have a lot planned, but um not not a mad of him, it was just like I had planned a bunch with him being included, and since he wasn't there, I wanted to get the stuff I wanted him to kind of be focusing on is the most important stuff I wanted done. So I was building a barn door and framing a you know, changing the framing of a of a a door opening.
SPEAKER_01:Um did a hell of a job. Yeah, it did a job. Door opens and closes, that's the thing that matters.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. So we opened uh we'll have it in a week in the life of here coming up. Yeah. Um tomorrow. Oh, tomorrow. So we'll have uh yeah, so we m we found another way to fit cars into a different area of a building, which is the general consensus, how can we fit yes, how can we fit more vehicles if need be? So this area had like a little four or five foot door that um did not work very well. Um the track was probably 70 years old, and you know, the door was a hundred years old. And um we got a whole new door and track and all that stuff, and we made the door opening just under eight foot wide. Um, and then the door itself is you know eight foot wide.
SPEAKER_01:And we made a good discovery. We found concrete under a floor, which is like the best is the best discovery ever.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, after uh summer was the with this the oldest building that I've been focusing on at the mill, it's just been you know, disappointment after disappointment. Not that I wasn't expecting it because it's an old building that has not been uh, you know, very maintained over the years. So I wasn't upset. It was just that like you're you know, it was difficulty after difficulty. We'd run it, we'd fix some stuff, and then be like, oh man, this is you know, this this the door frame's you know rotted here, and now we gotta rebuild the door or every window frame needed to be rebuilt. It was like totally crooked. Yeah, I was like, oh, we could probably just patch up the sills on them, and then we got into it, and it's like every single one really needed to be rebuilt. So after doing this door frame, we were expecting to have to like get way more involved. So Evan and I cut the floor away. He had off of school for Columbus Day or something. So he and I cut the the the floor joists and the floor ripped some floorboards up, and underneath there's like nice concrete. We're like, that's weird. And then we started realizing that bay is the same is connected to the building that has all the bays where the train would drop the the feet in. So all of those bins or bays are already concrete and this was just another bay, but they had built a wall, non-structural, you know, walls around it to make this a little separate room with a sliding door at some point in the building's life. And we never really thought about that. So we then looked and it's like, oh well, there's a wall behind it that they just like put some some tongue and groove boards up to board it off, and it's actually like double deep now. And we're like, you can fit so after move you know, getting rid of unnecessary uh shoots and things and opening this all up, we now have enough room to fit probably four to six cars or maybe eight cars in that area once we open it all up, because it's like it's really deep if the whole you know depth of the building. Um technically two buildings, because there's um but anyways, that was that was a nice surprise. A nice surprise. So we gotta rip the floor up, um that you know subfloor or whatever it you want to call it. I don't know. But there's it's all the good thing is we're repurposing everything. So I was joking as we were building the door. It's like just like an old we're building it with the same mentality as like an a hot rod guy or an old old time, you know, hot rod and custom guy. Use whatever you have around. So like I'm literally searching for the the right boards in all the buildings to build this door. And once I realized that we were pulling the floorboards up out of this room, I'm like, these boards are nice wide boards we can that are the same as the outside of the building. They've just been walked on and out of the weather. So I'm like, we can rip these boards off, use them to patch holes in the exterior of the building. So it's like trying to spend as little money on materials as possible for stuff that we have. So I just bought um the sheeting to put over the door itself, but everything else was just stuff we sourced from laying around at the mill and multiple different buildings, like go up in the attic over here, go in the attic over here. And sure, when you look at the back of the door, you see that it's like all different wood, but it literally looks authentic because that's what every door in the whole building is like. Oh, a board broke in this door. I'm just gonna patch in a piece. So it's like it's sturdy, it's strong, it's just you know.
SPEAKER_01:It'll all w all look weathered eventually.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so it's our building is also perfectly shitty, kind of. All the above. Yeah, yeah. So that was uh that's been the excitement for for us lately. So um, yeah, that's kind of what's going on. Um today's um Oh, I should mention the Oklahoma thing. Um we've talked about that, so if you're out in that area, um hit us up. And uh if you're in the Oklahoma, Texas, I forget what other states is in Nebraska or Iowa's right above it, I think. Yeah, so if you're in near any of those Kansas Good Lord, I was like, that didn't sound right. Um if you're near any of those and you want a uh cheap project junker car, I mean uh beautiful car.
SPEAKER_01:High-end merchandise.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we we we will be selling some stuff out of there um in November. So hit us up. We had a few people hit us up to maybe help. That's also great. If somebody wanted to come and give us a hand uh for you know, whatever, uh it would be that would be helpful as well. So we're gonna be going back out and doing some of that. We have a couple hopefully a couple little adventures uh planned before the end of the year. We're gonna try and fit in before snow flies, but um we as always we try our we're vague about a lot of that stuff till it actually happens or we know exactly what's going on.
SPEAKER_01:So things always change. Yeah, they change. We always try and have well-laid plans, but it never works. Never works out.
SPEAKER_00:So, anyways, that's uh some of the stuff going on. Um today's discussion. We tried to break it up between all the videos, but we're gonna talk about um I guess you could say our wrap-up from fall Carlisle and Hershey.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, just talk about what we bought, what we saw, trends, um, things that are changing, so on and so forth. Kind of just talk about the general shows in general, both of them.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I think we're we've been hitting hard before and after Hershey and Carlisle and some of these SWAT meets we do, especially Hershey and Carlisle, um, because we're trying to help with people understanding that these are like the events you should go to. Like even if you live really far away. Um I know we've just seen it in the years that we've been trying to push these events. Um we get nothing out of it, it's just we want we want to see them continue. Because we've seen people that have come that were kind of like fans of ours or customers of ours. They started coming maybe three, four, or five years ago, and now they're like they're hooked, and every year they're gonna go. And I feel like that's what generationally has happened with Hershey and some of that stuff, where like, you know, you go as a kid or you go once with a friend, and you're like, I gotta go every year, this is crazy. So we're trying to get more people hooked so we can get more vendors, you know, people continuing to vend, and that's our little part of it.
SPEAKER_01:I do love when people stop to talk to us and they're like, I used to come to Hershey with my dad, and it was miserable, it was muddy, it was wet. It's like I I kind of wrote Hershey off for years because it was always so miserable in a muddy field. And I saw you guys start doing videos at Hershey, and it's like it's much more pleasant to walk around because it's in a parking lot now. So they started coming back again because they saw our videos and they're like, I haven't been to Hershey in decades, I should go. And now that's like three, like you said, three, five, six years, and they're like, I love Hershey, it's the best thing ever.
SPEAKER_00:I'm kind of surprised still how many people stop me walking around Hershey that say that they're not they may not even necessarily be fans of the channel that say that they watch the tips for Hershey.
SPEAKER_01:That video gets a lot of traffic.
SPEAKER_00:We we get a lot of people that stop, you know, the stop us or stop me throughout the the week that are like, hey, thanks for the video. Or they're like, hey, look, got my backpack. Yeah. Whatever they're you know, I I I got these these tips, so thank you. You know, so that that was really cool. And um that you know that stuff we're doing is kind of helping with everything we're doing. Because again, we don't get anything out of this. We don't we're not partnered with the ACA. Um you know, they share that video once in a while sporadically, but it had nothing to do with them. We just did it, you know, as a fun way to you know, a fun piece of content to put out. So it's it's good that that stuff uh is still getting watched, and maybe as things progress we might do an updated version. But I think it'll hold true. Pretty much all those tips are gonna hold true for the most part, yeah. For forever. So um, but yeah, we're gonna talk about, I guess, what we saw, what we found, um trends.
SPEAKER_01:Probably the best two weeks of weather we've ever had for both events. Yeah, normally normally it rains at one and it's nice for the other. At Hershey, we only had one evening of rain, which is like not that big of a deal. It rained at night, it was done by like seven in the morning. So both events were like pretty quote unquote weather free.
SPEAKER_00:It's about as good a weather you can ask for. This part of the country, the weather is we get like hurricane season, and yeah, um it pretty much every year, if it doesn't hit on Hershey, it's the week after the week before we get like some major, you know, rains and winds and things. So this year it was the week after Hershey. Yeah. We got a bunch of rain and wind, and you know, it's been it's been blustery uh around here. So that um we just got lucky this year. Definitely it definitely helped I think the crowds being spread throughout the week. It's it's hard for us to as sellers. Um you see a lot of people discussing on the internet, you know, sellers about crowds or how things are doing or whatever. At least when the w when there's gonna be rain or or weather, we could pretty much predict our busy days. So it's like if it's gonna rain Tuesday and Wednesday, we know Thursday's gonna be insane because everybody's gonna come Thursday to go shopping because they didn't want to come in the rain.
SPEAKER_01:That's kind of how it was at Hershey. Yeah, there was rain forecasted for Wednesday morning till like lunch on Tuesday, so a lot of people came. Tuesday was like insanely busy because of that, and it's it happens every year. You can almost plan your social calendar off of that for Hershey. You know it's gonna be slam packed.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's it's um pretty pretty crazy. So I guess Carlisle will start with that. Um I it was pretty b it was fairly busy with vendors. Yeah. Um, I think there was some open stuff. I think spring was a little busier for vendors.
SPEAKER_01:Spring's always bigger. Yeah, because spring they fill the whole top of the hill and behind the hill where like that little racetrack is. So fall's always a little smaller. Um the one thing I did notice is the car crowd was like non-existent this fall. There wasn't a lot of cars. There was some cars for sale, but it wasn't as full as it normally is.
SPEAKER_00:I uh somebody, I don't know if it was you and I or somebody I discussed with, it could be because a car while is now offering the auction.
SPEAKER_01:I did see someone mention that in one of the groups, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And it makes you wonder if they're that's shooting themselves. Well, I mean, I they don't carry the weight because they're making the money, but like I wonder if so, you know, the the auction has a bunch of cars in it.
SPEAKER_01:I would I would assume that's where it's part of it, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Because it because you you're already fighting with internet sales, people don't want don't feel like they need to bring a car to sell, but then also you get these people that are like, oh well, I'll put it in the auction, it might have a or you're almost guaranteed for it to sell, you feel like that way. So I I think that's probably all around. Definitely. I actually didn't even walk the car correctly.
SPEAKER_01:I walked like a little bit and was just like, eh, there's nothing really that cool and kind of walking.
SPEAKER_00:Spring there is some there is some kind of cool stuff.
SPEAKER_01:Springer is a lot more. Uh, one thing I will say, if you use Facebook and the internet, there are two great Facebook groups for both Carlisle and Hershey. If you're looking for something very specific, there's a great Facebook group for vendors at Carlisle and Hershey. You can post in there that you're looking for this little specific trinket, and there may be a vendor that will have it, and you don't have to walk 10 million spaces asking everyone for a little said part.
SPEAKER_00:And now on the flip side, though like every Facebook group ever, they're also the sounding board for every negative Nancy and whiny Willy that that's on the planet, and it's just like This sucks.
SPEAKER_01:This is the worst ever.
SPEAKER_00:It got a little excessive at Hershey. Yeah. There was a there was like live. There was like live bitching. There was like a a guy's wife or somebody I saw that was like live bitching about the free fucking bathrooms. I'm like, they're blah blah blah and this and that. I'm like, you're in a parking lot in a swap meet. I get it. Then the shower's cold and this sucks. Be glad there's a shower. Yeah. I mean a lot of these swap meets that you go to, there's nothing. But like then these people are complaining about the free shower and the this and that and the bah ba-ba-bah. Like, if you really care that much, get a goddamn hotel. Sorry, sorry, my swearing's already going off the off the charts here. Um but I just feel like some of these people like they want they want the full, you know, this isn't some dude.
SPEAKER_01:The swap meets Hershey does above and beyond for a lot of stuff. Yeah, I don't the amount of food vendors, the variety of food vendors is crazy. Yeah. Most places you go to, it's like you get French fries and chicken fingers, and that's that's the only thing you get.
SPEAKER_00:Or you're waiting in a line for uh for fucking ever because there's three food vendors and ten million people.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know. I I there is a lot of complaining and doomsday posts on on these groups. Um so the group is great because I've seen people connecting that are like finding stuff. I also enjoy it because people vendors are posting what they're going to have in their space numbers. So for me, that's super cool because I'm like, oh, that guy, I see some part in their pile that like might be interesting to me, or maybe there's a couple 32 parts that I'm like, oh let me go check him out in the morning because maybe he has other stuff. So that's like I always make a list of some of those vendors, but like, so that part of it's good, but then like uh like everything on the internet, there's like all the people that just go go on there just like this is terrible, the show's ending, everything's yeah. So we're trying to do the exact opposite. We're like, this it's awesome. You should go, it's great, it's a good time. If we want to continue to have it, let's not be posting doomsday, you know, and that well th those groups have been like that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Not even just the the SWAT me, just the AACA group in general has been like that for years. Just talking about the how it's the it's not as good as the good old days. Well, it's never gonna be as good as it was in the 70s.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's that's everything that you talk about, you know. That's just how it was. Rock rock and wall roll was cooler in the 60s. It's like, okay, we get it. That yes, we can't we can't replicate that. No. But we can, you know, make the best we can with what it is. So um yeah, so those groups I think are very helpful. They were good. People are posting, and um I think overall those groups are are pretty good, you know, other than some of the complaining type stuff.
SPEAKER_01:So as far as vendors, um, what do you think the the scale between old and new was? I feel like more a lot more older car parts are showing showing up at Carlisle for our for our stuff.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I would think that Carlisle, in my opinion, has been getting better for older stuff. I'm I'm quite surprised. Um there's always the same handful of vendors like ourselves that have early stuff every year, but I was surprised that there was more there there's some new or different people that were selling that stuff. I don't want to say that maybe there's more, I just there's you're noticing that there's different vendors coming. Um the fall fall Carlisle is always helped by Hershey because you get a lot of guys that are from out of town for Hershey, and they figure a week before, why not set up a Carlisle and try and find sell and also find some stuff. So I think at Carlisle, that's always fun because I always look forward to that because there's the guys from out of town that you only see once a year, and you kind of get a preview of their stuff at Fall Carlisle. So that's always that's always fun.
SPEAKER_01:And you can also ask, be like, you got anything better you got set aside for Hershey? I can take a look at.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, yeah. You get some of that stuff. So that is always good. Um there's always a handful of vendors that um there's a lot of vendors too at Carlisle. Hershey's the same way, but Carlisle, there's a lot of vendors that um you only really see at Carlisle. Yeah. Where or maybe they do Hershey, but they get lost in the you know the sea of vendors. Um so there's some like older guys that I see at Carlisle that have early stuff, but they don't bring a ton. So you gotta go and hit them every year right away and see what else they have. So um that worked out pretty good um this year. So but yeah, I think it was I think it was a good spread. I wasn't, you know, as always we'd love to see more of the early stuff, but uh but there was there was a decent am amount around for sure.
SPEAKER_01:What was your is there anything that you bought at Carlisle that was your favorite? It's hard you gotta think.
SPEAKER_00:Well the thing at Carlisle this year that was really this year, swap meets-wise, was really I felt was off. I g I shouldn't say that. Every year of fall Carlisle and Hershey, it's like it is insanity for us between us selling and stuff being pre-sold, visitors from out of town. This year I added to the madness by allowing two people to stay with me for a month from out of town. So we had Dale from um Colorado, and then we had Anton from um Sweden. So both of them staying with me, and my father came to her. It was just utter craziness.
SPEAKER_01:I was a taxi driver all between Matt and I drive back and forth every day, but I was like to Carlisle, yeah. Gotta go to Carl the shop, pick everybody up, have a full car load, drive all the way out to Carlisle.
SPEAKER_00:It was it was a lot. But um, so this uh it's so so our week started off with, I guess, Friday. I forget what day I picked up Anton.
SPEAKER_01:That was the week before. That was like the f Saturday or Sunday, the week before.
SPEAKER_00:Oh yeah, the week before I picked up on Anton and he basically helped me around the mill and with whatever else for like a week and he hung out. Then Sunday he must have went and did something.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, he went to the KOP Mall, I think.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. Yeah, he went to he Oh yeah, we had to anyways, so then that Sunday, um I went and picked up Dale at the Allentown Airport, which is a smaller airport closer to us, and like the night before, um one of our the early Ford Model A guys we know in the Model A club called me, and this happens almost every year. Um guys will call and we're thankful for it. Guys will call us and give us like first look or first dibs at parts before as they're loading their van or truck, they'll call us and say, Hey, do you want to look through this stuff? Because you're gonna end up buying it at Carlisle Hershey anyways and save me the you know, packing it. So um our friend had went and got a bunch of 32 stuff from one of his friends in the club who uh no longer could could go to the SWAT meet anymore. So he went and drug a bunch of stuff out of his attic. The guy the guy hasn't had a car for years, but he you know he had leftover parts. So he called me and said, Hey, there's a bunch of 32 stuff, some repro, some original. Before I load it all up, do you want to take a look? So he had just gotten home from unloading and he said Sunday. So Dale was flying in Sunday, so I was like, uh Dale, we're we're going like he got in from the airport. I'm like, we gotta go on a right uh off the airplane, we're going to look at some stuff. So we went and visited um our buddy that was, you know, lives in the Lehigh Valley, and um I bought uh not a ton of good quality.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, quality over quality.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so I bought we bought a basically most of the interesting or decent quality original 32 stuff. So we bought um some B splash engine splash pans, we bought um some original gauges. Um probably the only only couple things I kept is I got a pretty darn nice not nice like with patina um 32 horse collar from him uh that I put in my stuff. A bunch of it we just we you know, which he knows the he he knows our business. Um uh we bought and resold, you know. We had or we had customers in mind already. I don't remember what else I got from me. I got a c couple odds and ends for me, but most of it was a small pile. It was a fair it was a for what I got, if I told you what I paid for, you'd be like, holy shit, that's kind of a lot of money. But in 32 stuff, it's not. Um the probably the exciting things out of that, which is unusual, is like the original zinc door uh sill trim for a 32.5 window. Like that's the stuff that's like it's kind of stupid, and it's worth nothing, and it's worth it a lot at the same time. Because if you have the right customer, we're a lot different than other people. We have a big customer base and we have an inventory that we can sit on things. So sometimes I buy stuff like that, and I'm like, I'm not sure if it's gonna sit for two days or two years, but I know that it's really rare, and there's gonna be a guy that's gonna need that. Um we got some of the trim that goes around the roof, the the uh tax strip for the roof insert. So there's a lot of that kind of stuff that seems stupid, but that's like the insanely hard stuff to find.
SPEAKER_01:That's the stuff that's sold right away. Yeah, it's the the the uh the door sills and the tax strip are the first two things I sold. And the tax strip, I had a customer that was looking for it and I forgot about. Oh no. As soon as he saw it, he sent a message, he's like, Is that did that sell? I'm gonna be at Carlisle tomorrow. Can you please bring it?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so that stuff that's where having our customer base is really good that we can buy stuff, and and even the gentleman that I was buying it all from, he's kind of like, I don't even know who's gonna want some of this stuff. And I said, I I agree, because he doesn't really sell on the internet. I said, I agree, if you don't have the you know, the reach, somebody would have bought the stuff at Hershey, but it it might not have been as easy as he thought. So for us, we can take that item right to the customer and sell stuff. Anyways, I bought a handful of things, but it was, you know, I don't know, it was a few thousand dollars, I think, or two, two or three grand I spent with him, and it was not a very big pile. It was just that um, but there was some neat stuff. Oh, there was a beautiful 32 firewall in there, which is funny because he helped this guy buy it from uh the one estate they were cleaning out that was a huge local collector. So the writing on it we could tell who it was, and we're just laughing because it went full circle. This guy lives down the street from the other guy who we're cleaning his estate out. He's been gone for years. Um, and uh they lived right down the street from each other, and I knew the handwriting is like, oh yeah, I helped my friend buy it from him, you know, years ago, and it's just like this stuff just goes like just trade hands around and around.
SPEAKER_01:But it's like the nicest firewall I've ever. If it if it had the padding on it, it would be the nicest. And it was original paint.
SPEAKER_00:Like somebody, I don't know if they acid dipped it or what, they they they stripped some of the paint off, but like it is no holes, almost no pitting.
SPEAKER_01:And we got a nice set of five-window garnish molding, too.
SPEAKER_00:Oh yeah, that was probably that was where a lot of the money was on what I bought because it was uh you know a a full set of you almost never see a full set of garnish molding ever. And that's again, that's gonna take us a while to sell because it's a higher dollar item. And most people need like one piece of garnish or or just the rear window or rear quarters. So we got all that, but that was like I'm like you everybody probably puts a budget aside for Carlisle and Hershey. So I'm like, I got a bunch of money this year. Not not as much as other years because of the mill, but I'm like, I have money put aside I'm gonna spend to buy stuff, you know. And boom, we didn't even get the Carlisle the day before setup day. I already just dropped like two or three grand. I'm like, shoot.
SPEAKER_01:Like And then on pre-setup day.
SPEAKER_00:Then on presetup day on Monday, we got there. So the theme this year was apparently m us buying in bulk at which is pretty normal most years. We'd but not this not on like the first twenty-four, forty-eight hours. It's been always like that.
SPEAKER_01:But it's usually only once.
SPEAKER_00:We bought in bulk three times in one day or twenty-four hours. Yeah. So there's a guy there that we um has he always brings a little bit of early stuff, but he brings a little bit everything. But I've bought odds and ends from him for years now. Yeah. Um and he brings he brings decent stuff. He's he's in our age group, I would say. He's maybe a little older than I am, but like he always has good stuff. He's been hunting for stuff and buying and selling forever. So it's like this is one of those deals where like we're all playing the same game, it's just that he is he fairly reasonable to work with. So I I walked at his booth, A, A, to say hello, but B because you Know he always has a little bit of interesting stuff, and not every year is it something that I'm gonna buy. So I walk in and straight away he's got I'm looking at it actually behind behind the camera here. Um straight away I walk in and he has a or no, actually didn't have it set up.
SPEAKER_01:Didn't he call you over?
SPEAKER_00:He called me over and he had some 32 stuff and I saw he had some 32 stuff. I'm like, oh cool, like headlights and I spotted some stuff in his booth. Walk back inside his booth. He's like, Oh, I was waiting to s waiting to see you or I was gonna come and see you. He's like, I got a bunch of stuff. You ought to just buy all this stuff. I'm like, what's the deal? He's like, Well, I got leftover stuff for my 32 that I'm not gonna use. So he has a 32 tutor that he is an old hot rod street rod, and he's changing it a little bit. So he's like, I got all this extra stuff that came with the car, I pulled it off, I'm gonna sell, and then he had some other stuff, you know. So he starts showing me a little bit of stuff, he's like, Oh, and I have a pretty nice grill, and I'm like, No. So he pulls it out of the box, and it is like a really nice. It's not original paint, but it's freaking nice. It's pretty I'm looking at it right now, it's pretty nice. It's one of the nicer ones I've come across. Um, you know, you flip over the backside and there's no like there's no like major welding or or pitting or, you know, major I I you could pick it apart, but it's not bad. And it's got the bull nose, all the trim, and he's like, Yeah, I pulled this off my car. No disrespect to him. I don't know why the hell you would do this, but he was like, Yeah, I pulled it off the car because I just didn't want the thought of banging up an original grill. So he pulled an original grill off his original car and put like a Brookville or Reaper grill back on. Maybe it was bullshitting me, I don't know, but it's the same color as his car. So I don't think he was. But I was just like, Okay, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna argue with it over that one. So I again, long story short, ended up spending two or three grand again on a big pile of stuff.
SPEAKER_01:And it's always funny when we're at Carlisle and Hershey, because I'll just get a phone call from Matt, and he's just like, What are you doing? And he's kind of like giggling in the background. I'm like, Do you need me to bring the pickup truck?
SPEAKER_00:I'm like, can you come over to you know XYZ spot and uh I gotta I need some help.
SPEAKER_01:I need your truck.
SPEAKER_00:And uh but it it's also kind of the competitive side of me enjoys it. But I also cringe because it it's probably why people also sometimes guys talk shit or hate us. Yeah. Um you know, a while a lot of these times I'm making deals. These people came to us or called me into their booth, and they know how we buy. They want us to buy all of a either all their stuff or a big batch of stuff. So this these deals usually take an hour or more. You're bullshitting, you're looking at everything, you're hemming and hauling, or whatever, you know, it takes a while. So a lot of times as you're doing this, guys are walking in and out of the booth that are people that buy and sell like us, but maybe they're on a smaller scale, and they're looking at the stuff and the and and you know, the guys basically the deal's done. So like a bunch of these times I felt bad because guys walked in and they're like, Hey, how much for the 32 grill? And the guy's like, Ah, it's um, you know, you're gonna have to ask this guy here, he's buying all this. And and they're just like, you know, you can tell they're like, what the fuck, you know. God damn it. And it's like, I I'm you know. I also kind of like, hell yeah, scored all the stuff. But like, in the same breath, it's like we didn't make that happen, it just was bad timing. So it happened, happens a lot when we're at these, you know, when these vendors call us over. So, um, so really great to deal with Guy, made a deal. The the hilarious thing was we made this deal for two or three grand worth of stuff, and you know, as we're standing there waiting for Mike to come over, he goes, uh, or maybe it was as we were negotiating, he goes, Well, what kind of 35-6 pickup stuff do you got? I was like, We have a ton. We got a bunch in Oklahoma this this this year, and blah blah blah. He said, Oh, well, I need a bunch of stuff. And I'm like, why don't we make this simpler? I'll just buy this stuff from you and you take care of me. We were haggling over five hundred bucks or something. I said, You take care of me. I said, We got most of the stuff you need, and we can bring it if we don't have it here, and we'll take care of you. And he's like, Okay, sounds good to me. So then he walked back over the next day and handed a thousand of my dollars that I literally handed him back to Mike for a bunch of stuff he needed. He would have been happy to to to trade. But we've talked about a bunch. Sometimes trading's like it makes things so muddy because he didn't see the parts and he might value them differently than us. So it's like, I'll buy this stuff and we'll just make sure that when you come onto our booth, we were we're not gonna be hard asses with the pricing, and we'll we'll take care of you. Well, you know, if this is five hundred bucks, we'll give you a hundred bucks off or two hundred bucks off because you took care of me.
SPEAKER_01:So And that's also a good thing about us driving to and from Carlisle and Hershey. On Monday, he gave me a list of what he needed. I came home, came back to shop, drop Matt off, went to the mill and dug around and found all the stuff that I needed, and then delivered it to him on Tuesday and made a sale. You had options too. Yeah, I brought a little bit of a few of everything for him to look at like pick out what you would like. Because whatever you don't pick, I'm just gonna put out for sale.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so he was he was stoked because he got a bunch of stuff, he traded me some stuff, and uh he made some money, he got rid of some stuff, he got some stuff he needed. I was stoked because I got a really nice grill. Um, and uh I don't think I kept anything else. No, I think that's the only thing. Oh, the other surprise out of all that stuff was I bought a pile of steering boxes out of his trailer, and I didn't really look that close to them. I just saw that they were, you know, the way we were pricing everything, I'm like, the steering boxes kind of came in free with all the stuff. We get them all home and we start looking at them, and two of the boxes were 33-4 boxes, and Mike's like, I need a 33-4 box. Both of them actually steered and turned and felt tight, and I'm like, it's like a running joke because Mike's car, we a bunch of his parts are stuff that we got on PICS and kind of gave to him, and it's like, here we go again.
SPEAKER_01:Mike gets a free steering box, taking all our profit margin.
SPEAKER_00:So now we have another item to to to jab at him. But anyways, it was really good because that was on Mike's shopping list for Yeah, I didn't even have to go shopping for it.
SPEAKER_01:Matt Matt bought it for me.
SPEAKER_00:I found it for him, so great friend. Um, but we got two good steering boxes. We got an F1 or 100 box.
SPEAKER_01:I think there's one of each, F1, F100, and two 334 boxes.
SPEAKER_00:So we got a bunch of stuff there. So that was like that was in like let's say the morning or almost lunchtime that happened. So boom, boom. I can't remember if I bought anything small in between there. Maybe I did. And then towards the end of the same day. It was the next day. It was on Tuesday. Oh, okay. Then the towards the end of the next day, and again, I bought some odds and ends. I don't remember anything like nothing super crazy. Extraordinary.
SPEAKER_01:Um because setup days are always tough. I mean, you drive around drive around, there might be a lot of people pull in and set their tent up and then put nothing out to the next day. So you're like chasing people in as they pull in, and then you get to them, they're like, Oh, I'm not setting anything up till tomorrow. Then you keep driving, and it's just the luck of the draw of having to pull up on a person.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and a lot of people ask us, is it worth coming on Monday at Hershey? Is it worth coming on Monday and Tuesday at Carlisle? And we say, Yes, if you've got a day to waste, because there's a lot of Mondays and Tuesdays at Carlisle that I will buy stuff, but at the end you're like, I don't know if it was worth wasting two days. Like, I bought stuff, but it wasn't anything that was exciting enough that I'm like I probably could have bought it on Wednesday when everyone else was here. Yeah, I don't know. So, but then you talk to other guys that buy and sell like we do, and they're like, you know, it's a little like Mike said, the luck of the draw. We talked to another guy, and he's like, dude, I scored like four intakes, I did all this great stuff. He was just on the right cycle of catching people as they're setting it out. And that's it. I like that Carlisle and Hershey it kind of evens the playing field. Yes, we sometimes get called because people know that we have a bunch of we're we're buying a bunch of stuff. So yes, we do get a little bit of and there's a lot of that going on where a guy, you know, your neighbor you vend next to every year, a Hershey goes, Hey, next year, or they call you and go, Hey, I'm bringing some stuff from a friend you might want to look at. There's a lot of that, but overall it evens the playing field where it's just like you just have to be lucky enough to drive up on that stuff while they're setting it out or you know, whatever. So um we had a very elderly gentleman that he I buy stuff from him a bunch of years over the last ten or fifteen years. I bought stuff at Carlisle from him. And I think he's from Jersey originally, but he has property at multiple properties. But um he's easy to recognize. We see him every year. He's in the same spots. Again, one of these guys, I always drive up to his booth to see what he has. But the last handful of years, he's been really, really, really rough shape, uh, you know, healthily.
SPEAKER_01:Put to perspective how old he is. Pete goes, I remember when I started coming to swap means that guy looked old as shit when I was coming to the swap.
SPEAKER_00:When I was going in like the 70s, early 70s, he's like, I remember that guy and he looked old then. Like, holy crap. Yeah. So the guy's pretty old. So he knows who we are. He doesn't he can't possibly do the internet. This guy is a thousand years old, and I don't even think he knows who the president is or what anything. Like, nice guy, but he's he's he to be fair, he shouldn't be at the sw he shouldn't be going to a SWAT meet on his own.
SPEAKER_01:No, definitely not by himself.
SPEAKER_00:He his his health is not too great. But um he rides around on a scooter, so he comes by our booth. We obviously have a big setup that's all the stuff that he's into. Yeah. So he he always peruses around our booth. So he I wasn't even at the booth. He made a beeline to our booth and talked to Mike and said, Hey, I have a bunch of I don't even know what he told me.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, he just pulled in and he's like, I I got a truckload of stuff that I'd uh I'd be interested in selling everything to you guys. Said, oh, okay, what do you got? Started going down the list and he's like, the only thing is I can't unload the truck. It's like I'm not physically able to put it. Did he tell you that? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, you didn't tell me that.
SPEAKER_01:Well, the way he explained it, he said it's just in the back of my truck. He didn't explain that there was a ton of other shit also in the truck. The way he worded it was like, yeah, I just I have some early Ford stuff in my truck I'd like to sell you guys.
SPEAKER_00:I then tell Matt, Matt goes over and I know Ray Ris Mike describes him, I know Ray Riskface is who he is. So I go over and I go, you know, I'm like, hey, yeah, you know, Baba he recognizes me and it's like okay. He's sitting there like out of breath. He's like, Alright, unload the truck. I'm like, unload your truck. Thanks, Moon. Good job, buddy. I'm each. Um so I was kind of like, so we started unloading the truck, and he wants to make a deal with us, but I don't know what I'm unloading. Yeah. I I kind of do.
SPEAKER_01:I also get an agitated phone call from Matt. He's like, hey, can you come up here and help me unload this?
SPEAKER_00:This is like, it's hot as I'm it's like hot as balls. I'm digging in his the back of his truck, clamming on my hands and knees to get the stuff out. He so long story short, this guy had a property in Tennessee. Yeah. Also. Uh I'm guessing he probably went down there in the winter or something like that. But he had a truck, 34 pickup there. I guess he had a bunch of cars there.
SPEAKER_01:I think he said he lost nine cars.
SPEAKER_00:And he was in the middle of restoring a 34 pickup. It was all painted but needed to be assembled when the floods came in last year, right around Hershey and Carlisle, and he basically lost almost everything. He had some parts that they were able to save from the flood that were all freshly painted parts that they could carry out of the garage. But I guess his insurance company did pay him for most of it, but they then took the cab, the bed, the you know, the major cars. They took them and you know, they went to some salvage auction probably. And so he keeps, you know, I'm digging through, so someone else loaded all this for him. I don't know, a relative, a friend, a neighbor, whatever. So he's like, I don't even know what's in there. I'm like, okay, well, is it nice? What is he? He's like, I think there might be a hood. He's like, he didn't really know. So I'm unloading this thing. We haven't even talked dollars. We're getting all the stuff out on the ground, and this is where the feeding frenzy at Carlisle and Hershey, because all the guys have been walking all day looking for deals. When you see a guy unloading a truck onto the ground like this, and the stuff's all wrapped in blankets, and you know, there they see a guy that's like, you know, quite elderly that's sitting there and we're unloading for him. It's like that's like the feeding frenzy of resellers and yeah, that one was really bad. So people are just like, and it's like I'm like saying to the dude, I'm like, whoa man, like I'm not gonna unload your truck for free, and then you sell all the stuff to everybody else. And I, you know, like that's not how this works. He's like, no, no. He was cool about it. He's like, no, just I'll I'll I'll deal, we'll we'll deal, just get it all out. And it's like, okay, but we're also pissing off a thousand people because they're like, how much for the this, how much for the that? And they're like, it's uh for sale, and the guys are like, Oh, well then why is it out? You know, did you guys give him cash? And it's like, dude, I I know this is awkward, but that this is how he wants to do it. I don't know. So and we ended up buying he had a freaking steam engine.
SPEAKER_01:There was house stuff, there was uh Stanley steamer engine in there. There was something else weird in there, too. We had to buy it.
SPEAKER_00:It was a bunch of randomness, but like I'm digging them like what is this under here? It's like, oh, it's a Stanley steamer engine, 1907 or something.
SPEAKER_01:And to make it worse, the truck had a cap on it. Yeah. So it's not like you could just pick stuff out. Matt's like climbing over everything to get in to get the fenders out.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so we had to cut everything open from moving blankets, look at it.
SPEAKER_01:It was packed insanely well. Yeah. It was everything wrapped up in moving blankets and taped to hell. It was actually it's actually hard to look at because it's like we had to cut everything open to look at it.
SPEAKER_00:It was just all the bins. So because this stuff was in a flood, some of the stuff that was in the bins, you'd open it up and it was like kind of wrecked. You know, a gauge, a gauge that was in a flood is not going to be usable. A fender, it got mud on it and you could probably buff the paint back out. Great, but like some of the stuff we had to actually look at. So we got we got most of it out. And we kind of looked up and started making a deal, and and the price he gave us in the beginning was like, dude, that like I that's like more than we'd sell it for. I can't.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and we just unloaded your entire truck.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so it was a he was a tough negotiator, but it made it even more stressful for us because there was a thousand people trying to come up and buy that stuff as we're you know, there was a beautiful, probably the nicest one I've ever we've ever had, 34 pickup grille. Yeah. Painted black, perfect, sitting there, and it's on display. And old car grills is like magnets that you know, it's like throwing chum in the water for for sure.
SPEAKER_01:Or just nicely painted car old car panels in general.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So people were on it. Um but we basically got front and rear fenders that were original fenders that were restored, that are very nice. And some of them have a little bit of work in them, but not much. And you got to figure this guy was buying this stuff for years, so he was buying good.
SPEAKER_01:And I think the driver's side front fender, the non-weld fender, is actually NOS. Wow. He said it was it was new, you know, they don't reproduce them. Um he said it was a new old stock fender that he got for the truck and had it painted.
SPEAKER_00:And the other difficult thing is he was getting out of breath, he was very overwhelmed. So like I was trying to ask him questions to make the deal, but like these questions are very important for us. So like I'm like, are these fenders reproduction? And he said, Well, the you know, you said, like, oh, that one's new. And I'm like, Well, is it new, new, like reproduction, or and you modified it to make it a 34 pickup fender, or is it like new old stock? And he says, New, it's new. It's like, and then I can tell he's just he's just getting overwhelmed. So, okay, we'll just we'll just have to work around all this. So we worked around it. We you know, um turns out that they were real 34 pickup fenders. There's a little like nub or or there's a little like bump in it that's for the cross member, I believe, if I remember right.
SPEAKER_01:I think so, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um that's like a bulge that's ha that's formed into the fender. You can take, I believe, 30 32 car fenders. 32 pickup fenders and modify them um to to make the bulge is still not right, but you can. And that's where we were like, as I try to negotiate, I'm like, well, if these are just 32 car fenders that somebody hammered the shape into and modified, that's worth way less than real 33-4 pickup fenders. So they ended up being all the right stuff. The grill was beautiful. Um we got a bunch of Columbia stuff, and uh the funniest part of all of it was he totally caught us off guard. So I just bought the guy on our friend on Sunday, and then um the guy on Monday, I dropped a bunch of money, and then I bought random stuff throughout the you know the day.
SPEAKER_01:And it's set up day, so we haven't sold anything.
SPEAKER_00:Anything. And because of all the craziness going on, I didn't have time to physically go to the bank to get more money out to have like money. A lot of years I I get some money out, so if there's a car to buy, I have a bunch of money, you know, either at the house or you know, available. Yeah. I didn't have anything because I didn't have time, so I had literally whatever money that I, you know, had kicking around from selling junk here, and I spent like 80% of it, and then this dude comes up and we're like looking at three, four thousand dollars worth of stuff, and I'm like, uh and then we start making the deal, and we finally come to an agreement on a price, and I go in my pocket, I'm like, I sit in Mike, I'm like, shit, I don't think I have enough cash on me. Now I could go home and get it, whatever, but like I'm like, after this long, painful process, it was like an hour of negotiating, it was pretty painful. Hour of unloading, hour of negotiating, essentially. So our buddy Pete um was sitting there and um waiting, and Pete enjoys it. Like he came and watched us unload, but he he can't stand real long anymore. So he went back in his truck and was just sitting there and he's watching us doing all this.
SPEAKER_01:Just he was laughing too. Every time I'd walk over, he's like, You haven't fun yet?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so so uh, you know, Pete's my hot rod dad. So Pete is enjoys this because he was literally doing the same. This is again generational stuff here. He's like remembers doing the same thing when he was at Carlwell, like in the 80s, you know. So it's like he's just laughing because he knows what's going on here. So then after all that, I'm like, crap, I don't have enough money on me. So Mike goes over to Pete and is like, hey, can I uh hey dad, can we borrow some money?
SPEAKER_01:So you got any extra money on your side?
SPEAKER_00:And if you know anything about me, I hate borrowing money from people. I I'm actually it's a fault of mine. I don't like asking for help or borrowing money ever. Whether it's a bank, whether it's a loan, you know, anything. 20 bucks for dinner, I'd rather pay for everybody's dinner than you know. So he went over and Pete always offers, you hey, if you you know, you need a couple bucks to because he has lots of stories of him and other buddies at SWAT meets before, you know, online payments and things. They used to have to do this a lot at SWAT meets where you'd find something and you'd borrow money from buddies. So he floated us the money for the deal, and uh, and then that saved my money in my pocket for if I needed to buy anything for the rest of the day or whatever. So that was good. It it it hurt my soul to borrow money for for for a short time. It's so funny.
SPEAKER_01:Pete's been offering that for years. Like anytime we're ever at a swap meet or we go picking, he always mentions that, and we've never at one time I think we were it was that one up in state college, wasn't it? It was only a couple bucks, too.
SPEAKER_00:It was like five hundred bucks, and I think I didn't bring any I think I forgot to bring money or something. We or we went there to look and we didn't think we were buying anything.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we went to film that video for that crazy auction with all the cars. We're like, oh yeah, there's probably not gonna be any parts to no, I think it was Shady's.
SPEAKER_00:It was at a state at Shady's. Oh, was it? And it was a 32 grill. Oh we went there because we thought we were looking around just to get a feel of what was there, and then we got there and we found a 32 grill, and I drove the red 34, and I brought literally no money because I thought it was just like meet and greet with the you know with the widow and and just just say hello. You know, I uh we're we're not pushy with buying with a lot of these situations, so I was kind of like, I'm not gonna buy anything, I'm just gonna say hello, Pete's gonna, you know, introduce us, and then maybe we can buy. And then we get there and it's like, yeah, you can buy that grill. And I'm like, crap, I don't have any money. So borrowed whatever, five, seven hundred bucks from Pete and bought a grill. Um, so yeah, but he was laughing, he's like, I don't care, whatever, you know, and he gives me because even though Pete's not buying a lot, you can't you still bring money with you because you never know what you're gonna find. Even though he's not trying to buy anything, you never know what you're gonna roll up on. So he could have rolled up on a deal for something insane, and he wants to have that money, even if he's out of it. He's not gonna be able to do it.
SPEAKER_01:Do you know how many old dudes we talk to? They're always they're getting out of it. They're never and they stop by a booth and they buy shit every year. Never out every year.
SPEAKER_00:You're not out of it. You're either looking or you're, you know, you still have the eye. Why did you bring money to the swap meet? If you don't, if you don't need anything, you don't plan to buy anything, you should have brought 20 bucks.
SPEAKER_01:Enough for the the uh to get in and a food.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. So, anyways, he he lent us the money, that was funny. So we brought all this stuff back, and the funniest part of that whole deal was that night I get home, and this was just like total mayhem. It's the end of the day, we're trying to leave, blah, blah, blah. I realized that I left actually this flannel, it's like a nice vintage pendleton that I I love wearing, and some 34 Columbia control parts that are actually quite rare. That was the other thing we got that was really rare in that stuff. There was two uh 34 Columbia bells that were converted by John John Connolly that does the um bulletproofing of the stuff. There was two of those rear bells, which are very rare or expensive to have done by John, and then there was the controls that John makes 34 specific switches for doing a Columbia and a 34 if you're trying to do it restoration. Yeah. And I realized that I left the brass copper brass switches on the tailgate and I left my f my flannel on on like a a car part that was, you know, uh on the side of his booth next to his truck. We got home that night and I'm like, no. And because of the steam stuff, we thought the brass valves were you know initially we weren't sure what they were, and then it dawned on me what they were. And then I looked at John's site and I'm like, oh yeah, they were those switches. So I had them sitting there. I was gonna just throw them in the boxes because I had a hunch anyways, and then I just through all the craziness forgot. So then I had to hunt the dude down the next morning, and his neighbor is a guy that we see at SWAT meets and knows who we are, and I went over, I'm like, hey, do you know where you're near? He's like, dude, I don't know. He's like, that guy's like, he might not have made it through the night. He's like, I don't even know. That guy was rough. And he's like, I saw him this morning get up like quite early, stumbling out of there, and I don't know what happened to him, I don't know where he is. So I'm like, okay, well, if you see him, let him know that the guy that bought all the 34 stuff lost his sweatshirt and I left a couple little things here, blah, blah, blah. Okay, no problem. So as I'm walking the swap meet, I see the guy, he remembers me, and I said, I left my a couple switches and I left my my flannel there. I don't remember any of that. I'm like, I'm sure of it. And he's like, Well, where were they? And I'm like, the switches were on your tailgate, your truck's closed up, and I said the flannel was laying on like a you know a set of bumpers that were laying against a building that we didn't buy. I don't remember that. I said, I I I know they're there. Okay, well, I'll be back in a few minutes. And he's out sh this is what's funny. I gave him all that money. He was out shopping, and he was at a random vendor buying something with my money that I handed him back.
SPEAKER_01:I'm getting out of it. I'm not buying anything else.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'm done. I'm I'm too old, you know, whatever. I lost everything. I'm done. He's buying parts. So it's funny. But eventually went back to the booth, and uh, and the dude that I know that that I see at the I apologize, I forget his name, but he's at the booth next to him, his neighbor, and he goes, Yo, I talked to him. He had no clue who you were or what I was talking about. When I met like I'm like, really? I just talked to him an hour ago in the swap. I mean, he remembered, he's like, I don't know, man. He just had no idea. So then I walk up, he remembers who I am. I don't know where the stuff is. The put his truck's a disaster. So I opened the truck and I start digging around. Way up in the front, I find my sweatshirt. He must have threw some of the moving blankets in, they got mixed in. And as I'm digging around on the ground, I found one of the Columbia switches just like in the grass. It was like it was like a drunk person was was was packing the truck back up. And one was on the grass, some somebody had stepped on it. Luckily it didn't get broken. The other one I found like in the crevice of the tailgate when he shut it, it must have thrown it and got down there. Both were okay. But I got those things, but I was like stressed out because I'm like, man, I'm gonna lose these two valuable valves and my one of my favorite Pendletons. Pendletons, yeah. All through this stupid deal. So we got everything, it worked out great.
SPEAKER_01:And then after that, the kind of the craziness kind of tapered off, and you didn't really find anything else.
SPEAKER_00:I don't remember if I bought anything real exciting.
SPEAKER_01:You found some the craziest thing happened. Matt bought a set of green guide 682s with no bezels or lenses on the top, which we buy like that because we find bits and pieces, and then like two hours later he comes walking in with green bezels and lenses and goes, here's the top for those guide headlights and walks back out. It's like there's no way that's physically possible. You never find any of that. You just find like one shitty, like rotted out bezel or one lens.
SPEAKER_00:It's fun playing, it's it's fun with the um it's fun with the like the treasure hunting. Do you want to go out? Moon's requesting to go outside now. He has to go see what everybody's doing downstairs. Somebody's supervising. Yeah. But it's fun, that's one of the things that's really fun now that we have a bunch of you know, we have people watching the booth. We I can go out and just hunt. Yeah. And and talk and so you know, socialize and whatever. But we can go out and hunt for stuff and we call each other. And like my if Mike's out also walking, he can call me and say, Hey, do we need a whatever XYZ. So there I'm like bringing like little pieces of gingerbread in the back of like, here you go, here's that. See you guys later.
SPEAKER_01:It was just funny that they're both like they almost match the buckets perfectly. Like they like someone took them off and was selling them separately. It's so crazy.
SPEAKER_00:But we you know, we we find a lot of stuff like that that that's like a lot of what we're searching Carlisle for is actually just like normal, kind of boring inventory. Like, I do find good stuff at Carlisle, you know, like more interesting stuff. But a lot of what I'm looking for is like steering boxes, headlights, r random stuff that we sell every day of the week. You know, just the bread and butter stuff as I call it. It's like we're just always I mean, that's what we're both doing.
SPEAKER_01:I'm looking for the holes in our I know what's missing from our inventory a lot more than Matt does. That's what I get phone calls more from Matt is like, hey, I'm standing here looking at X, Y, and Z steering box. How many do we have on the shelf right now? It's like zero. Okay, buy it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Or he's like, we have 27 of them, and the guy's asking 150, you're like, we get 160. Is that not worth you know, buying it? I'm like, oh, oh, okay, that you know, whatever. I just some of that mechanical stuff I know, but I when it gets a little more expensive, I'm like, I don't I don't remember exactly what we get. And prices change and stuff gets hard to find.
SPEAKER_01:So um if it's not a car that I personally have that I'm hunting for parts, sometimes I'm not as up on the value or how and this year we were trying to behave ourselves because we got so much we have so much back inventory, and it's like, do we really need to be spending thousands and thousands of dollars on more inventory when we have which we had already done.
SPEAKER_00:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:But the inventory we bought we didn't have.
SPEAKER_00:It's like we were buying quality, like all three of those purchases for the most part were you know, when I'm buying the original 32 parts or stuff that you know is is really nice, I don't mind buying it. So it was like quality parts. Yeah. A little bit of the stuff I bought from the vendor with the 32 grille was a little rougher, but you know, it was still good usable stuff. So um the rest of the carwell I didn't find. Oh, we found those like new old stock lions white wall caps, yeah. White wall trim rings. They're like uh white sides, I think they call them, but they were new old stock in the box for Ford 16-inch wheels. That's the hard part. You see a lot of these Lions caps and accessory trim rings, and they're almost never for Ford, they're for GM or some weird off-brand. These were four Ford in the box with the instructions. I don't know if they've sold yet or not.
SPEAKER_01:I have a guy that's interested in them. He wants me to he wants to put them on a set of uh wide fives. Okay. So I actually have to test fit them today to see if they fit wide fives.
SPEAKER_00:I wouldn't test fit them very hard. No, no. They're new old stock. Yeah, exactly. Um but we you know, like that was and what's funny is that was from our neighbor across the way at Carlisle, that's an early Ford guy. Um I didn't see them the first we I was like on Thursday or Friday, I bought them from him. I didn't even see him, and he's like, Oh yeah, I had them out like all week. I just wasn't walking the right direction. So um I did not buy a sign this year.
SPEAKER_01:Did a Hershey, but not at Carlisle. Bought that Oliver sign.
unknown:Oh, yeah, I did.
SPEAKER_00:So at Carlisle I didn't buy a sign. Correction. Yes. Um, so yeah, otherwise I don't think at Carlisle we bought a ton of the big thing at Carlisle is we sold the 39 coupe.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, which makes our lives the nice thing is it was bought and picked up at Carlisle, so it makes packing up a thousand times easier because I don't have to pack a car to put it in the trailer, and I would like to think that that was the bargain of Carlisle.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, a lot of people are coming by our booth like, I can't believe you're selling it so cheap, and da da da no. So for all the people that talk crap on us that we buy. And resell and we price our stuff ridiculous. We're actually not. There, there's there's more oftentimes than not that we sell project cars for super real like I sold that car, we sold that car for what we would have bought it for if we were looking. Like if I was looking for a 3940 coupe project and I saw that, I would have bought that car. It ticked all the boxes if you're looking to build one. So definitely we we buy the stuff right so that we could sell it affordably. And then if it's really rare, yes, we're gonna ask more for it. But that was like, let's just move it along. And uh that guy bought it, and hopefully they're happy and they're gonna build it, and you know hopefully buy lots of parts from us. Yeah, that's that's always the goal. But um, so that that was the kind of the the idea there. So we um were very happy to see that go, and a lot of people were like, Man, I you know, I should have I should have came over and bought it earlier. You get all those guys, I would have given you more, and you're like I know what to tell you.
SPEAKER_01:It was sitting there and it was for sale.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And like those guys didn't buy it at 7 a.m. I mean it was there for a few hours at least before that.
SPEAKER_01:They bought it at like 9 a.m. on Thursday.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so it it was there for a little bit of time. Yeah. So yeah, that was basically the big big thing. We had our Mexican feast on Friday. That's one of our one of our uh Carlisle traditions. Carlisle traditions. Now we go down to Mechanicsburg. Mechanics is it mechanics?
SPEAKER_01:No, no, it's um it's basically towards Harrisburg.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we we stopped and got Mexican, which was fantastic. It always tastes better after loading at Carlisle, um, which was great.
SPEAKER_01:And uh Sunday, because the way the Hershey's moved this year, Sunday we spend the day and spend part of the day and pull some stuff out that we only take to Carlisle, put fresh stuff in for Hershey, and then because of Trog being between, um, there's some people from out of town that just stop by and visit. And we had a customer from Minnesota that's a has he bought the um 39 convertible sedan a couple years ago. He's always he's buying parts to fix that car, and he has a bunch of projects. So he bought a a T5 from us for another car. He bought a flathead engine, a bunch of stuff. He's he's a very good customer. He's always buying a pile of stuff, and he made a mistake. He showed up with a U-Haul because his trailer wasn't showing up for the engine for a day or two. So he showed up with a U-Haul at our place. So I was like, what do you need? What can we? It was a 10-footer, so it wasn't very big, but I was like, what can we put how can we fill it?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. Um, but yeah, that and then he we hooked him up with our our buddy George that did the Columbia's for us, so he dropped the Columbia off to him, and then we're um we're gonna ship it, you know, we're gonna basically freight it. Uh we're not gonna pay for the shipping for free, but like we'll we'll create it for free for him. And and that's not we do this quite often for people or customers or friends. So because we're all set up for doing freight, so when it's done, we'll put it on the pallet, we'll get it shipped out to him and handle the logistics, which helps him get a Columbia rebuild. Yeah, our buddy George gets a little bit of business of a rear to redo.
SPEAKER_01:George doesn't have to do with the headache of freight shipping.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, he doesn't want to deal with any of that. So we're just we're helping to facilitate that. So that worked out really good for him. And if if his rear needs any parts, we have them, so we'll be able to help. George is right down the street, so he can just come and pick them up. So it'll work out fantastic. So that was good. We always get a bunch of visitors. We had a you know, it actually wasn't too bad this year.
SPEAKER_01:Some years it's like there's like 50 people that show up and it's come through throughout the day. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So we had a one or two groups of people that came. It wasn't real crazy, which was nice. And uh oh, I bought I forgot a carlisle. I bought a thirty dollar thirty-two grill.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, that's right. I forgot that was thirty dollars.
SPEAKER_00:Pretty banged up, but I bought a thirty dollar. There was a guy that was pulling in, he had a thirty-two five window on a trailer, and it you could tell it was an old hot rod that somebody tried to Is that the bla that was in black primer? Yeah, somebody tried to like fix up and they kind of took apart a neat old hot rod and they put like a speedway front front end with disc brakes under it, and blah blah blah blah blah. But I to me, I see that and instantly I'm like, what else do they have? So you could tell that they had swapped, it had a it had like a new speedway grill shell on and all this stuff. So I'm like, they're unloading the trailers parked and they're starting to unload the truck of their tables, and I swing by like, hey, you got any other uh 32 parts? Yeah, we just got some junk left over from this car that we took off. What else you got? So they start pulling some stuff out. Oh, I bought a very cheap two seconds. That was the day that I was on a roll. You get on these cycles. I feel like at SWAT meets you get on a cycle where you're like you're in the right rotation of buying stuff and whatever else. And if you keep, I'm very superstitious. So if you're this, I feel like it's a it's a Philly, it's a Philly thing. Yeah. With the Eagles, it's the same way. Like we're all super suit superstitious. So I do that even at SWAT meets. I'm like, I'm on the right cycle. I can't go back to the booth, I need to carry all this stuff.
SPEAKER_01:You see Matt walk to the booth, he's got like a million things. You're like, dude, you could have dropped, I can't stop. I'm on a roll.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I bought a really affordable old 3-2 Olds uh intake, and then I walked like two booths, found these guys, and um I bought a 32 grille, which had been cut for a channel car, so this car was probably channeled because it was all this stuff was white. Um there was something else. Oh, I bought a 32 dash that was all cut up from different gauges and a couple odds and ends, but the stuff was all like give me 30 bucks, give me 50 bucks. I think it's been like 150 bucks for a pile of stuff, and the grill is not was not super nice. I I tweaked it all back into shape. I actually have it down in the building. I was able to get an original insert to fit it after some hammer and dolly and because it had like expanded metal, but that was pretty cool. Two 32 grills in one week, one was 30 or 35 dollars.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, the other one was expensive.
SPEAKER_00:It was expensive, but it'll get paid for when we sell that stuff. Um but that was kind of fun. So I bought bought a handful of things. I did buy some good stuff.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, the coolest thing happened at Hershey or a Carlisle guy showed up to trade. Um yeah, we traded, he needed a four-barrel intake for his flathead, and he's like, I got a fixed and high-rise, I'll trade you. It's like, well, sounds like that that's the kind of trades we like. It's uh, you know, four barrel intakes are not the easiest to sell. And we had like three of them. Yeah, we had three of them. The one we traded for is actually kind of rare. It's a fentan four-barrel. They they're like kind of an oddball. Um, you usually see Offenhausers or Adelbrocks. So he's like, Yeah, I'll trade for that Fenton. It's like, well, they're both about the same value. It's like, and uh a high rise is easier for us to sell. High rises sell like really easily.
SPEAKER_00:Fix and high rise is one of the iconic flathead intakes, so it's like we always can move them. So we figured it was a good for him trade and a good for us trade, because that's something you know that that's great to have in our inventory. So that was cool. That you know, we we joke we have like the the pawn shop, Carlisle pawn shop, because every year, every Carlisle we have customers or viewers that come in with stuff.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so we brought us a 35-6 steering box this year.
SPEAKER_00:The buy. Yeah, like guys will bring stuff that we buy and we're right by gate one. Yep. So I feel like they'll come in and they get cash from us and then they go shopping with the cash for the stuff. So it's like a pawn shop. So it's like early Ford pawn shop at our at her booth. So that was pretty cool that we we did that. But um Yeah, so we pretty light uh for visitors on Sunday, which I was thankful for. Um and uh Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Right to the Hershey Madness.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that was that was uh we went right to Hershey. Hershey, we always joke, I always joke. I'm the first person to jump in and help and do work any time of the year, except for setup day at Hershey.
SPEAKER_01:Unless there's not enough of us to set up the tent. Yeah, that's true. Depends on who's there. Matt will stay in as soon as the tent is up and it is strapped to the weights, he is gonzo.
SPEAKER_00:But if we have enough helpers, which we luckily these days generally do, yeah, I'm gone. So this year we had more than enough help. We had our two out-of-town guys, my father was there, Mike was there. I think that was it. Yeah. And I was like, but we had plenty of people to set the tent up. And uh I'm like, see you guys, on my bicycle. I mean, the trucks, you know, I put the truck in park and and shut it off, and there's still fumes coming out of the tailpipes, and I'm on my bike riding. I'm like, I gotta get it.
SPEAKER_01:Well, the the intro to the week in the life video last week was literally just that his dad just got this the the uh chair out and was just like testing it in the parking lot. He literally we didn't even get anything out of the trailer yet.
SPEAKER_00:I was gone because that's that moment is my favorite, like that moment of pulling in the Hershey, getting on the bicycle, and going out to like you know thousands of potential vendors, you know, of cool stuff. It's like that manic moment where you're like, what's that? Oh my god, oh my god. It's just like treasure hunting to the max. So I love that. Even if I don't buy a damn thing.
SPEAKER_01:And usually most years on the setup day, it it is like that. It's so setup day is very sporadic at Hershey. It's tough. Like I said, a lot of guys just pull in and drop their stuff and don't even Or they're doing the same thing as us.
SPEAKER_00:They all get on their bicycle or they drive around looking for deals or going to visit friends, so but there is also all those opportunities of people just pointing with the trailer not even set up, and you spot something on the trailer and you're like, ooh, snatch that, snatch that. So I do I don't buy a ton, but every year I score some stuff on Monday that's like you bought Packard headlights on Monday. Uh that so that I was specifically went for. Um I bought did I buy that sign and the other stuff on Monday? Yes, yeah, it helps you carry it back. So Monday, the great thing on Monday is they are okay with you riding a bicycle uh on Monday. So I get on that's the only day I ride my bike during the swami. Now I before early in the morning and after hours you can ride a bicycle around, no problem.
SPEAKER_01:Um idiots that still ride it during the day, though.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but so we've had some people comment on our video, how come you can ride bicycles? Uh there was a guy commented, I'll never go back to Hershey because they they got me off my bike and you guys are riding. Asshole. I abide by the rules. So Monday, you can ride your bicycle around. You will not see me riding a bicycle during hours. Um now, if it's pouring down rain and the place is basically shut down, yes, there's been years I'll ride my bicycle. But like otherwise, Monday's the only day. Because because it's so spread out and sparse, to you know, you might go four rows to get to a vendor that might even be setting up. So buzzing around looking for stuff, and and it's always fun. But you can also like I hit the whole swap meeting in that day. I must have put 30 miles on my bicycle riding up and down roads.
SPEAKER_01:There's a bunch of people that are like, I just saw Matt way over there. And then someone comes in the booth a couple minutes later, they're like, I just saw Matt way over there. It's like he was bebopping around the swap meet.
SPEAKER_00:My ADDs on Macs. And a lot of times I'm going to people that every year have neat stuff just because I want to see what they have, whether I can buy it or I can't buy it. It's just going to see the neat stuff that you know you want to check on. And then there's people that I go to see to say hello to and have a quick conversation because then you know that the week flies by and you don't get to talk to them, so I stop and and say hello. So I always stop and visit, you know, a few rows over from us is uh Ron and Laura, uh, that um they always bring a ton of you know equipment. Yeah, so they we stop and see them. All the Connecticut New England guys, you know, the are all in a row there, so we go and I always go and see them, see what kind of neat stuff they're putting out, say hello, blah blah blah, and then buzz around and whatever, and um, you know, go over the go over the bridge and go see. But this year I had like a I had a shopping list and I there was some Packard stuff I was looking for, and I knew for a fact when you go over the bridge, over to like Green and Orange Field, there's a lot the all the most of the Packard vendors are over there. So there's a couple of vend there's one vendor in particular, I remember every year when you cross over the bridge, you make a right, in the first few rows, there's a guy every year that has Packard parts. And every year I go and look through his booth because I've liked Packard stuff for years. And maybe I'll buy a trinket or whatever, but I was like, I'm going right to them because if anybody's gonna have the headlights, it's gonna be one of these five booths that are in that you know general area. So sure enough, I go right over and he has a set of those headlights. Exactly what I was looking for, though like the th the 37 V8 um headlights with the the senior headlights with the Mohawk trend. Yeah. Complete painted black, everything's in them, which was important for me. I didn't want to buy pieces and bits and put I want to I'd rather step up and buy a full set. They were actually hot rod headlight money. I couldn't believe it. So like I was expecting this year to blow a bunch of my budget on these expensive Packard parts, and I'm like, the stuff was no more expensive than a set of you know, I basically paid for them what we sell a set of nice guide headlights for, so I'm like, okay, this is relatable, no problem. Boom. Bought them, set, left them there, because I was on my bicycle, and I'm like, and I had no bag, no preparation, typical of me.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we gotta find your swap meet bag.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know where it's at. It's gone forever. It's somewhere, it's in a trunk of a car or somewhere. I don't know. It's maybe it's in the delivery stuff somewhere. Um and then I was riding around the I guess the the the theme for first two for setup day and Tuesday was I bought a lot of intakes this year. I bought I don't know how many flathead intakes, but I bought three. Yeah, I guess not a lot, but I bought I bought a few and they were all like really cheap.
SPEAKER_01:Like I'm I should say three intakes, because you bought that old's at Carlisle, and you bought an Edmonds and a Fenton at um Hershey.
SPEAKER_00:I thought I bought another flathead intake at Hershey, too. I bought that Anderson. Oh, Anderson, yeah, that's right. But uh bought a couple intakes, and anytime you can find we have like we joke about these rules, like it used to be the$50 banjo rule, the$100 intake rule. Yeah. You know, if any flathead intake, if you find it, it's a hundred dollars. Aftermarket. Aftermarket, it it's worth buying for the most part. I was buying stuff for those types of prices, which are you know, great. So we rode around. I I I found an intake then. And I found an intake and something else, and I saw that Krager intake down way down by the car corral, basically. By the car corral in Orange Field, and I had my bicycle and it was a 4-2 with the carbs and all the linkage, and I was like, I have a Krager, but the freaking cast aluminum piece of linkage that you never see was on it. I'm like, oh, I really want that. And the price was affordable, but I had my bicycle, bought those headlights. I was like, eh, I'll come back for it. Or I was just for whatever reason I didn't buy it, I don't know why. And then I went and visited um Patty and Tim uh that are not far from there. I was like, hey guys, can I borrow some bungee straps and some plastic bags because they're always uh super prepared. So they gave me like six plastic bags and a bunch of bungees. I bungeed my intake, my flathead intake to it, and then I rode back to the headlights and then I double bagged these headlights, and these dudes were like, I'm putting them on the handlebars, and they're like, I just bought Packard headlights. It's like Packard senior headlights, and I'm like, put them in plastic bags and put them on my handlebars. They're like, You sure you you can come back for them? I'm like, I got it, it's good, it's double bagged.
SPEAKER_01:Do you see there was a comment someone's like Matt looking like Debo across the bridge?
SPEAKER_00:Coming to take your hot rod party. Yeah, yeah. And that's where I posted a funny video. We always joked that I put it in the week in the life of.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, did you? Yeah, yeah. So funny.
SPEAKER_00:My bicycle, um it's an old bicycle, and the crank a lot of times is is bent on them from kids throwing them down, and it like just hits the chain guard. So when you're pedaling, it sounds like you have a rod knock. So I always I posted something on our social media that like the old girl has a red rod knock but gets me home every time I'm riding with these headlights on it. But that like to me, that is the fun of Hershey. Like, I always love the fun of going out with no preparation with my bicycle, and you get what you get and you try and get it back to the booth, and it's that's my favorite thing to watch, too, is just people like struggling to carry shit. The signs on their shoulder on the bicycle and their their wagon that they're pulling, and it's like the stuff's precariously strapped up. So good. So, Patty and Tim, I owe you guys two bungee straps.
SPEAKER_01:And then I went and bought that Craig 4.2 the next day and had to carry it all the way back to our spaces.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that night I got back to the booth and I was like, I should have bought that intake, and Mike's like, Well, what did he want for? And I was like, 600 bucks. And it was like at 497s or four Strombergs, the linkage, the intake, and it's like the intake was probably worth five, six hundred bucks on its own. So I'm like, to get that linkage in the carbs, it's like, even if I sell, pick whichever Craig's intakes better, I'm like, you can't find those little pieces, they're like impossible to find. So it's like sometimes it's like you gotta just spend the money and then play the long game and swap around to get what you want. So I was like, Mike, if you go over there and he has it, just just buy it. So Mike went over to the city. It was heavy. It was heavy.
SPEAKER_01:I carried it all the way back. So Mike's a Mike gets the uh someone was like, uh Luke was like, it's an aluminum intake. I'm like, it's got four Strombergs on it, they're not that light.
SPEAKER_00:And you gotta carry it like miles.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it was the literally almost the furthest point from our space that could be.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's it's pretty close. So um it's okay.
SPEAKER_01:I had to walk back to the booth anyway to get a hand truck to buy it. I bought a set of wheels.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that was funny.
SPEAKER_01:You bought what four four 46.8 Ford wheels for insanely cheap with tires, and then you took the hand truck all the way over there, wheeled them down three spaces to a friend, and he went, I've been looking for a set of those. You want to sell them? That happened to Hershey so often. And I felt bad. I was like, he's like, Where'd you buy them at? I'm like, literally right there. He's like, You gotta be kidding me. I was like, I literally was just walking down the road to you and I bought him. He's like, What do you I gave him a really good deal? You know, we I made money, but not as much as we would if I would have brought him to our booth. It was just so funny. I was just like, Well, I guess I just took the hand truck on a walk all the way to the other side of the swamp meet for nothing. They just wheeled them to you.
SPEAKER_00:And like I bought or traded uh like a carlisle, my my buddy Nick. I was just hanging out in his booth one day, just shooting the breeze, and I'm looking at his stuff on his tail, and he had these super cool exhaust tips that are like they're chrome like bullets, so you can't see where the exhaust comes out in the bottom of them.
SPEAKER_01:The exhaust comes out the bottom of them, but when you look at the back of the car, it's just like they kind of look like the Corvette Bottinger air cleaners, is what they look like.
SPEAKER_00:But they're they're exhaust tips, and he had them in their new old stock, and I'm like, Oh man, those are cool. What do you want for them? He's like, Ah, for you, a hundred bucks, whatever. I'm like, ah, cool. So I'm about to hand him money. He goes, dude, I gotta buy stuff in your booth. You said you have a steering wheel, blah, blah, blah. Let's just trade. I'm like, okay, I don't trade often, but he's a good friend, so we we we we do trade back and forth. So I was like, oh, alright, cool, man, whatever. Um, but he's like, I bought them at the gas gagoon swap like two weeks or a month, whatever it was before.
SPEAKER_01:And I'm like, man, you could have bought them there.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, just it's funny how this stuff gets passed around. So we like to bring up these stories because a lot of people demonize people buying and selling and making money. I have no problem. Like, there's been loads and loads of times where like somebody bought something for a crazy steal at a swap meet, they bring it to us or show it to us, and I pay full-blown retail where I pay, you know, he probably bought those tips for 20 bucks for some vendor, and then I pay gave him a hundred, 150 bucks worth of stuff.
SPEAKER_01:Just part of the part of the game. It's been going on longer than you and I have been alive. Guys have been doing it. Pete Pete used to tell us stories. They used to go to SWAT meets with nothing, run around the SWAT meet, buy a bunch of stuff, and then that's what they would sell at the SWAT meet because they travel, you know, 10 plus hours, so they just take a pickup truck with tables and then just run around and buy a bunch of shit and then try and sell it at the SWAT meet.
SPEAKER_00:I I I'm almost tempted to try that one year just for the fun of it. It's pretty, it's pretty funny. So that's it's uh we have to do it at SWAT meet.
SPEAKER_01:We don't go to very often, though. Go to like Portland or Pate or something like that.
SPEAKER_00:That would be fun. It would be would be kind of fun.
SPEAKER_01:We did I did get the dates for Portland this year. They're like two weeks before Carlisle. Ooh, nice. So we could go. It's like the 11th, 12th, and 13th or something like that.
SPEAKER_00:Well, they they're usually the same time as Charlotte.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, but Charlotte hasn't been that good.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's true. Um but yeah, so we talk about that stuff because we do it. Yeah. And everybody does it. There's just for some weird reason there's people on the internet that are angry that that demonize. And it's been hot rotting, swap meeting, treasure hunting, antiquing. It's been this is what's happened. Any, you know, big antique shows, gun shows, this stuff happens where stuff will will get resold six times in a matter of a week between vendors and get marked up each time.
SPEAKER_01:And honestly, if we buy something at a swap meet to resell, the price that we put on it's usually extremely fair.
SPEAKER_00:Because we would love to move it at the show. Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_01:And make a couple bucks but not have to like whoever's buying it was obviously looking for it. So we're not like gouging the shit out of them on price. Yep. We're 99% of our prices on everything we sell are insanely fair.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think most of it. And now everybody has there's still people walking around Carlisle and Hershey that are are thinking of 1980s prices and are you know.
SPEAKER_01:I had a dude come into the booth at Hershey. We had a restored 32 column drop. He's like, he has a list for his 32, and that was on. I was like, here's a restored one with a key, just ready to go. Put on 250 bucks. It's like$250, that's really expensive. I was like, to be fair, they're like$350 on the internet. Yep. Or you can buy a reproduction one that's not original for$300. Like$250 is a pretty good deal.
SPEAKER_00:Ready to go.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, that's a painted, painted black.
SPEAKER_00:That came from our our friend that I bought all the stuff the you know before Carwhile at his house, and the guy was starting to restore five-windows. So it's like that it was ready to go. This dude did all the hard work. They blasted it, they painted it. That you know, if you've ever had to take and free up an old 32, any early 4200.
SPEAKER_01:Not even free up, just take them apart. Those calm drops are very intricate and kind of not fun.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so this one was ready to go, and it's like, how do you value your time? Because I think just to disassemble one, blast it and paint it is 250.
SPEAKER_01:Had a brand new block on the back for the ignition wiring, had a key in the tumbler.
SPEAKER_00:That's like a herd key.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, an original style key. It's like it was ready to go. You didn't have to do anything, just slide it on your column tube.
SPEAKER_00:So that's that's the wild thing that we deal with at Carlisle and Hershey is you get the old timers or the people that uh I just say you they don't value the things the same, but we, you know, generally we don't always we price stuff under internet cost because you know you get vendors that you go into. That's one thing that I saw an overwhelming re comments about on the Facebook group about Hershey was people saying that Hershey prices were out of control this year and everybody was flu b full-blown internet prices. If I wanted to buy it off eBay, I'd just buy it on eBay. Well, to be fair, you'd have to pay shipping on eBay and all that stuff. So that's tax and tax. So those people that are asking eBay prices and they're probably willing to negotiate, it's still cheaper to buy it in person. Now we go the other way. We generally price all our stuff, unless it's super rare, under what everybody else is selling it on the internet for. Now we're not gonna cut it in half, but it might be fifty or a hundred bucks off. And then we still will negotiate some.
SPEAKER_01:So I will say there was someone that came in our booth, I think it was at Hershey and was like, you guys are one of the only people I bought stuff from that were willing to haggle. It's like a lot of people I went in their booth and they're like, This is the price, don't like it, it's not for sale. It's like that's kind of it's tough to be like that, especially in-person cash. That's like all these swap meets are always based off of like haggling and not trying to get a deal, but being uh somewhat fair. Like if you're asking me fun, if you're asking a hundred percent of like full-blown retail what it sells on the internet, and you don't have any wiggle room in it whatsoever, it's like it's not fun if I just like I'll take it for full blown. Like, I want to deal a little bit.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I do there's been instances where guys play that game. It's funny, some guys play the game. I've had instances where the guys play hardball, and I go, ah, you know,$500 XYZ item, and I'm like, ah, you do four and a half. Nope,$500. That thing's rare, they give you the whole spiel, the real cut and dry hard.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we do that with stuff. I will say, we will do that, but it has to be insanely rare.
SPEAKER_00:Super nice or something like that.
SPEAKER_01:Like the only one that's available for we have a 40 Chevy trunklet right now. I did that with someone recently. But it's like we literally have the only one for sale in the entire country on the internet.
SPEAKER_00:And it's nice. Nice, yeah. So, but these guys will, you know, they they say that, and I'm not rude. I just go, you know, and then I'll look at it and I'm like, I don't really need it. That's you know, whatever. Set it down and they start to walk away, and then guys like, how's$4.95 and they take five bucks? I'm like, come on, dude. Like you know, and then they start to but they wait for you to walk away because they're playing hardball. And there's times when I just go, I'm good, I just walk away. And it's just like, you know, if you if you gotta be that much of a that's gotta be really exhausting to spend a week playing hardball that much on every item. Like if I'm standing there and I make you an offer and it's close, I mean I'm only a lot of time I don't usually hit people like half.
SPEAKER_01:That's that drives me nuts.
SPEAKER_00:I'll do like fifty bucks. If it's you know, sometimes it's a hundred bucks if it's something that's like, you know, the price is a little high or whatever. But like I'm not gonna say this is a$200 set of headlights, will you take a hundred? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Unless it's totally like$200's an insane retail, like double retail price.
SPEAKER_00:So I had uh I bought a a a convertible rear window from a gal, and I don't know what it was. Maybe it was a hundred bucks an hour for a you know or no, I don't remember what it was.
SPEAKER_01:I think it was 40 bucks.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and she had it for 50, 60 bucks, and I said, Would you do 40 bucks on it? And she's like, My husband isn't here. She's like, like, like it was like high for, you know, like she's we're talking like the sale of uh her home.
SPEAKER_01:Six thousand to four thousand.
SPEAKER_00:She's like, I don't know. Uh maybe I'll try and call him, and uh and she's like, house fifty-five five dollars. I'm like, it's fine. Okay, fifty-five, it's fine. But it was just like it's funny how she was like so scared to like give me much more than that up. I'm like, it's fine, it's it's yeah, whatever. And then I've had one times you walk to the booth and the lady's like annoyed that her husband hasn't been there.
SPEAKER_01:That fucking dickhead hasn't priced anything. What do you want to give me for it?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, he hasn't been here all day, and he's not answering his phone. I'll take whatever you offer me. And you're like, okay.
SPEAKER_01:Also, if you bring stuff to a SWAT meet to sell and you get annoyed when people ask you a price and then don't buy it, put a fucking price on it. Oh my god. And no one will ask you the goddamn price.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that that's a thing. People play games, they have like these really good items that are very desirable, and everybody everybody's gonna ask about these items, and they don't price the item. I feel like it is detrimental to your sale and your experience at Hershey, because I and a lot of these high-end guys do that. So there was a booth and I mentioned they had some really good headlights, some really good high uh headlights and stuff like that, high profile per shop, and they had high-end stuff. Nothing had prices on it. I went up to the booth, I am willing to pay high-end prices because it's good stuff for I would have wanted for me. A set of those wood lights were there.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I know who this is.
SPEAKER_00:And I went around and I had to ask six people in the booth because they got fucking 12 people working in the booth. Nobody can tell me what the stuff costs, because there's only one guy in the booth that is authorized to give me a price for it, and he's giving you prices off the top of his head, and I'm like, come on, guys, like, and then I feel like a dick because the prices were high, and it was more than I wanted to spend for the quality of the headlights. It wasn't that they were outrageous, it was just that I couldn't justify it. But I'm like, it took me it was such a painful process because that guy was dealing with someone trying to sell a car in their booth, and then it's almost like I'm annoying them by asking them for a price of the headlights, which are three thousand dollars or whatever they were. And it's like, well, it's not like I'm asking about a a little trim ring on the ground, like I was asking about good stuff, and it's like and then you feel awkward because then everybody's staring at you and he has six guys and to get the price, like just price the stuff. If if if it's gonna be expensive, you know, somebody will walk up and uh time wasters, like maybe I guess myself was, will just look at the tag and be like, Oh, okay, it's more, you know, and I'll keep walking. I do that often.
SPEAKER_01:It's like you know, and the worst part is when they get like visibly annoyed, they're like, You're the thirtieth person that's asked me about 'em. Well, that should be a key indicator. But you should just put a fucking price on it and no one will ask you. I don't I don't get it. It's That is the most frustrating thing. It drives me nuts. Sometimes if the guy just looks like a pain in the ass, I just won't even ask price because it's like, this guy's going to be uh annoying to deal with.
SPEAKER_00:And I have to ask the price on some of those because I've had instances where it looks like they're going to be expensive. Oh, yeah. And you ask about three or four things, and everything but one thing is really expensive. You're like, oh, all right, I'll take that. And it's just for whatever weird reason that thing is, you know. But I just it's so painful when you have to bounce around the booth between six people and no one knows the price.
SPEAKER_01:I'm sure people feel like that in our booth sometimes, because like this year we had at one point in the booth, your dad was in there, Luke was in there, Anton was in there, and Dale. And Luke's kind of like the sales guy, so they probably talk to your dad, and it's like, who do we talk to? But at least all of our shit's priced.
SPEAKER_00:So it's like Yeah, usually it's somebody wanted to haggle on something. Who do I talk to about this item? I want to see if he can give me a better deal. Okay. You know, but yeah, it was like but a lot of these booths you go in where nothing's priced, it's just like, oh my god, like how can I if you make the buying process that difficult, yeah. But I think people fish, they like I think some of the and I feel like it's an old school antique show.
SPEAKER_01:They do. There's guide these guide headlights I bought.
SPEAKER_00:They're like fishing, and one guy says a price to one person, and and it happens to us. We were like, I think those chrome headlights.
SPEAKER_01:Those guides that I bought, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that Mike Mike bought them, and he sends you a photo. I'm like, dude, those were priced pretty stiff. What like did you buy them to resell? And he's like, No, they're for me. I'm like, they were still priced pretty stiff, and then I'm like, What'd you pay? And it was like$150. Yeah, it was what the price they told me, and I'm like, I probably would have bought them for that.
SPEAKER_01:And I'm like, You talked to the the wife first thing in the morning, it was$450. Yeah. I walked by in the afternoon and it was$350, and I talked them down to$300.
SPEAKER_00:I'm like, what the hell? Yeah, you know, for$300, I would have probably bought them.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I was like, well, these look perfect. I sent you a photo, you're like, you didn't buy those to resell, did you? And I was like, no, they're for me. And you're like, Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, because the price was there was like no room left. But at that same booth, because of those headlights, she was waiting to call her husband or something to get a price. I I looked over and there was this really cool boat speedo that we got, and we posted, was it in the week in the life of it? Oh, yeah, yeah. So uh really cool. It's a whole gauge panel, not just speedo. Yeah, yeah. It's for for an old speedboat or mahogany, you know, crisscraft or something. Um store water gauges, 1930s there. It's all etched and super cool. If you didn't see it, you can go in the uh Week in the Life of video, it's in there. Um that was like 60 or 50 bucks while she was waiting for a price. I'm like, that's cool. It's funny how this stuff works. You're like in a booth looking around and something distracts you, and then you see an item.
SPEAKER_02:You're like, ooh.
SPEAKER_00:It's like fate. And I'm like, oh man, that's cool. I don't know what I'm gonna do with it, but for that cheap, I'll I'll just buy it. So it's sitting over there. I don't know if we're gonna sell it or I'll just put it on the case, but whatever. It just happens. Any of these any of these big flea markets, uh, Kate and I and our friend uh Nick and Naughty from Australia came over. We went to Brimfield earlier this spring, which is a huge antique show for a week. It's like the antique version of Hershey, and the prices you want to talk about Hershey prices, go to Brimfield. It's crazy. I mean, you little trinkets that you would go to your local flea market and are$10 are$250. It's people are wild with prices there. So you get to the Hershey and Brimfield and some of these shows, you see high prices so much that you start like if you're in a normal setting, you'd be like, I would never spend that on. I would never buy a random gauge panel that I have no intentions of using. Maybe I would for$50. But like you're buying stuff that you're just like, eh. Everything all the other gauge panels are a thousand dollars. Yeah. For$50, I'll buy it just for something to buy. So you you just start buying things because you're just like you're this you have so much sticker shock as soon as you see something that's like reasonable, you're like, oh, it's not too bad. I'll buy that. You know, so that's how you end up with all those Hershey items you buy and you get home, like, why did I buy this? I don't I don't even know. I guess it was a good deal on it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. The only thing I will say about Hershey this year is it still there's still a lot of empty spaces. The ACA's got to do better with consolidating some of the fields. I think the swap meet would feel cooler if everything was condensed, less people just parking and not selling anything.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I don't I don't know the way to correct that because to play the devil's advocate, it is nice to have we would be affected by that because we rented some spaces from one of our neighbors to park our trucks in.
SPEAKER_01:So But we're still selling stuff. There's plenty of people that just park and have nothing out for sale.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, true. Yeah, I don't I don't really know the best way to I don't know the best way to cure that. You know, is it something where if you have spaces, you you can have your vehicle there in one of the spaces. But I do agree. If you if you have spaces and you don't even have anything for sale and it's just a parking spot, that kind of stinks. You know, especially some of these guys that have ten spaces and an RV and all this stuff, and they bring nothing to sell. There's like nothing to sell. It's like their grill and the lawn chairs, and it's like, well, that kind of stinks. So I don't know. I'm I I don't know how I feel about it. I don't really mind it. I guess because I'm able-bodied and I can walk the swap, it doesn't bother me that much.
SPEAKER_01:The only two things they need to do away with are the two red fields, the two ancillary red fields that are in front and behind the stadium. I feel bad for the people that get especially the one behind the stadium.
SPEAKER_00:But some of those people like that spot. I saw somebody comment on one of the things where people are complaining that they they like being back there and people go and seek them out.
SPEAKER_02:Watch the heater.
SPEAKER_00:So I could go either way because I go to that racers row Redfield first on Monday.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. True, because some of those dudes have been there for like 50 years.
SPEAKER_00:They bring good stuff. So I bought a my 50-51 Merc Dash for parts Monday from a guy back. Now it might have been the first thing I bought at Hershey, actually, was at back in Racers Row. So I I don't know. If those the way I feel about it is if those guys don't like being back there, they should request to be moved. But some of those guys, some people like where they're at. That other red field, I don't know. I feel like there's enough people in that that it still is shoppable. Yeah. Um I think the green and orange fields over across the bridge, some of those in the far line corners, people don't make it out there as much anymore. You know, people can't get around as good and you know, whatever reason, but I I don't know. I I think really it's just a matter of we're never gonna get back to how it was in the 70s where there's as many people vending. But um I think like we keep preaching in our videos, if you're coming if you're gonna fly in to go shopping at Hershey and get a space and park your rental car in the space, just set up for like a day or two days, or just bring some or like we said, buy some Totchkies in the flea market and set it down on your table.
SPEAKER_01:One thing I I think the AACA could do better is the the swap meet is still very pre-war oriented. Yep. There's very little, you know, the AACA is 25 years and older. There's very little stuff that's 60s, 70s era of cars.
SPEAKER_00:There's very little I'm gonna say that I'm glad of that. I'm I I I don't I don't think but the thing is they don't it's not that they don't allow that. I think it's just the vendors don't set up yeah. I don't I don't I don't have an issue with it though, because I I I I like it.
SPEAKER_01:But it might fill the SWAMED in more.
SPEAKER_00:It would, but then we'd be complaining that there's new car parts.
SPEAKER_01:So it's I mean I don't mind it at Carlisle.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I don't know. I I I could go either way on that. The one thing I did notice this year, probably more than any other year, is the amount of sign vendors at Hershey. Oh, it's yeah. I felt like it was as heavy as it's ever been with people that were just sign guys. That also creates a weird feeling on Thursday because sign guys are s ridiculously notorious for running around on setup day and then leaving, you know, setting up for half a day and then leaving. They're they're they're the worst out of all the groups of people that buy and sell. That they do not stick around at a sw show or swap meet. So I think a lot of people are complaining that Thursday was really a lot of people had already gone home. I think a big portion of that you're feeling was it was a lot of sign guys that already bought what they needed to buy. They did they don't stick it out for the whole SWAT meet. No. I I could see not staying for Friday because they kind of want you to pack up by lunchtime or something Friday or whatever, but like Thursday, if you're leaving Wednesday and it was like a one, you know, you're only there for Tuesday and Wednesday officially, it's it's kinda lame. It's kinda lame. So I I think that that was one of the reasons I think you saw a lot of people leaving.
SPEAKER_01:Um sign guys are also some of the most annoying people to to deal with. Sorry if you're a sign guy. Most the majority of them are fucking pain in the ass.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, they can be. It's a pretty cutthroat business and and and just it's kind of I don't know. I don't I like that I don't we don't deal in signs. Because it I couldn't that the way a now I'm sure there's like everything, there's a lot of it doesn't feel as laid back as no, not at all. What our stuff is. And we I feel like a little bit of that is getting into our world of.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I a bunch of sign booths had hot rod parts in them for sale.
SPEAKER_00:They're starting to be dumb. Those guys are starting to buy some of the stuff that we collect, and that's where you're seeing some of those like insane prices that they do, like with the signs where they bought it for ten bucks and they put some insane price on you.
SPEAKER_01:Like, dude, that's like ENJ headlights for six thousand dollars.
SPEAKER_00:That's the trend this year. I've never ever there was a guy.
SPEAKER_01:If you watch the Hershey The Week of the Live, there's a guy that had four pairs of ENJs for sale.
SPEAKER_00:I've never seen more sets of ENJs every year at Hershey, you always see ENJs.
SPEAKER_01:That's like at least two to three pairs. Yeah, there's like eight-ish pairs or ten pairs. The guy with the four pairs also proceeded to tell me he paid a hundred dollars, fifty dollars a pair back in the 70s. I was like, so what are you asking for? He's like, uh, they're$2,900 a pair, or you could buy them all for$10,000. It's like that was a pretty damn good investment.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:He was actually the cheapest person there.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, believe it or not. That's what's crazy. And it's crazy to me because three years ago?
SPEAKER_01:Two or three years ago.
SPEAKER_00:Two or three years ago, I bought a set for$900 that were beautiful, probably nicer than almost any of the sets there. And then I sold them for two grand. And I was psyched because I made$1,100.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Or$1,200, but whatever, eleven, twelve hundred bucks.
SPEAKER_01:So um and the person that bought them was super psyched because that two grand is actually a pretty good deal for a pretty good price.
SPEAKER_00:Again, back to we sell things reasonable. Yeah. So, but we walk around the booth and these the prices were every which way you could have, you know, you you didn't know if a set of ENJs were going to be two grand or six thousand dollars.
SPEAKER_01:Well, it's hilarious is the dude had like all shitty, rusty Model A stuff. So I was like, I wonder what the ENJs are. Just you have to ask. You see shit like that, you have to ask.
SPEAKER_00:How many people didn't you think asked him throughout the week of the city? Oh, probably an insane amount of price off.
unknown:No.
SPEAKER_00:So it's just like, holy crap. But that was a that was one of my favorite things about Hershey that you will not see any other swap meet. A dude with that many pairs of ENJs in one spot. You see this stuff that's just like so wild, you're like, that's like holy grail hot rod items to find. And this dude's got multiple sets laid out, and it's like just for the photo of that many sets gathered together and fucking wild. So that was really cool. Um I think as far as I was pretty reserved buying this year. I didn't buy this was the first year ever that I bought the majority of the items on my on my wish list, which is stuff that I actually need. It's kind of crazy. I bought that Mercury Dash because I needed a I wanted a rate original 5051 Merc radio to have converted. And I needed some switches and and different things, and I wanted an extra set of gauges so I could send them out to get redone and not have to pull my dash apart while I'm fitting it to the car. So um I found that dash. Uh I got those headlights for the Packard. I ended up finding a match to the 36 um NASH taillight. So it's like a shark fin, round glass lens with like a glass shark fin on it. Super crazy taillights. I found one at Carlisle years ago, and I've been searching for a mate. I found a spare lens, and then that guy's brother, who was two spaces down, is a taillight guy. He had a single taillight complete. So within that was on Thursday. Yeah. My dad and I were rolling around, and I bought that. So that was super cool because I wanted cool taillights for the Packard. So now I got these super cool decorative taillights. And a spare lens. And a spare lens.
SPEAKER_01:So that was no one will be handling those taillights when Matt puts them on and off the car ever. It'll be. But Matt. Yeah. With gloves. With gloves.
SPEAKER_00:So those were really cool. That was good. I found there's some other stuff.
SPEAKER_01:There's a lot of small stuff. I found for Matt, I found a set of inside uh push buttons for Lincoln Zephyr. They're uh loose, red loose, kind of like the steering wheel. Um push buttons for the inside. Um they're all they're hard to find, they fall apart just like the steering wheels. Bought it from a good shape, yeah. Bought them from the Zephyr vendor. That's all he does is Zephyr stuff. Paid like$40 for a pair. It was kind of crazy.
SPEAKER_00:I think they're pretty fair. That was fair. Yeah, very fair. Um yeah, I don't remember what else.
SPEAKER_01:I will say for both Carlisle and Hershey sales, we did really good. I mean, there it wasn't our I wouldn't say it was our best for either event, but it was a very standard, we did good at both events.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, last year was really I I am gonna say the flooding is what hurt last year. Yeah, the two hurricanes, definitely. Yeah, but we did it was very light last year, and I was a little worrisome. It's like, man, what is it?
SPEAKER_01:It was our worst Carlisle and our worst Hershey.
SPEAKER_00:We're like, are all these doomsday people right? Like, what's going on?
SPEAKER_01:The SWAT meet shit not doing, but like I think it wasn't I think it was our like second or third best Carlisle and like our second or third best Hershey. So it's very and it also depends on some years at these events we have like such good stuff that we sell like multiple items that are like thousand to three thousand dollars. So it's like then it's hard to judge how an event is by the dollar amount because some years we bring shit that's like you sell five items that are a thousand dollars, it's like a very easy year to do well.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. Like the one year I I brought a McCullough blower. Yeah, we sold that.
SPEAKER_01:It's like oh that year we sold a McCullough Blower, a set of rare 334 skirts, and a K.R. Wilson engine stand.
SPEAKER_00:And it's like you pad the numbers. Exactly, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So that that's but I think we did overall, it was a good year. And we're starting to notice trends. Like big shit doesn't sell at these events. It's all about and we we're the same way. We try not to buy we try not to buy big big shit, it's carriables, stuff you put in a bag, wagon, that kind of stuff. And that's as we do this more and more, we notice that that's just what sells is smaller items.
SPEAKER_00:But we've been trying to still bring a little bit of big stuff that's quality because we want like we had those 34 pickup parts there that we got at Carlisle because that stuff was so nice that if you had a 34 pickup and you were looking for them, those are the ones you would buy and carry back to your truck because it's like they were so nice. Um, but we also want to remind people if they're not aware of who we are or what we do, that we have a little bit of everything. So we want a little bit of body panel so a guy might come in and say, Oh, you I see you got these fenders. Do you have 34 car fenders? Yes, we get them in. Here's our card, and you know, because we we use Hershey and Carlisle as much for selling as we do for marketing to get our cards out, and we handed a ton of cards out this year, people looking for stuff that maybe we don't have and we will get, or we have it back at the booth and we or you know the building and we can mail it to you type thing.
SPEAKER_01:So that's what overall it's pretty good two weeks, better than being at a real job.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, certainly. Um my father got to ride around. Um our friend Sean, who's a local uh brass car guy, he's uh in the horse horseless carriage club. He's very active in it. They actually do the Hershey Hangover tour. I kind of want to get a uh I've been thinking about our friend Ryan um lives down from Sean and Sean's infected him, and now he has like a 1911 Studebaker or 10 Studebaker. So these a bunch of people they've been doing forever. They do the Hershey Hangover tour where they actually drive for a week after Hershey, and they take these brass era cars and they drive them, I don't know, a hundred miles a day or whatever it is, to these different destinations. They stop in museums, they stopped at the Boyertown Museum last year, I think.
SPEAKER_01:They stopped here the year before. Yes, this is like their jump off point, I think, for the tour, wasn't it? Something like that. They did coffee and donuts one morning, and Matt and I were somewhere else. So Steve Steve facilitated that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. So um, but yeah, it was like they do these fun tours, so there's a lot of that stuff that's going around. But Sean gave my dad a ride in his 1904 curved-olds. So I I one big thing with getting my father going to Hershey, he's actually started to look forward to going to the show to get to hang out. He's gotten to know a bunch of people, so now he's starting to see people, and he likes just being around. I would like to think that for my father, it is gotta be pretty cool that he's seen what we've built. Yeah. You know, so he goes to Hershey, we get all these people that come in and you know, they're all over the world and are talking about.
SPEAKER_01:I can tell he gets uncomfortable. They're like, You're Matt's dad, hey. Like they like know him from the videos. He's like, Yeah, I'm hi, I'm Jim. The first couple years it was funny.
SPEAKER_00:I think he now he he he my dad's actually like sometimes bragging me up, and I'm like, oh, because I'm like super low-key when I'm out walking the swap meet. I'm the last guy that's gonna tell you who I am or what we've done or what how big our business is. Uh so we found on the last day, my dad and I bought oh, I bought some really cool um industrial lights for the mill that have like these white porcelain fish mouth shade shades. Super cool. I bought four of them for fifty bucks. Yeah. Which was cool. Um, and then I found a guy with a free glass display case. He I guess he was tired of taking it back and forth to Carl Hershey, so he had it out for free. So we got that. So while I ran to do something or ran with you to take, I don't remember. I came back and my dad's like bragging to this guy about who we are, what we do, and the guy's like, the guy's like, Your dad's really proud of you. You know, and that's so that stuff's cool. So, but anyways, I like every year trying to get my dad to ride around on one of the so he rode in our friend's Stanley steamer the one year. Yep. Um, and then this year I saw our friend Sean walking. So I mean he had his olds there. I was like, Hey, do you think you take my dad for a ride in the in the curve dash?
SPEAKER_01:Um, he just likes seeing and do so he took him around for a loop in the in the that thing's actually really like the one day I was out walking or riding, he came like zipping in the main entrance, and I was like, for 1904, that thing boogies along like pretty good.
SPEAKER_00:It's pretty cool. So he and it's so small you can navigate around the swap meet, and it's not it's not much bigger than like some of these side by sides.
SPEAKER_01:It's not actually wild. Some of the bigger brass era cars that some of the guys drive through the swap meets, they're like open touring cars that are like six and nine passenger, and they're still navigating them through the swap meet. It's always you turn around, you're just like, holy crap, and he's like ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch ch Yep.
SPEAKER_00:And I think that that's a hole in the market that's not hole in the hobby that's not being filled. People in our age group are not getting into those cars as a whole, and the prices have significantly dropped. I've sorta could see myself getting one of them. If if we came across the right one for the right deal, it'd be kind of neat to have one of them. They're the you want to talk about simple. Those things are extremely simple. You do have to be handy mechanically to to tinker because they are like constantly need upkeep. A lot of these cars were restored like in the 50s when it was, you know, an old car in the 50s still. So but I think those cars are really affordable, and that's like our friend Ryan bought the Studebaker. Uh I'm sure he got a good deal on it because of you know what it was and whatever.
SPEAKER_01:I mean a touring Model T from like 1914, they're actually like very affordable.
SPEAKER_00:So I've considered if I ever came across the right one, it'd be kind of neat. It'd be kind of neat to get involved with those people to do some of those tours because that age group that is one of the parts of our hobby that's aging out a hundred percent.
SPEAKER_01:Uh just speaking of at Hershey, that area, the brass era, the road, the mainly where the brass era guys are, their rows run the opposite way for whatever reason. Don't know why. That area was like desolate this year at Hershey. There was it was empty.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's getting so I think that stuff is, you know, shrinking down. I again, I'm not into the judging thing so much, but it would be neat to get one to do like a driving tour or just have it the bebop around my little town. Because my little town's kind of small enough that I could take a uh a brass car and drive it into town for ice cream. Or do so I don't want to be that eccentric old man someday and I'm driving my like this little putt putt around around town and got my got Moon Moon the third in in in the uh in the past maybe who knows with me. Could be next year and it's moon, actual moon in the passenger scene.
SPEAKER_01:We were talking about Packards not that long ago. I think they're still bringing a little bit of no, I meant like we were talking about Packards and now you own a Packard.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, I think um overall, I mean, I bought some stuff, but I I feel like I've settled down over the recent years because we've gotten so much stuff. And a good example is one of the flathead intakes that I bought that's quite rare. I bought it because it was a good deal, and then I got it back to business. I'm like, I think I have one of these. And sure enough, I got home from Hershey, I have one on the wall. Yep. So then we had to sell it. But it's like, so now I'm trying to calm down a bit. I'm like, unless it's like an insane deal, I was really heavily just buying anything cool to like build my collection up, and now I've settled down. I you know, it's gotta be a high toxicity for me to buy it or a really good deal on something. So I didn't I didn't buy really anything crazy high dollar or whatever. Um we did get that sign. I bought a the one Edmonds intake, or no, Edmonds Heads. There's a guy that at Hershey on the outside row where the car corral is, but there's no car corral further up. Um the outside road, there's vendors that are set up, and uh there's a guy that always has family, they have big RV. They always have a lot of 35-6 stuff, so I always stop in, see what they have. We buy stuff every you know handful of years, walked up, they were setting stuff out in their trailer. Um, I was looking at stuff and I saw these Edmonds heads and or whatever they were. I saw Finn heads, I'm like, hey, what's up with the heads? Blah blah blah, and there's you know, stuff on top, and he moves it and there's a big sign. I'm like, what's up with that? Oh, it's an old tractor sign my dad had, or whatever the story is. I'm like, oh that's kind of neat. Pull it out, gives me a price, so I'm like, okay. And then there was these heads. So I worked the deal to get the heads in the and the sign, and it's a big ass double-sided olifer sign. It's not perfect, but it's neat.
SPEAKER_01:It's perfect for the mill.
SPEAKER_00:And it's perfect for the mill. So I was like, oh, that was cool.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, we checked every box. We bought a sign, you bought at least one 32 grill, and we bought one we bought two 34 grills.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we bought a you bought a 34 grill that was smashed. Kind of crappy, and we we repaired it and had it was beautiful.
SPEAKER_01:Matt did some nice repairs to it, and it's even more beautiful now.
SPEAKER_00:It's good for a driver. Yes. Um, and then we had another guy do the um our Hershey pawn shop.
SPEAKER_01:This is on Thursday. It's like we were like done walking the swap meet. Matt calls me, he's like, Can you come to Chaka World? I got like two boxes I need help carrying back to the beef.
SPEAKER_00:A guy brought in his trunk a bunch of stuff. Um, they're clearing out like his grandfather's estate or something. And he had sent us photos of like all the cars in the property a a while ago. And I don't know if it was mixed communication. I didn't really realize he was coming. Not that I was angry, but he's like, hey, I got a trunk full of stuff out in Chocolate World if you want to look at it. Walk out there and end up buying a 34 Ford grill, um, bunch of headlights, um, some triple lights that were in kind of disassembled. Um that one really good one was that Firestone.
SPEAKER_01:Firestone Super Ray.
SPEAKER_00:Super cool. I wish there was two of them because they would have gone on the Packard, but got one of those, um, and just some good hot rod stuff. He had a bunch more stuff, but I did I just didn't want to take it all. It was just, you know, whatever. So we bought a little bit of a guide headlight, one single.
SPEAKER_01:Which we actually had a matching single, which never ever happens.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so even all the way till the end, we were buying in the park. And then when we were walking through the spot meet, I had a 34 grill on my hands. People were like, on Thursday are like, Where'd you find that? I'm like, ah, it was in a guy's trunk out there. So that was fun. But yeah, overall, good week. Had a great time. You know, as always, we did we had a big crew of people doing dinner and ice cream every night.
SPEAKER_01:One of these years I gotta stay out there to enjoy all of that festivities.
SPEAKER_00:It's good fun. We go to the same ice cream spot most nights, and we we just have a good time, and it there's friends from all over the world. I mean, this this year it was people from all over the country, and then we had a Canadian friend, Swedish guy at our table. So it was like melting pot of car guys.
SPEAKER_01:I will say Hershey's like that. A cool story I want to share. You weren't in the it was Wednesday, I think, or Tuesday. We were sitting there talking to a younger kid from the UK. He came into the booth, he's I maybe in his early 20s, pretty young. Starts talking, he's like, love the podcast, love the show. I'm not in old cars, but I'm into porcelain signs. So we start talking, he starts showing some early Ford signs that he had found recently and sold. And then a Swedish gentleman just happened to be walking in our booth and heard him and came over and goes, I'm really into Ford porcelain signs. I'm from Sweden. This is my collection. So the three of us are just talking and they're showing me all these crazy porcelain signs that they found in Europe. And it's just like, where else in the world are you gonna have a conversation with three different people from three different countries all talking about old junk? It was just it was a cool interaction. And then Anton happened to live like an hour, hour and a half from those guys. So then they started talking to Anten in Swedish about like Sweden and stuff. So it's just it's Hershey's always such a cool experience. That happens every year, different situations with people from all over the world.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, he said uh Anton went to uh a bunch of there's a there's one guy or a couple guys that organize a container from from Sweden every year, uh, for sending to Sweden every year for Carlisle and Hershey. And um Anton went and took earlier this week he took my truck and took a bunch of stuff he bought. He bought some stuff for his father and his and his and his father's friend or his friend. Um and uh he said when he got there to the container it was two other Swedish guys, so he he hung out with them for a bit and we're talking and whatever. So it's like it's kind of wild this pot time of the year, how many people from Europe and Japan and Australia and New Zealand and you know, people from all over the world that come to our little part of the country for Carlisle and Hershey, and it's really neat because now we've gotten to know a lot of these people and we see them every year and say hello and you know, whatever. We trade shirts with a a couple from New Zealand every couple years. We see them, they buy stuff from us. It's it's it's really cool. So that it's just neat the melting pot of the world. So that's why if like we always say, if you haven't made it to Carlisle or Hershey for the fall, it's worth if you can get at least a week or two weeks away to do it. Um and and then we didn't even talk about there was there's a swap meet in between at the EMMR museum that happened that we didn't. Swap meet of Trog. Swap meet of Trog and Trog itself. We just it's just so much going on. We we kind of dispute Carlisle and Hershey.
SPEAKER_01:I need I need Saturday and Sunday to like one of these years we should make a decision. Like if it's gonna rain early in the week, we'd skip Carlisle and go vend a Trog. Yeah. Just because people say they do so well at the Swap Me to Trog. It'd be cool just to do one year.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, it would be fun. It it's just uh it's just always so much going on. But I am we did just start working on that 32 roadster old drag car we got out of Ohio. We just pulled that apart yesterday to start restoring that or re you know, refurbing it or whatever you want to go call it.
SPEAKER_01:Um check the video, it's out today on Sunday. If you're listening to this on Sunday, the video is out today on YouTube.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, there you go. Um so we disassembled that to start fixing that. And the idea is to keep that a nostalgic drag car. So that car would be a good example of something we'd have a even more of an excuse that we could bring a car to maybe race, we could vend it to SWAT meet, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah all that stuff. So Who knows? I say that every year and then I'm flaky and flaky and I don't do it. I don't know. I I I'm self aware enough to to know my fault. Yes. So but yeah, that was kind of our wrap up on Carlisle fall Carlisle and Hershey. Great time. Um you can check out the week in the life of videos where we showed some of the adventures from that, and uh it's been a lot of fun, and hopefully you guys uh maybe inspired you to to make it out uh next time or set up and yeah, I want to say thank you to everyone that came by the booth, stopped us while we were walking around.
SPEAKER_01:You know, just we appreciate all the support. It's always cool seeing people wearing iron trap shirts that I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:It was kind of crazy at Hershey and Carlisle, but Hershey especially, I couldn't believe how many iron trap shirts I saw of different types. It was like all the iron trap shirts. Yeah, we saw I mean, I saw a ton.
SPEAKER_01:I'm always like kind of and I I enjoy when it's someone I don't know. Because like I see shirts at swap meets all the time, and it's like friends of ours or people we're we know pretty well, so it's like it's neat to just walk past someone they're random vendors that were wearing.
SPEAKER_00:Like I saw a handful of our parts robot shirts, and I was like, that's pretty cool. Like limited run shirt, and you you see, you know, you see.
SPEAKER_01:A handful of them, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So I I'm still still very surreal that people actually think what we're doing is cool enough to buy a shirt and wear it somewhere, not just like you know, like we're making shirts that are cool enough that you'd actually want to wear it to an event. So that's really cool. We thank everybody. Yep. Appreciate it. And uh if you're watching on YouTube or even Spotify or listening on, you can comment. What was your best Hershey or Carwill find this year? Like if you went, what was your score that made you really excited? Whether it was a really great deal to resell and make money or uh something that you were looking for that was really cool. I'd love to hear we'd love to see you down below and and hear what you got.
SPEAKER_01:And remember, there's 50 weeks till Hershey next year.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, there you go. Thank you guys for listening. We appreciate it. We'll uh catch you next time. See ya.
SPEAKER_01:See you guys.