On Saturday 2/23/08 I located an ad for an estate sale in Vancouver, WA which was being held Saturday and Sunday. The ad said they had lots of "power line insulators" for sale along with the china, silver, and blah, blah, blah. Normally I won't even bother with these based upon the low likelihood of finding anything but x1 insulators but something told me to go for it, even though it was going to cost about eight bucks worth of gas!

So, after church on Sunday I drove the thirty miles to check it out. Apparently the estate belonged to some single old lady who collected all kinds of stuff. In the garage window were about 30 insulators, all but one of which were worth $5 or less. On the top shelf was the piece in this photo. I grabbed it and asked the price and was told that all of the insulators were $5 each. I asked if there were any others and she directed me to a box on the other side of the garage which contained about 20 x1 pieces. She said there were a few more in the kitchen so I checked those and found a Surge, as steel grey Diamond pony, an SCA CGICo. pony, and a second piece pictured in Part Two listed in this folder, for which I forked out another $5.

These are the best pieces I've ever found at a garage/yard/estate sales in 27 years of collecting which just goes to show, nothing ventured, nothing gained!

Yippee!