if it looks weird on the x-ray.
Another time, I went to NYC for a computer trade show. While I was there, I called a high-end mineral dealer there and got invited to his offices and showroom. He sold minerals to high-end collectors and museums, so what he had was way out of my price range, but we were both mineral dealers, so it was a professional visit.
His location was on the 16th floor in some building in the diamond district, with security, cameras, and a video camera at the outside door of his place. I went in. We chatted. I looked at some spectacular specimens and we discussed the business we both did. I was about to leave when he said, "You know, I might have some stuff for you."
He took me into a back room, where there was a stack of about 25 flats of specimens. They were part of a collection he had purchased from the family of a long-time collector who had died. He had cherry picked out all the high-end stuff, and what was in the flats was everything else - stuff that wasn't his stock in trade.
A lot of it had old collector labels from the 19th century and even earlier. The specimens weren't visually that interesting, but...so I asked him how much he wanted for the entire stack of flats. I didn't even look through all of the flats. I was blown away when he said, "How about $1200?" I said, "Done," and wrote him a check. So, now I had 25 flats of minerals to deal with in New York City. I excused myself and went to a store in Times Square and bought a heavy-duty luggage cart and some bungee cords and went back to his offices.
I loaded it all up on the cart and left with it, rolling it through the hall, into the elevator and out onto the street. I was about 10 blocks from my hotel, so I hauled that stuff down the sidewalks and across the streets through NYC. Back at the hotel, I had to figure out how to get that stuff back to California. Finally, I found a UPS store not too far away, bought boxes, then bought rolls of paper towels. I spent the next three hours repacking all that stuff into boxes, and then took the bigger boxes on the luggage cart back to the UPS store and shipped them off to California. I disposed of the empty flats in the hotel dumpster.
By the time I had sold all of those specimens, I had made over $15,000 on that purchase. The guy in NYC thought they were worthless, and they were to him, I suppose, but they were a windfall for my internet sales business. Those old labels were worth more than the specimens, it turned out, but the specimens were classics, all from famous locations that no longer existed.
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