Various goods with serious money-making potential are tucked away in the garage. Photo / 123RF
Various goods with serious money-making potential are tucked away in the garage. Photo / 123RF
COMMENT:
Like most of us, I'm always on the lookout for an opportunity to make a few bob extra.
This is particularly so at the moment as the Boomerang Child - she always comes home - has returned with the happy news she and Builder Boy are finally engaged.
Naturallywhile Mrs P and I are delighted with the news, we also know weddings aren't always cheap so we plan to pitch in with a bit of cash to help out.
To that end my Londoner heritage has kicked in big time and I've begun to regularly stick some 20 cent pieces in the jar I keep under the bed.
And obviously, being a Londoner, I have a ''scheme" on the go.
I have purchased six old king-size bed headboards from a hotel down the line. The plan is to either do them up and sell them for a million bucks or just flog them off for half a million as is. Simple really.
It would be fair to say Mrs P doesn't exactly share my confidence and enthusiasm for the plan.
She points to a similar scheme 100 years ago when I missed the boat big time.
Back then, I bought an old cast iron bath for $50. There were eight similar baths in a three-storey building and I managed to steal a march on a multitude of prospective buyers and get in first.
As I somehow manhandled the enormously heavy brute down the first flight of stairs, bathed in sweat, hernia knocking at the door, it occurred to me I could buy them all, do them up and sell them for a fortune in the big smoke.
It would be fair to say dollar signs drifted through my imagination, growing bigger with each step.
I knew speed was of the essence, so I left that first bath halfway down the second flight of stairs, sprinted back up to the owner and told him I'd take the rest for $50 each, too.
The deal done, I went back to the struggle.
Old claw foot baths can make a mint when done up, now there's a thought... Photo / 123RF
It took me a full two hours to get that one bath down the stairs - where are your mates when you need them? - and as I somehow tried to get it on the back of my ute, the dam thing dropped on my foot and broke four toes.
To cut a long story short, I had to seek medical assistance and by the time I got back (ironically with two mates who lifted the bath I had left at the foot of the building on to the tray of the ute) the bath owner had given up on waiting for me and, in an era pre cellphones, had sold the baths to a local dealer who'd just happened to chance by - for $200 each.
Thinking that price was still a bargain I shot round to the dealer just in time to see him putting a For Sale sign up on the seven baths he and his team of workers had just collected. The advertised price? $500 each. Money I didn't have.
I've since been told, properly restored, those baths were worth in excess of $2000. I figure my lack of organisation probably cost me in the vicinity of $10,000. Or at least the chance of making that much.
It is a lesson I have never forgotten. I've always sworn I'd never be caught out like that again. And this time I've got the goods safely out of their original home and tucked away in my garage - propped up against the freezer and Mrs P's treadmill, which hasn't seen any action for at least a year.
Unfortunately I've not sold any of them yet and there has already been an ironic link to my previous experience with the baths which could yet prevent me dancing at my daughter's wedding.
I had to move one so I could get some mince out of the freezer and I dropped the blasted thing on my foot.
