Bargain Hunting

Bargain
Originally uploaded by mfophotos.

A few days ago, my friend Cynthia sent me this e-mail: Seems George Coleman, used photographic equipment dealer, is going out of business due to ill health. His sale is this (Jan 25) Thursday through Sunday, 9-5, except Sunday at 11-4. The location is 23404 Sherwood, at Lozier, in Warren. I was just in there around Sept? October? There was a LOT of stuff. It was nicely organized. Lots of enlargers, large negative carrier ones too. Don't know if there are any images. Probably some store fixtures."

Well, I wasn't about to jump in the car and go during the week, but I figured that Saturday, there might still be some goodies remaining. I contacted some local photography friends, and we all took off in my van Saturday afternoon. We arrived at a somewhat decepit-looking cinderblock building in a light industrial/residential area that looked like it had seen better days. We knew it was the place when we saw the film dispensing units arrayed outside the door. We walked in and it was a mess... stuff was everywhere. Now, of course, the sale had been going on since Thursday, so the very best had been taken already... but still the amount of photographic stuff - from camera cases to chemicals to expensive machine lab equipment was everywhere. Room after room. It seemed like a demented version of colossal cave adventure -- go L, there is a darkroom... go R, there is a door...open the door... you see boxes of stuff... you get the idea. I really wish I had taken a digicam along to show what we saw. Unfortunately, most of the paper we saw that was remaining was for color processing - commercial stuff. I am reluctant to buy any opened boxes of photographic paper. But, I did find a bunch of film, and put most of it into a bag. I found some photographic books (they had lots) that I liked, and some developer, and that was about all I could really buy as I had (stupidly) not gotten a bunch of cash beforehand. Thankfully, Ross loaned me $7, so I could get all that for $20. Matt picked up 20x24 packages of Kodak elite paper - wonderful stuff - for $5.
Anyhow, it was a surreal experience, picking through the place -- it seemed at times that things were left as they were at quitting time one day, and nobody ever cam back to work there.