I've been buying and selling things and dealing with all kinds of people all my life. I'm a street-savvy guy from a big city, and I'm no stranger to how weird people can get. But I have to admit I was pretty rattled by this one.
A few days ago I saw an ad in my local craigslist which just said "shaper $125". I saw it at night and realized it might be a good deal, but went to bed anyway. The next morning it was still there, so I called the guy, went out there and looked at it. The machine wasn't perfect, but it ran (it's the 11" Vernon I posted about earlier this week) so I figured for that kind of money I can't lose, and paid, knowing it would be a holy bitch to get it out of the shop. The shop was simply an amazing place. The lot is filled with old airplane hulks, a rotting sailboat, lot of just plain junk, everything covered with morning glory and feral cats. In the back the first person I saw was an old guy sitting on a wheelchair in the sun with no pants on, drooling. Then the actual seller came out, a little squint-eyed guy in a polyester jacket with a gigantic attitude.
He opened up the shop, a 20x30' wood frame building from about 1910. Inside it was very dark, a dim light hanging here and there. The shop is divided into two rooms. In the larger room (about 15x15') was packed a giant Brown & Sharpe horizontal mill, a large Smith-Drum engine lathe (maybe 16x48?), a 12" Clausing lathe, a Jet 6x18 surface grinder, a heat treating oven, a hardness tester, a refrigerator, a microwave oven, a large air compressor, a belt/disk sander, a wood planer, the 11" shaper, the remains of a small airplane (large body section), several bicycles, none functional, about 30 boxes of junk on the floor, and clutter piled everywhere, and chips and dirt on top of that - DEEP. You could barely move in there. The first thing the guy said to me just blew me away. He said "Yup, I've spent the last two weeks cleaning up in here!" I almost choked!
Anyway, like I say, that day I bought the shaper, came home, wrote the posting, done deal. The next day I loaded up a bunch of machinery moving gear and headed back down to Little Appalachia. This time the seller was completely different, like a different personality emerged. He was apparently kicking himself because other guys had come and looked at the shaper and told him it was worth a ton of money. He demanded another $150 "for his time" and whined about how he was in trouble with his wife. I thought about it for awhile and told him if it took a day and a half of his time, that $150 might be reasonable, but that I didn't think it would take that long. We left it at that, and worked on getting the machine up on wheels and freed up. That done, I left the matter until today.
Today I went back down there, and this time I told the guy I thought his demand for money was outrageous. He had sold me the machine, maybe too little, maybe not, but a deal is a deal. As for helping me load it, 99% of the work was simply moving crap in his shop, and he can't expect me to pay him to clean up his shop!
The guy simply went off on me! At one point I really thought he was going to pull a weapon. I realized at some point I wasn't dealing with someone fully rational, but I wasn't exactly in a situation I could just walk away from either. He screamed insults at me for quite awhile and we went back and forth and finally agreed on $100 for a "loading fee". I mean, if the guy had simply asked $275 for the machine in the first place, I might still have bought it, and then no insanity!
The machine is still down there, I don't get to go pick it up until Monday. With a nut job like that, I'm going to be seriously relieved to see the last of that place. I'd like to make a deal with him for the Smith-Drum lathe, but faggedaboutit!
Unbelievable.
Grant Erwin