No, you have to know what you're looking for then get lucky and stumble upon it, but it really is amazing what people get rid of around here. I see electronic equipment all of the time, so I'll print this article out and keep it in the truck for those days when I decide to look at garage sales.

In the great garage sale find category, my best is this: at a sale a few years ago I came upon a 30-gallon bin filled to the brim with CDs. There was a rather dismissive hand-written note on top that said "All Classical Music." A woman approached me, said "we're never going to sell those. Make me an offer. $20 and they're yours." My heart skipped a beat, but I didn't have a $20 on me, so I calmly purchased my items in hand, drove to a nearby convenience store and got cash. I handed over my $20 just as someone else was advancing on the box.

It took two of us to carry it to my truck, and I unpacked it on my dining room table in a more or less alphabetical order across the entire surface. Someone's family had donated this from what must have been a scholar's estate - they were high-end high dollar issues of all sorts of wonderful works, often with several versions - I can now compare Bernstein and Toscanini and von Karajan on some of their Beethoven interpretations, for example. I did the math - over 300 disks, most of them the $15 to $25 range - I couldn't afford to go buy all of these new, but I treasure them now and hope that the deceased guy is no longer rolling in his grave for what someone did with his wonderful collection.

SRS