It is weird where stuff turns up. This was at a garage sale that was a worse-than-usual wasteland of plastic dollar store holiday decorations and still-in-box As-Seen-On-TV single-purpose plastic kitchen gadgets. I spent fifty cents on a fake Mason jar drinking glass with a handle that was heavier-made than usual, but it had an OMG-I-shit-you-not $8.99 price tag from Hobby Lobby on it. Also bought two medium-weight 11-gallon steel garbage cans (two bucks apiece) that were
$20 each from Ikea -- only one lid between them and that one useless because not tight-fitting enough to keep a breeze or animal from knocking it off, so I'll probably drill them and use them for planters. They have dog food residue in them, and the lady clearly found them as unfit for that purpose as they manifestly are.
There was an entire forest of plastic-fabric wreathes, plastic-wicker baskets full of postmodern decorative I-dunno because I cannot even
bear to look at it, and random
art frames that stand out from the wall with some random bit of textured stuff where the art would usually be. All made of plastic, plexiglass, and the cheapest of painted/stapled chipboard.
How my solid vintage folding rule made of genuine boxwood and brass turned up among that amazing collection of highly textured nothingness, I can barely begin to imagine. But it confirms a lesson I've come to believe quite firmly, which is that you can't judge a garage sale from the street. Sometimes the best treasures are to be found among the "goods" of people whose life path is so divergent that they don't value them or don't even comprehend that the items are valuable. How do they come by them? It's fun to speculate, but, ultimately, we usually just can't know.