Did I ever tell the story of how I got most of my collection?

I made the mistake of stopping at an estate sale of the type that is
professionally run.  This was outdoors behind the antique store that's on
the corner of a pretty busy intersection about a mile and a half from me.
I go past there all the time, hence my noticing the "Giant Sale" sign.

Fast forward maybe forty-five minutes or so and I've slowly made my way
through the masses of items when I see some big boxes of piano rolls --
perhaps 5 boxes? -- for a total of around 400 rolls.  The rolls look to
be in good shape and have interesting titles, so I go inside and ask "How
much" and they say "200 bucks."  That's about 50 cents per roll.

I offer them $100 a box and I'll take the whole bunch of their hands.
We're now at 25 cents per roll.  They seem fine with that so it's a
done deal.  The guy says he'll start bringing them up to the sidewalk.
I thought, "Hmmm, that's a strange way of putting it," but I'm okay
with getting the help.

By the time I've gone and moved my car up to the side of the building,
I notice that there are more than 5 boxes; there are in fact _way_ more!
It seems that I didn't notice that under the table where the original
boxes were sitting were a few more boxes, which are also now mine.

After _four_ trips back and forth I end up with bags and boxes which,
when I finally got them cleaned of dust and sorted through, amounted to
approximately 1200 rolls at 8 cents per roll.  If I discount around 10%
as completely un-useable that's still ridiculous!

I have yet to hear anywhere near half of the rolls but I do have
them in categories: Recordo, Themodist, Vocalstyle, etc.  And probably
one-third are QRS.  There were 200 decent Ampico rolls, which were
donated to a couple of guys with an Ampico that I had heard play.
I also have a bunch of rolls that have no boxes, but as fate would 
have it, I also got some 50-odd pristine empty boxes -- _and_ I have
a roll-repairing table.  :-)

My grandson has begun going through the rolls with me and he is tall
enough at 9 years old to be able to pump pretty well.  I have to ask
him nicely _not_ to play the same song over and over again, though;
it drives me nuts.

This is just to say that when I think about prices of piano rolls,
I laugh!

Claudine Jones
Oakland, California