I suspect that if some of you had been with me today, you would have smacked me for walking away from the machine I refused. It was a beautiful Singer, in fairly clean shape, the cabinet left some to be desired. The woman selling it had drawers full of old spools of thread, heaven knows only how much sewing junk in them...an old darning egg, pipes to put snaps on, etc. Yes, she did have the small manual and the attachments, if you dug thru all the other stuff. Uh...I have plenty of "stuff", including some of those old darning eggs.
I asked her if it ran. Well, she didn't know because she only bought it for a Christmas display. I want you to know I took off my shoes (because they are hush puppies) and waded thru standing water to get there, to hear this. She put this on display, with her drawers of antique stuff open...a Christmas display. LADY...put up a tree and a singing Santa like anyone else!!! She had masking tape running along the cabinet. $130 OBO.
Dh was at the end of the driveway, praying, "Dear God, Please don't let her buy that machine."
I handed him my cane, because the drive was steep, and I was nearly tipping over backwards. Having pulled the drawers out and offered me all these treasured spools of thread and other goodies...forget the machine, the owners sat in their comfy chairs. I scooted this stuff (did I mention,I also have boxes of wooden spools of thread, old needles, metal thimbles, etc?) and pulled the machine up out of the cabinet and looked at all the spider webs. I asked, stupidly, "How long since you ran the machine?"
"I TOLD you, I only used it for display.", I get, with an irritated sigh. Hmmm. I put the Singer down, stepped back, looked at it really well. Yes, there is a plug, but where is the foot pedal? Leaned over a tad closer, and....where the heck is the belt? OMG, is that dried up piece of worm laying there the BELT?
I looked at the man, because it was obvious that I had lost the woman. "It's a pretty machine, but the people who are really interested in them want the to run, and I am only interested in it if it will sew. I can't find that out because there is no belt on this machine." Huh? No belt. (No, dumb***, if you had actually LOOKED AT IT, while you were putting all these geehaws on display, you might have seen that. Obviously, I did not say that outloud. Thought it pretty hard tho.
"No, there is no belt, and anyone wishing to try it is going to need a belt on there. The rest of the stuff in the drawers in not important." I pulled out the manual, the accessories, and a couple of items marked Singer, and laid them in front of the machine. "This is what is important, right here. The people who want this don't care about the rest of it. Just the Singer, if it runs, and these pieces right here. Now, I can't lift the machine, it's too heavy for me, so I don't do repairs, and I don't do any restoration on cabinets, so I am sorry, but I can't spend that kind of money not know if it would run at all. Good luck selling it."
I told my dh, who was sooooo glad to be leaving without it, that they could have emptied the drawers and sold the stuff in there off by itself as collectibles. One of you would probably grabbed the machine up. I just wanted to smack them upside the head for putting it on display and not even noticing the belt and the foot pedal were gone. And to be honest, if it was a 1914 model, it was not really an antique, lol. To be an antique, has to be 100 years old. Like me, it's still only a collectible, lol.