I saw some giggles at the antique plaza this weekend. I love browsing those places but I rarely buy anything. But sometimes I get lucky and find a bargain, and if nothing else it's fun to look.
I always check the front case so I can laugh at the FW prices. They only had one this time, and at $395 it was ALMOST reasonable. Had a manual and the case looked decent. Usually they're more like $450-$500 so I took a moment and admired their restraint. Maybe prices are starting to fall!? This was even a ...centennial, I think it is, with the blue ring on the badge?
In the main mall I found the usual - treadle machines with big price tags and so much stuff piled on top I didn't even try to open most of them (why do they DO that? They ALL do that!) DH came and fetched me, "Did you see the really fancy Singer? With all the paint?" Well no, that doesn't sound like something I'd seen so he led me to it. Singer 66 red-eye, sitting on the floor halfway behind a table. I think, "Hmm, not up on display, maybe it'll be a bargain!" I pull it up where I can see it and it's a little rough and dusty but not too bad. Slide plate is missing but otherwise appears intact, only a couple little dots of rust. Has the foot pedal and cords all look OK, motor seems clean and everything moves alright. No attachments or manual but that's OK. Decals are pretty good but not super. Flip over the price tag and.... they wanted $450 for this "RARE ANTIQUE!!!". MORE than the FW up in the front cabinet!! I (literally) LOL'd at that one. I should have snapped a pic of the tag, it read like a bad Craig's List ad.
Someone else had plastic jars full of "sewing machine attachments". The jars were taped up so you couldn't spread out the pieces and they wanted $27 per jar. By far, MOST of what I could see in the jars looked like the brackets and pins and stuff that would have been inside an attachments box to hold the pieces in place rather than actual attachments themselves. If they were $5 I might have gone for it.
I did find a manual for a Minnesota "A" machine for $5 in the attic space at a little funky shop, but it was really dirty, yellowed, and bent up and I think a spider was living in it so I took a pass. I don't have any of those machines and don't anticipate getting one or I'd have braved its 8-legged guardian. But if anybody needs a manual, I know where you can find one if you're not afraid of spiders! It was just paper, probably about to disintegrate, but you could probably get a good scan off of it first.