How to please my father

Okay, so I'm no expert in this field -- I think, in fact, I'm the one who most frustrates and aggravates Pop. But today, I did something on a whim that raised his eyebrows in a positive manner.

As some (many) people know, I spend my Sundays at one particular auction house, in large part for the social scene, as well as the occasional opportunity to pick up a cool post card or two for dirt cheap (which I did again, today, but only by accident).

Today's auction had a lot of musty, fusty, mildewed books and other not-too-terribly-interesting items, including a half table of cameras and accessories. The bulk of those cameras had been battered Brownies of all sorts, with a few plastic-bodied virtually-disposable single lens reflex units generally given away when one subscribed to Time or TV Guide magazine in the 1980s or '90s. In the midst of these items lay a somewhat grimy thing which, to me, looked as though it might be worth a couple of dollars. It had a bellows structure, and a brand name which only vaguely rang a bell (unlike Kodak, Minolta, Canon, etc. in all their everyday familiarity): it was a Graflex. It had a film packy-thing attached to it, too, so I could tell it wasn't your everyday 35mm toy.

I brought it, plus a box of lenses, filters, etc, for a Zeiss-Ikon, home to my pop. He was practically beaming, as he came downstairs after checking on their respective values -- the Zeiss-Ikon stuff was worth ten-to-twenty times what I paid for it, and the camera, for which I forked over a grand whopping dollar, is quoted in Pop's sources, as valued at $200.

I really like it when good luck comes my way at the auction. Especially when it's pure-dee dumb luck.

And, Pop isn't complaining, either.