Sometimes you just get lucky
Today we went to the dump to the swap area, and didnt find much. But on the way out, I had to dump some trash, and when I looked into the compacter you dump everything into, I saw an ancient trunk. Not a huge one, one about the size of a baby coffin. Now, your'e not supposed to take things out of the compactors, but no one was looking, so I opened the lid. And sitting right on top of a some crumpled newspapers was a box that said Britians Soldiers, and when I took the cover off, it had 5 beutiful tin solders in it. So I put the cover back on and was going to leave the trunk, because I didn't really need or want an old trunk, but last second I just grabbed the thing and put it in the car. And thank god I did. When I got back to the shop we went through it, and in wrapped in the paper bits and tissue were more tin soldies. I have an almost full set of civil war soldiers, I have a number of other soldiers in very very good condition. Sadly two horse solders had missing feet, but the find could be worth at least a few hundred dollars. Not even counting the trunk if it has any value, and it might, it's leather clad and in decent condition.
I've already send an email to a site that buys and sells tin soldiers. I'm hoping I can get a decent price withough going through the trouble of ebay.. but if not, I can do that too. Still have to put the jack o lantern I found on ebay.
I have no idea why anyone would throw out the tin solders. I can only imagine someone was cleaning out for their parent or grand parent and they intended to bring the stuff to the swap but maybe go frustrated at the line of cars or lack of parking...and just said screw it. Maybe they didn't even really know what was in the trunk. Also in the bottom of the trunk were about 3 or 4 dozen marbles... which may or may not be old. Hard to tell.
All in all a fun find. Though my crazy friend would be beside herself that I salvaged lead figures. lol