> i haven't touched this stuff in 25 years

then it isn't yours in any sense that matters, it's an archaeological site. that said, the camera works, which is more than can be said for most of what passes through a yard sale. reclaim the camera, price out the rest.

an archaeological site! that's exactly what it felt like seeing the photo, like opening a time capsule somebody else packed. the skip-protection CD player is the one i'm weakest on, i used to carry that thing everywhere. it deserves better than a stranger's driveway table.

Case open: abandoned property. Exhibit A, the camera (works, reclaim). Exhibit B, flip phone (novelty, reclaim, it's a conversation piece). Exhibit C, earbuds (they're wired and tangled, straight to the table). Exhibit D, CD player - this is the contentious one. Verdict: you don't get to abandon a thing for 25 years and then suddenly get sentimental. Sell it. Case closed.

Dex i would accept this ruling if you hadn't just put the CD player in the same category as a tangle of earbuds. the earbuds have never meant anything to anybody, fine, straight to the table. but that player has skip protection. it went in my jacket pocket every single day of like 2003. you don't just hand that to a stranger because i was bad at deciding what to keep when i was 20.

deep down i think i'm keeping it and pricing out everything else but i needed to say that out loud first

skip protection is a real feature though. i had a discman in high school that survived being dropped off a counter like four times. keep it, whatever else happens

deal accepted. i'm going to test it this weekend with the same CD i had in it, which i'm pretty sure is still in the box because i never took it out. if it spins i'm framing the whole set up on the shelf next to the PDAs.

yeah second this. 25 years of basement rent is worth at least a diner breakfast. get her the good pancakes

the cd you never took out is the best possible detail. if that turns out to be the disc you were listening to when you packed the box, this stops being a yard sale dilemma and becomes an unfinished sentence.

an unfinished sentence is still a sentence nobody wanted. case closed stands. your cousin keeps the blank tags either way, someone's got to do the pricing and it isn't you, you'd stand there debating each tag for an hour

it's a burned disc. no label, no sleeve, just marker scuff on the top. so now i'm going to be standing in her driveway this weekend listening to whatever 20-year-old me decided was worth 74 minutes of a spindle

if it's the worst, package it with the player and sell them together. stranger gets a mystery, you get rid of the corpse. case closed, for real this time

burned disc with marker scuff is the most 2003 thing in that whole box. mine were all like that, half of em skipped on track 3 because i burned them too fast. post what it turns out to be

dex i will have you know i am excellent at pricing, i just... choose not to be. and tern i will absolutely report back, because now i'm worried it's a mix i made for someone which changes this whole thing from a yard sale thread into a more complicated yard sale thread

before you get sentimental, pop the lid and look in the battery bay. 25 year old AAs leak and eat the contacts, and if they've corroded your player is a shelf ornament whether it spins or not. i keep a drawer of loose batteries at the bench for exactly this, dani calls it my hoard pile.

of course now i have a new worry. i genuinely don't remember if i took the batteries out, 20-year-old me was not a person who thought ahead. going to check the battery bay before i even drive out there, because if the contacts are gone i'll be crying in a stranger's driveway at 9am.

an unlabeled disc is a cataloguing failure, not a romance. i've watched people shelve things without a spine label for six years and it always ends the same way - nobody can find it, nobody can get rid of it, it just sits in a box being technically someone's. which, come to think of it, is your entire box.

wren that was a little too accurate and i'd like to formally request you stop describing my life from across the board. anyway. cousin says the sale starts at 8 saturday and she's making me do the pricing after all, so i'll have the full report by noon. batteries checked thursday.

8am start and you're on pricing duty. this is a trap she set on purpose, she's seen your shelf. write the number, say the number, never say the words "skip protection" out loud at the table or you'll walk home with the whole box back. i bought a discman at a yard sale in 2019 for two bucks, worked fine, flipped it a month later. no regrets, that's how it's done. case closed.

i still have the jacket. it's in the back of the closet and the pocket is exactly where i'd have kept it, so apparently the muscle memory from 2003 is the only part of me that still functions. pricing system: anything with a moving part gets a number and i don't look at it again.