My only gloats of late are way off-topic. I really haven't engaged in 
"the chase" in earnest at all for quite a long time now. I was heavily 
into my acquisition phase of Galoothood back in the 1990s. But now I'm 
in the "do I really *need* this thing?" phase. So unless it's something 
really unusual or at some insanely ridiculous, way-too-good-to-pass-up 
price, I'm not really buying anything anymore.

Plus I recall a while back (probably a bunch of years now, although it 
doesn't feel like it was more than a couple), there was a bit of a 
kerfuffle over the "gloating." I don't recall who, and even if I did, I 
wouldn't name names, but someone took some sort of offense to the 
gloating and then there was a whole discussion about the ethics, 
morality and seemliness of gloating. There might even have been a touch 
of navel-gazing; I don't fully recall. But after that affair, I decided 
to kind of back off the heavily over gloat, if I did get one.

The most recent really gloatable event I had was when my buddy Michael 
and I bought the truckload of blacksmithing tools from an estate - that 
was back in January 2010. We ended up keeping a few choice things for 
ourselves and selling off the rest at a nice little profit. I still have 
the anvil, a killer Buffalo forge, a mess of tongs, swages, hammers, 
various handled tools, and probably a half-ton of steel stock 
(literally) along with various and sundry other tools that came out of 
the same garage. Unfortunately, pretty much all of Michael's stuff got 
stolen, along with a lot of his other tools and stuff (long story).

- Bill Taggart
- Owner/Operator, Junk King of Central Virginia

On 4/19/2012 2:22 PM, Bill Ghio wrote:
> On Apr 19, 2012, at 12:14 PM, James Thompson wrote:
>
>> >> Have we just stopped with gloating over tool finds? Or are we just not fin
ding tools to gloat over? I haven't seen any decent gloating here in so long tha
t I can't remember the last one. Are all the tools now collected?
>>
>> >> Seems that our posts now refer to tool finds at "ungloatable" prices. I st
ill go to estate sales, but rarely find good stuff at good prices.
>>
>> As Merle Haggard asked, "Are the good times really over at last?"
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