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Good one Eric, you were a young pup back then and are still going strong.

OK I got chidded into telling a picking story by Minuteman, The originator of this thread! It appears to be very popular and this is all thanx to who i think is probably the best petroliana picker out there bar none. It seems like when we used to pick more often, that every 2 or 3 years he would show up with a new truck because the last one was shot!! No one drove more miles and crawled under into or over more old buildings and sheds than that guy, whew! Anyway he was an inspiration for sure. Anyway, i dont have many pics cuz like he said we never took photos of the truckloads, just the individual things we kept after we put them up.. This story took me about 5 years to complete. I was trying to buy some signs from an old fellows fence not far from home about 25 years ago and asked about globes. He said the only time he ever had a chance to buy any was about 5 years earlier when a guy tried to sell him 2. I asked what they were and he couldnt remember. outa the blue i joked, they werent Grizzly were they? I had been dreaming of getting ANYTHING from this rare Montana co. He thot for a minute and said i think one of them was! I got a name from him and the hunt was on. Turns out the guy lived next to a small piece of property id just bought and actually one of his sheds was 10 ft onto my property! Ah now i had a reason to go over and see him. The woods were real thick right there so i couldnt see his place at all but went over and knocked on the door. on the front of the shed were a few signs and i could see a visible in a leanto. He comes to the door and i ask him about the globe and told him about the shed being over on my property and that i didnt really care. He said lets go look in the barn. Im getin kinda excited at this point and just inside the door of this old junk filled barn is a big box of bolts on the floor with a Grizzly Ethyl globe laying on its side on top of the bolts!! Holy *****, would it be ok if i get it outa there? NO, I put down there because it used to be up on that beam with another globe and the cat knocked the other one off and it got broken. Over in the corner was the broken globe.......... An Oval E globe, whew! I woulda died had it been a regular Grizzly! Anyway he didnt wana sell it now! Still laying down in the box,, Just leave it there! Long story short i bugged him for 5 more years to no avail. One day he was with his wife up town and i see them together and go over to them. I had noticed that at one time he had a fireplace on the side of his house and it had been removed leaving a big section of exposed area that was missing the bricks that looked like ***** and had been that way forever. Being a mason, again i asked to buy the globe offering my original amount but throwing in that i would patch in the brickwork on the house on top of it,... in front of her!! The pressure was on now! That evening the phone rang and you guessed it , come fix the brick and i will sell you the globe! Got the globe 2 Gilbarco pedestal air meters a bunch of old signs and a G&B 67 Visible before it was all over.......... Dont ever give up and pull out all your old tricks! Lol

Great picking story Les!!! I'll tell you the Grizzly globe story that belonged to the guy at the bakery in Missoula sometime. You and Kim are a hell of a team!! What a great, rare globe!!!

Last year I went to an auction where there were dozens of old vehicles from model T era to the 60's. The preview showed a picture of a shed crammed with heavy auto parts, transmissions, engines, lawn mowers, radiators etc.
I wondered how the heck are they going to sell that!

When I got there they had pulled out tons of parts out of this shed and it was in rows on pallets.

There was still 2 feet of junk left in the shed and I poked around in there as well as 30 other people. The auctioneer said, "If you find something in there you want, bring it out and we'll auction it off, but you won't get it for a dollar, it'll cost $5 to start." I thought, hmm if I go digging in there and find something, I'm not going to bring it out for everyone else to see. haha, so I looked in there and there was a few cans but you really couldn't tell what was in there unless you took things out and made room, because if you moved something you had to put it on top of something else. It was nasty dirty, dusty, dead rats etc, but looked like fun. So at the end of the auction they decided to sell the remaining contents of the shed for one money and I got it for $35. One thing I had wondered about this auction was, where are all the license plates? They sold 2 but there were 30 to 40 vehicles here. I had about 45 minutes before darkness set in so I dove in with my flashlight. I moved a big red seat, some tires and there was a 2 foot dead furry critter laying there, uggghhh, stepped over it, looked between the studs in the corner and bammm, there was a stack of license plates, from the late 20's to the early 40's, all matching sets. woohooo, a good start. I had 300 miles to drive home so I boarded it up and planned on coming back the next weekend.
I'm not very knowledgeable about old car parts, but I have a friend I know who is. Unfortunately this guy had just lost his wife to cancer the year before and he was in the dumps so I thought yea, I'll give Joe a call and he was happy to get out of the house to do a little digging. Next weekend comes and we arrive and Joe is like a kid in a candy store, he's recognizing what truck this came off of, what that belonged to. I start towards the corner, and now we could take things outside. I got down to the floor, and there was a model T tool box, filled with Ford hubcaps. Found 7 of these all in a nice row, filled with stuff, even mice. I left Joe in there and went into another building as the owner said, take anything you want because in a week I'm bringing an excavator and we're going to level the place. An hour later I go back to the shed and ole Joe has got a grin on his face, "look at this!" he says, and holds up an old motorcycle tank. Neither one of us knew what motorcycle it belonged to, but we knew it was a good one. After hours of research I still didn't know when I listed it on Ebay, but soon after I figured it out, a guy by the name of Excelsior offered me alot of money, that's when I realized this was a 1925 or so Henderson Motorcycle tank. I split the money with Joe and we said, let's do it again sometime.

Great find and story Richard . Congratulations

Ur hot on the trail of Mike and Frank with that story Richard!! Never found any rare bike stuff myself...............congrads!

Well thank you kindly. The reason you never found any rare motorcycles here was there just weren't many. I found one newspaper article dated May 1925 in which the city of Lewistown Montana was looking to do something about catching speeders and their old Ford wasn't doing the trick. A Henderson 4 cylinder motorcycle was one of the fastest machines you could get at the time, and it's looking like they got it. Where the rest of the bike ended up remains a mystery to me, I just hope the scrap guy didn't get it.

Great story on tracking down the Grizzly! I know they're around as this one was caught on a game camera 200 yards from the house, except ... I don't much care for tracking it.

Not sure how long ago this was but I spend a lot of time in and going thru this small Montana town. One day I drove around town and noticed part of a Wayne 70 beside a big old building on the edge of town. I knocked on the door of the closest house and a fellow says he owns the bldg and lot. I asked about the pump and we walked over there. He said someone got the good pump awhile ago but didn’t want this one. I bought it for parts and asked if I could look around in the bldg. I could see it was now a storage bldg for carpet as it was everywhere. I did notice a small attic access door on the outside above the main big doors and asked if there was anything up in the attic. He said no, nothing up there. Would you mind if I took a look I asked and he said sure go ahead. So I got the ladder and headed up.
I opened the small door and shone my flashlight around quick. I could see off to my right something round but the dust was to thick to see what it said so I lifted it and looked at the underside. Holeeee s**t. It was a Husky sign.
This was a big bldg so started back to the middle and I see some wooden boxes. I looked in one and it originally held globe lenses with just one lense in there and unfortunately it was broke in about 3 pieces. There was also 3 boxes of small pint gas cans. Then I also saw a big long sign with a wood frame and flipped it over. Lol, was disappointed it wasn’t Husky.
After about half an hour rooting around I hauled down what I wanted and set it on the ground. The fellow came over and said well I guess there was stuff up there.
Yes and some good stuff I said. We made a deal on the pile and I loaded up. I think I left some of the small cans up there as I figured I had enough.
Pictures of some of it below. Btw. I gave the pieces of that lense to my buddy Les and he repaired it. I must say it looks great and I have never seen another one of those lenses.
There is another interesting turn to this story and another great find that I will add onto tomorrow. It’s getting late.

That was a good stop Kim......several goodies there! All from a junky Wayne 70 sitting outside. That's why you gotta stop and ask questions and look around. You just never know, and many times owners forget about things too.

another great story. Great find Kim!!

Great find . Thanks again for starting this .

Here are some Coke signs I got out of a closed down grocery store in Richfield Utah . And The story behind these computers is my wife's uncle Ferrell lives in Huntington Utah and as Clifton says we used to go around junking together . He new the people and the area better than anyone , so because of him we found a lot of good stuff . Anyways a guy that he new was the guy that serviced all the gas pumps in that whole carbon county area and that this guy had recently passed away .This person lived on a farm in Elmo Utah , Uncle Ferrell told me the last time he drove by there the hillside was covered in old gas pumps . That thought got me very excited so we drove out there and all the pumps were gone but there were piles and piles of computers by an old shed . Ferrell knew the wife so we knocked on the door and asked where the pumps went? she went on to say some guys from California got ahold of her after her husband had passed away and she sold all the pumps and stacks of pump plates to them . It took them 2 trips with trailers to get them all . She said All the computers were going to the dump and she said take as many as you want . We started to load them and I didn't know any better at the time to pick up the old ones piled up outside the shed I grabbed 12 or 15 of the cleaner ones in the shed and then I thought why am I getting these things . So I said thanks and left .

I am going to tell a not so great picking story to shake it up a little. In 2004/2005, I was looking on ebay and a guy had a Cessna neon for sale. I called in and he said come on out and see what I have got because I have tons of stuff including an entire airplane hanger full of signs, cans, and other stuff. I am on the plane the next day to LA. I drive a little over an hour and arrive at the airplane hanger. The guy said, I'll be at the airport restaurant. It was a small private plane airport. I go over and walk in to meet the guy. I follow him to the hanger and buy $33K worth of signs, oil cans, etc. including the Cessna Neon (pictured). I didn't take a lot of pictures but have a few. Here is where the story goes a little sad. As we were walking though the hanger, offices, etc. he informs me this all used to belong to Steve McQueen and he was his best friend. We walk in to the small room and on the floor was a pile of sketches and an old box surrounded by dead crickets. He says "Do you want any of the Von Dutch stuff". I said, "I know that guy was famous but really don't collect that paper stuff nor am I a hot rod guy". He says that he and Steve were good friends and all of this came to me that way. I said "No, not for me". That was one of the worst decisions of my junking career!! That box was his painting box and the sketches are part of the auction link ( a year or two later) that I will attach to this page. The saying goes this way; "I stepped over the Dollar (or two) to pick up the penny". Notice the price of the paint box and all the sketches. Man, I wished I would have bought the old box.... He didn't even care about any of it. I went back to see him a few years later and talk to him from time to time. We joked about the Von Dutch ***** (painting below) and he said he couldn't believe what it brought. He was a great, great guy...... I took a few pictures below with me and my buddy in his Hupmobile taking a cruise around the airport on my second visit a few years later. I am in the back seat. Kinda fun memories..... LOL

https://rmsothebys.com/en/home/lots/bc06

Clifton, we probably all have had those brain fart moments. I looked up the numbers.....that had to sting a little bit! At least you were able to get a few things and make a friend out of the deal.