LOL......I'm still alive.....and.......(drum roll please).............it was a Frankenstein collection of MIJ....not even worth the trip. Was so disappointed. I don't know about the rest of the country but here on the east coast, vintage drum sets have become non-existent. I have not seen a vintage set for sale in almost 2 years. No incredible yard sale finds...no flea market treasures.....nothing....oh well.....maybe next time...Keep on Pl

Wah Wah Waaaaaaah...sorry Phil. I feel your pain, but hey, at least you made it out alive. Or did you?

That crazy old woman may be posing as njphil3 just to keep the authorities at bay until she can dispose of the body etc.

So, what was the story behind the kit? It sounds like the woman was a widow... did she have any fond memories associated with her husband's drumming? Maybe she hated all the racket? LOL It seems sorta serendipitous that a random conversation, between two random people, at a random party, revealed a specific connection to drumming. Call me sentimental, but that in itself seems like a pretty cool find.

-murph

Always worth checking out but it seems the more hoops you have to jump through, or the longer you have to wait to check out a lead, the less likely that there will be gold at the end.

You used to occasionally find drums at thrift stores but now they send anything that looks remotely like it may have value to their auction sites. The closest I've come lately is finding snare kit cases. A year or so ago I came across a 60's era Ludwig case in a small antique store, there was definitely a drum inside, my mind raced as I opened it, maybe a Jazz Fest, maybe a Supra, surely at least an Acro...but no, some generic steel modern MIJ thing. Saw another case a few weeks later in a thrift store, same rush....empty.

Oh well, the thrill of the hunt continues.....

Been there before! At least she didn't sell it to another guy she ran into after you (that's always fun). In Mpls their ain't $hit to buy - so you'd think prices would be rising rather than stagnating or worse. I quit looking around here long ago.

Good luck and don't lose hope. Glad you made it out alive ~

I feel your pain. I live in NH and there has been very little action with things for sale around here and I used to find all kinds of stuff years ago. I got a call once back in the 90's from some young guy that was looking for info a drum that came from his wife's grandfather. This was pre-internet and this guy went with his wife to visit the grandmother one day and a set of old drums was out at the curb for trash. The husband played a little but knew nothing about old drums. He grabbed them as the grandmother told him they were her late husbands drums and she always hated those drums because the bass drum had a "flapper" painted on it.

You guessed it... the set was a 1920's trap set complete with 28" bass drum, wood blocks, Chinese tom and.... a late 20's scroll engraved black beauty super sensitive. It was complete except for the snare guards. At first this kid brought the snare to a music store and everyone there freaked over it. Obviously he realized he had something special but did not know where to turn. He ended up getting hold of me and I was the lucky enough to see the whole thing. They were way more than I could afford and this kid and his wife looked like they needed a break. Once I educated him he ended up selling it all for a good price but damn that was a crazy find. I think the Grandmother thought of that flapper like the leg lamp in "A Christmas Story". She hated that thing as far back as she could remember and after her husband died, the drums went straight to the trash! Yikes!

I took pics of all this stuff and probably have them buried somewhere. I knew I wanted to remember this set!

Great story. Thanks for sharing ~

The continual decline of vintage drum "scores" out there, is obviously a function of the internet/information age, and it could be argued that here at the VDF we are guilty of making it worse when we answer the "what is this drum worth" questions from new members.

In the world of poker they call it "feeding the fish"...when a beginner at the poker table makes a poor play, and a more experienced player explains to them what they did wrong, it makes the poor player less of a "fish" which negatively effects the future expected winning percentage of everyone else at the table. Although some serious poker players will get quite angry when someone at the table "feeds the fish", I have always had the opinion that educating the "fish" will keep them coming back to the game, and that is ultimately keeping the poker economy strong. That is also how I feel about the advise given here at the VDF. If not for the answers I got to my first few noob posts, I might have only one drum set in my basement.

If you find those pictures please post them Im sure everyone would love to see them.

Behind the drums was a land shark dada dah dah