I started being frugal about 25 years ago.  I got my first apartment, stopped at a yard sale and was able to find just about everything I needed for my new home all at one sale for about $20.00.  From that sale on, I was hooked on yard sales.
 
Then I descovered the wonderful world of flea markets.  I love the booths that have boxes of stuff to poke through.  I seem to always be able to find some kind of treasure for about $1.00.

One day in my town they were having the big trash collection.  My ex-husband and I noticed someone had thrown out some aluminum siding.  We stopped to pick it up to take to recycle when I discovered that people throw out perfectly good things when I got a perfectly find beautiful lamp.   From then on, I was a dumpster diver.  Always  watching for something good in the "trash".

Once I found a box of old pipe stems.  I'm not even sure why I took the entire box, I didn't know what I was going to do with them.  The box hung around my house for about a year when one day I thought I would check ebaby to see if things like that sold.  To my surprise the did sell and quite well for some of them.
So I dug around in the box sorting them, making piles of 50, when at the bottom I found a pipe!  I can still feel the excitement I felt when I noticed it was old, made of porcelain and had a picture of a German soldier on it.  I listed it on ebay and 7 days later my highest bid was $119.00!  That was just for the pipe.  I sold the stems in lots of 50 getting from $50.-$80.00 per lot.  I saved one stem for memories.  My grand total for bringing that box of "trash" home was $1000.00!  Not bad is it?

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