Tristar said:
Having items damaged by UPS, USPS,... does have its benefits. A few years ago I was in a small town in MO on business, and I stopped in at a local antiques mall. I asked the owner if he had any FD, EMS, or police items, and he said he had shipped a rotating light with a glass dome to someone that purchased it on ebay, but that the buyer refused the shipment as he heard broken glass rattling in the box. The owner of the shop had just gotten the box back earlier that day, so we opened it together. To my delight the light was a Federal 175 hill light (in very good condition), with a clear glass dome. The only broken glass was one of the bulbs. The owner was fed up with the ebay sale gone bad, and he sold the light to me for $75. The only downside was going through security at two different airports with the light packed in an overnight bag!
Several years ago I had sold my '67 Pontiac ambulance to a then-Navy doctor who lived in SC. He did a total restoration on the car and repainted it, with the Navy's permission, to look like an old Navy ambulance, complete with the stenciled signs on the doors. I also sold him a nice
NOS 175D that I had gotten along with a set of Superior bullet lights. Later he contacted me wanting an outside mount siren, and I sold him a nice 66L. Downside was that I under-insured the siren, and it was "lost in the mail", never to be found. So I lost my a** on that one! I was very careful after that to make sure whatever I sent was over-insured.
You think that getting past airport security was something? In 2001 I went out to Southern California for a weeklong meet put on my the then-SoCal chapter of PCS (now Professional Cars Internat'l). On the Friday of the meet, B&M Siren owner Kevin O'Connell put on an afternoon-long "emergency warning devices" symposium....all about the history of B&M and what they had built over the years. But did I get a surprise at the end of his presentation. Many years ago when the original owner of the co., Dick Miles, was still running things, I had sent in an S8B Siro-Drift siren for repairs. That siren eventually disappeared from the plant, and for a good long while, no one could make contact with Miles. I was then informed that Dick had died and that the place was shut down and no one knew what was where. But thanks to the late John Dorgan, I found out that B&M was alive and well with Kevin running things. When I first spoke to Kevin I told him that I was still looking for the siren I had sent in way back in the early '80s. I described the siren to him, as it had previously been worked on by a co. in Dallas that did B&M work, and they had painted the rotor with copper spray paint. Kevin said that he thought he had seen it. That was in '98 and he started the search. Long story shortened, he couldn't find it. Much to my surprise in 2001 at his symposium, he presented me with a refurbished and newly chromed B&M CS8B siren to replace the lost S8B. I almost fainted! Now that was in July of 2001, just two months before 9/11, so I had no problem getting the siren, which was tucked inside my duffel bag, on to the plane. But was that thing heavy! Once we landed at DFW, I had to go from one terminal to another, a very long walk. So I commandeered a vacant wheel chair and sat the duffel in it and pushed that heavy thing to the terminal to catch my flight back here. If it had been two months later, I'd never gotten that siren on a plane.
