My second year. A farm auction, and a walnut console stereo from about 1965, six feet long, the kind with the record player under a lid on one end and the radio on the other. Beautiful wood. Nobody was bidding and I got it for $40. I thought I was a genius until I had to get it home. I borrowed a buddy's trailer, put gas in his truck, and it took three of us to get it into the garage, where it sat, where it did not play, where Sheila parked next to it for five months. I finally took it back to the same auction barn and it brought $15. Paid $40, spent $10 on gas, got $15 back.

What I learned: If it plugs in, plug it in before you bid. If it takes three men to lift, it takes three men to sell. And when nobody else is bidding, there's usually a reason.

A household auction in a church parking lot. A box lot of Pyrex, and I wanted it, and so did a man in a seed cap on the other side of the wagon. Or I thought he did. Every time the auctioneer looked over that way, the man's hand went up, and every time, I went up another two dollars. I got it for $32. On the way to my truck I passed the man in the seed cap and saw what he'd been doing the whole time, which was waving to his wife across the lot. The box was worth about $15 to me. There was one good bowl in it.

What I learned: Decide your top number before they start the lot, write it on your hand if you have to, and stop there. And make sure the fellow you're bidding against is actually bidding.

A dozen Star Wars figures on their cards at the flea market, $3 apiece. I'd been reading about the old ones and my heart was going. I didn't look close. They were new, from the line they started making again a couple of years before, and every toy store in Indiana had a pegboard full of them. It took eight months to sell all twelve at the booth, for $36 total. I broke even, if you don't count eight months of shelf space, which you should.

What I learned: Turn it over. The back of the card has the year on it. So does the bottom of most things.

A big Griswold No. 12 skillet on a blanket at the fairgrounds, before sunup, for $20. I knew what a No. 12 brings and I had my money out before the man finished saying the price. I didn't spin it and I didn't look at it in the light. When I got it home and cleaned it there was a crack running in from the edge almost to the middle, the kind that won't ever hold grease or heat right. It sold for $5 to a lady who wanted to hang it in her kitchen for looks.

What I learned: This is where rule number five on the front page came from. Every piece, every time, no matter how good the price is. Especially when the price is that good.

On the front page I say I don't touch them. I said that after I touched them. In the spring of 1998 everybody was buying Beanie Babies and I bought a laundry tub of forty for $40 at a garage sale, figuring the people lined up at the card shops would pay at least a few dollars apiece. They wouldn't. Everybody who wanted Beanie Babies already had a tub of their own. I sold them through the year for $22 total and gave the rest to the church for the kids at the Christmas party, which is the only part of this story I'm proud of.

What I learned: If everybody's buying it to sell, nobody's buying it to keep.

A box of thirty for $5 at the flea market. Cars, pipes, a fire engine, a whole chess set's worth of little men. I'd been told they used to sell. "Used to" was the important part. Sheila said not to. I priced them at $2 each, then $1, then a whole shelf for $10. In four months, not one. They went to the church rummage sale on August 2.

What I learned: Listen to Sheila. That isn't a joke. She has a better eye for what people want in their house than I do, and she's been right more than I'm going to put on the Internet.

A Fiesta pitcher at a garage sale for $12, in a color I didn't know. I thought I'd found something rare. What I'd found was one of the new ones they've made since 1986, in one of the new colors. If I'd taken the time to learn the marks and the colors, I'd have known it in two seconds. It sold at the booth on July 17 for exactly $12, and the mall kept its $1.20. Two and a half months of shelf space to lose a dollar and twenty cents.

What I learned: I went to the library and got a book on Fiesta and read it cover to cover. Three weeks later I found the red disc pitcher for $15 and knew exactly what it was. It sold for $110. So the book paid for itself, and it was a library book.

A brown Philco table radio from the '40s at the flea market, $20. The man said it just needed a tube. I don't know radios, which is rule number one, and I bought it anyway, because it was a good-looking radio and I had a picture in my head of it on a shelf in the booth with a $65 tag. Two radio fellows looked at it for me. One said it needed more than a tube. The other said it needed a lot more than a tube. It sat in the garage from June to September and lost the vote on the first of August. It went to the consignment auction on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend and brought $8.

What I learned: "It just needs a tube" is never true. And rule number one is rule number one for a reason.

An eight-piece set of Pyrex refrigerator dishes with all the lids, $2 at a garage sale. I set the box on the floor of the truck without wrapping anything and took the railroad crossing on the county road a little quick. Two of the dishes didn't make it. The other six sold on September 11 for $14, so on paper I still made $12. But a whole set with lids brought $26 in April. That's the real number.

What I learned: There is now a laundry basket and a stack of newspapers behind the seat of my truck at all times. Wrap it before you drive. I know the road. I've patched that crossing myself.

A Little People garage with no Little People in it (March 20, $1), and a Play Family Farm with no animals (August 7, $2). I know complete is the word. I wrote it on the front page. Then I see a dollar sign and forget. They're both in the booth right now. My plan is to find the people and the animals loose at garage sales and put them back together. Sheila says that's how you end up with a garage full of plastic cows. I'll let you know how it comes out.

An estate sale, a retired machinist's house. In the basement, a wooden machinist's tool chest with all the little felt-lined drawers, full of his micrometers and calipers and gauges, all of it clean and oiled the way a man keeps things he's proud of. $60 for the lot. I'd never spent more than $40 on one thing, and I went out to the truck to think about it. When I came back an hour later it was gone. I saw it again that fall, or one just like it, in a dealer's booth at a show in Indianapolis for $350.

This one isn't in any ledger, because I didn't buy it. That's the mistake. It's the only one on this page I still think about.

What I learned: The rules are there to keep you from buying junk. They're not there to keep you from buying the best thing you've seen all year. When you know it, you know it. Buy it.