I thought I would start a thread, with not much to do with pictures…just, what is your story on something you just missed out on. I know we all have stories like this, and I love hearing them. Mainly because I have two stories that will blow your socks off.
The best part, is my stories actually happened, I sh*t you not…

I was about 20, and I was just getting going at the military thing. I was digging around in antique shops mostly: but, I soon tired glass shelves that held Nana’s teacups and napkin rings under little pot lights. So I started getting into the real junk shops. You know the place,… piles of crap, in once wet card board boxes piled way over your head. You have to turn sideways hold your breath when walking through the tight aisles for fear of your ass bumping one of the precariously balanced towers, and it all coming down in a rain of magazines, dishes and car parts.
I’m in that place, and it’s an old airplane hangar, so there’s miles of junk to go through. I’m digging around for whatever, and, I’m coming up empty. The person working the counter snaps their newspaper and looks at me between page turns, and was almost obligated to ask me what I collect, so I say, "military". She says from behind the paper, the only thing they have military wise, is a canteen and a painting.
"Well, lets have a look at the painting" says I.
Turns out its a really badly painted landscape. It’s very dark, and hard to make out the details. I’m not impressed. I’m holding it out at arms length and squinting at the thing and I still get bupkis. It looks like a dark blue mess. If I had to say what it was, it looked like it was laying on the floor under another bigger painting while it was being painted…like, that bad of a mess.
"So, what’s the military angle on this bad boy", I ask the newspaper.
"There’s a swastika on the back".
So, I flip it over, and sure enough there burned into the wooden frame is a little political eagle. It looked like the mark that is on handguns, and about that size.
Well…big deal…a little eagle on the back…"So, how much?"
"45 bucks, and that’s just for the fancy frame, you can throw out the picture if you want".
I’m looking at this LP sized painting, and I’m thinking to myself, Jeez, 45 clams, that’s everything in my pocket. So I pass.

Fast forward about 2 years, and I’m reading the paper. I catch a headline and read along. Some college boy digging around in that same place bought that crappy landscape and let a professional look at it…probably Ade. Apparently when the Third Reich appropriated artwork from conquered city museums, there was a little eagle burned into the frame. Turns out …its a stolen Rembrandt from Holland, from their National Collection. There’s a picture of the guy in the paper, holding the painting, out at arms length squinting at it, trying to make it out what the hell it’s a painting of. The article says it’s been missing since the end of the war. The writer speculated it probably came home with some troop, hung it on the wall, and didn’t tell anyone what it was all about. Troop dies, and grand kids clear out the house and it winds up on the junk heap in some crappy airplane hangar in Southern Ontario. The article in the paper was saying the Dutch were pressing the new owner to give it back, and the guy wanted his millions for it.
I never did find out how it all washed out in the end.

The other story I’ll save for a bit…