Treasure hunting at yard sales

Here is a tip for all you treasure hunters, it works best at yard sales and thrift stores. I know this is going to sound nuts but look for PENS, you heard correct PENS, you see them at every yard sale normally you can buy a whole box full of assorted pens for around fifty cents to a dollar. Believe it or not more and more people are finding Mont Blanc and other expensive pens at Garage sales and thrift stores.

Now you may be asking yourself, who on earth sells or even worse gives away a Mont Blanc pen? well the answer is, Old Jim Bob Jones down the street. See old Jim Bobs grandpa (let's call him Irvin) worked on the railroad for thirty years, then when he retired the railroad threw him a nice little retirement party. Now at said party the railroad honors Old Grandpa Irvin by giving him a nice

shiny Mont Blanc for his many years of service and all is right with the world. Until of course a few years later old Grandpa Irvin goes belly up, and his family is left to disperse of dear Grandpa Irvins possessions. They keep the items of obvious value for themselves, paintings, jewelery, furniture and such while everything else is put in a big yard sale or donated to a thrift shop.

Now here is the thing, Jim Bob and his family are like many people, they only look at the items of obvious value, and have no idea that something like a "simple" pen can be worth thousands of dollars.

So into the yard sale the pen goes until someone who does know what to look for discovers it, and tries to hide their obvious excitement when they hand the lady in the curlers and open back moomoo the 10 cents she wants for it.

Now the point of this story is don't be Jim Bob, don't be the guy that finds out years later he gave a down payment on a house away for 10 cents. Below I'm going to give you some tips on how to identify a Mont Blanc, Test these tips out the next time your at a yard sale or thrift store, you may be very surprised.

1. First thing to look for is this symbol somewhere on the pen.
2. Serial number, this is straight from Mont Blancs website. "The serial number would be located on the clip ring on the right of the clip. But not all of our writing instruments have serial numbers on them because we did not start to put serial numbers on our writing instruments until 1991"
3. Under the clip look for the words Pix or Meisterstück
4. Hold the pen up to the light. The black plastic should be somewhat transparent
5. Look at the ring of the pen, Every Mont Blanc pen has the word Germany on the ring.

Just a side note, the above story with Jim Bob and Grandpa Irvin was true. The pen was auctioned for $2,700