Originally Posted by
jbenedict
I knew Ed for about that period of time also. He sold out in 1996 because he was going blind from diabetes. (He realized it was time to stop driving when he blew a stoplight he couldn't see and someone did a major skid and turn to avoid him and he said to himself, "Man, I'm glad he could see because I sure can't." He gave up the keys and that was the end of that. He sold out soon after.) I got to be friends with his son, Nick, also and once went with Nick to some of his father's hidey-holes around the neighborhood and Greater Ballard. Ed had a *lot* of stuff. When the big camera sale in Puyallup happened, Nick would take a bunch of crap down there to sell and Ed would stay in Seattle. A couple of times, he showed me some of the stuff he had ready to sell to overseas buyers who were going to be in town for the show. He would only open to invited customers on the Saturday morning of the show. I never got invited because I wasn't going to buy anything and he was going to have some heavy hitters in there who didn't want anyone to see what they were doing. He had some really rare stuff. He showed me a Nikon F he would sell to a collector for $10,000 and, at one time, he had about 15 Hasselblad 1600Fs and 1000Fs in a display case going from $1K to $5K depending on condition and rarity. He had the third 1600F off the production line in there. When he closed, he had already sold all of the good stuff and sold what was left on a "take it all or take nothing" to a guy named "Chuck the Peddler" who had a week long sale of the excess in a warehouse in Ballard. There was some way cool stuff- a Kodak Autofocus 8x10 enlarger with a custom cold light head for one but, as I said, almost all of the cool stuff was gone. On one of the shelves were about 75 Kodak 16mm Home Movie cameras from the 40s. Plus a couple of hundred box Brownies. His method of acquiring this stuff mainly was estate sales and most of them were of the "take all or take nothing" variety. So, along with the good stuff came a lot of crap. I remember Clyed's downtown. When Clyed's got out of the LF business, Ed bought all of it from them and sold it in his store. I recognized it but Ed would get offended if you asked him where he got stuff. I was in there on a Saturday afternoon and a guy asked him if he had any screw thread Canons. This guy was obviously a repeat customer because Nick brought out 15 cameras for him to look at. The Camera Show was the kind of place you just had to check into regularly if you wanted the good stuff. It was on kind of a trapline I would run every Saturday afternoon. I frequently would buy some holders- 4x5 and 8x10- if he had any even if I didn't really need any. Loved his sales policies. 30 day no argue MBG and pay with a credit card- full price. Pay with cash? Minus 7.5 %. No MBG? Minus 7.5% Pay with cash, traveller's checks and no MBG? 15% off. On stuff like books and view cameras that you could tell if it was OK just by looking at it, I'd take the 15%. Lenses and bodies I usually paid cash and took the MBG. I got to know him well enough that he would take a personal check and call it cash.
I did a lot of supply business with Dick's Camera in Burien. I bought my first camera (an Exa) and my second camera (A Leotax F with a 50/1.8 Canon which was one of the really good Leica copies from the fifties) from Dick Dalgard. Still have them both. Dick passed away just last year. Never been to Kenmore Camera. Too far off my regular path and they never gave me any reason to go out of my way. Optechs up Republican St. from Glazer's was a pretty good stopping place, too.
Color. That's what has left Seattle. Color. Down in South Lake Union, there used to be all sorts of cool industrial crap to look at and buy. I went to a friend's daughter's wedding last year in the S Lake Union area and, the outside of the building looked familiar. When I got inside, I realized it was a place I had gotten marine parts like generators, carburetors and transmissions rebuilt twenty years earlier. What a waste. My uncle was a contractor and I sometimes was sent down there to get things from a place called "T and A Supply". T was 'Trim" and A was "Accessories" and they sold things like door hinges, screen doors and stuff to install carpets. I got a "T and A Supply" hat there once and had it for years. Just look at all the big buildings so Amazon can rape and pillage the bookseller and publishing industry and line the pockets of Paul Allen... Ah, that's enough...
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