Locomobile

Those are all good signs that the transaction is good. Only takes a few minutes to do a google search, google their name in the white pages and make sure the phone number jives, and that number was on the caller ID etc. I made a sale once about $4k, I received a check written on a bank in the Caribbean, and the delivery address was in California a suburb of LA, I street viewed the house and it looked abandoned, and the people were living in Hawaii. All the alarm bells were going off, so I called the buyer, and this lady got really PO'd at me, but I explained to her that the transaction mirrored a classic scam, and then she understood and agreed, I waited a while and shipped the item and all was good, I was holding my breath on that one -Ron

Be careful. I sold something for 9500 dollars and the money was transferred through PayPal. Something didn't smell right about the buyer, so I stalled him for a few weeks before shipping, 33 days later, the credit card company swooped in and took the money back. The credit card was stolen and the victim didn't realize it until his credit card statement came in and then filed a complaint. The scammer was still calling me after the funds reversal wanting to know when it was going to ship, then I informed him the card was stolen, he immediately hung up. I sold a vehicle on Ebay a while back and I made the guy wait 45 days before I would allow it to ship. 45 days is a good period of time to allow the transaction to settle and fish out any scam. And keep in mind on Ebay/Paypal, the buyer has 6 months to file a dispute and get their money back, and if they use an Amex card for the purchase they have a full year to dispute the purchase. If this buyer is wanting you to arrange shipping and rushing you etc, you better watch out. Bank to bank wire transfer is the safest way for the seller to receive the funds on long distance transactions, anything involving a credit card company or checks written on foreign banks is very iffy. Between countries, banks have very slow communication, a check or money order written on a foreign bank can take up to two months to clear. Most banks will put a hold on them just in case, but if the seller ships the item and the check then bounces, it's gone. Unknowingly, people assume because the bank accepted the check or money order it is good and the hold is just a formality, a bank will accept any convincing looking check, but that doesn't mean it's any good. What I do to sniff out scammers is note the questions they are asking about the item and their level of knowledge of the item, if they don't ask the normal questions, I ask them the questions they should be asking me, if they don't know the answer then something is wrong. People don't buy things they don't know anything about. Generally. -Ron

Waltham built very high grade pocket watches, some of the best available. A Waltham watch was presented to Abraham Lincoln as a gift after the Gettysburg address. 40 bucks for that seems very cheap. There was also a Waltham steam car, although not the same company:

Didn't Mark Twain state that when he was 15, he thought his father was the dumbest man alive, and when he turned 18 he couldn't believe how much the old man learned in just 3 years? -Ron

I'm no Model A expert, but I would think the dayglow green wheels are diminishing it's appeal to a potential buyer. If I was trying to sell it I would repaint the wheels gloss black and give it broader appeal. Cool old car, though. Hang in there, just have to find the right buyer. -Ron

I'm not defending this small business person's lack of response. I will say this though, most small businesses are budgeted for support time. When someone calls they must realize that the person who answers probably also works in the shop so the time they spend on the phone is taken from available work hours. The answering machine is a pretty poor way to handle it though. Being on that end of it in a small business it's best to always answer the phone, but politely get it across to the caller that they don't have all day to discuss their project. Some people will really abuse a small business by continually calling and pestering them and taking them away from the work. On a few hundred dollar sale, there is simply no money in the project to talk on the phone for hours, and the business owner winds up losing money on it. Again this business can at least return an email, which they can group together with others and provide some response, no response is the worst way to handle it. The other issue is turn around time. On custom work, if this business is a single source for a particular product or process, it's likely time consuming on their end as well, chasing down remote suppliers, or simply searching out a source. For upholstery related work and supplies, my experience is none of the good ones turn anything around very quickly and most I called had waiting lists months long and why I wound up tackling the job myself which came out okay. (see pic) It can be frustrating dealing with a small business, but they aren't Walmart or Amazon. Often they are not equipped or even able to handle high volume or rush orders. -Ron

I unhitched my wagon from the train of society's progress a long time ago and that is definitely why I like old vehicles and technology. They lost me somewhere around "Boy George"

Yeah good luck with that. Everybody answers to someone. In the workplace, it's your boss, in business it's your customers, If married, ya answer to her, if independently wealthy, ya answer to the IRS. -Ron

It isn't the people, it's the cable channels, they are scrambling to get the audience back and why they keep stretching with these ridiculous fake low budget shows. Most young people don't watch TV like us older people did, and lot's of older people got fed up and quit Cable years ago. When there were only a few major networks broadcasting, advertising was very expensive, so there were few commercials and higher quality programming. When cable came along with hundreds of channels, advertising became dirt cheap because of the competition, two things happened, the money to produce quality programming disappeared and they combated it by selling more commercial time, running as many as 20 ads in a row during commercial break, more people quit. Cable TV is in a death spiral. Many of the Cable channels are trying to make the segway in to social media, thinking they can somehow monopolize and trap a new audience in to sitting through the commercials again, it's laughable how poorly they do, some random guy talking about substantive intelligent issues in his kitchen on a laptop gets more viewership. -Ron

I'm a bit of a neurotic and I keep thinking about this off and on today. If it's a foot warmer and hung on a stove, the foot warmee would be looking at it upside down. The "M" if it is an M and not a W would be upside down. If it's a shelf it has a radius surface at the edge, , and the pointed portion has no purpose, not very likely a shelf. I think this is off of a wood cook stove, but I think it was just a piece of trim that went up near the top in front of the vent pipe as a guard to keep people from touching it and block a bit of the radiant heat. Something along that line. -Ron

Of course "M"orton thiocol. Apollo 8 most likely. Those wood stoves are beautiful but they will sure heat up a house in the summer time. Some people put them out on the back porch in the spring. "Slaving over hot stove" had real meaning. I was over at Greenfield Village a few years ago in the summer and they had one of those fired up in the kitchen in one of the old houses, it must've been 120 degrees in there, those poor women in the long dresses - period outfits, I don't know how they stood it. -Ron

Doesn't look heavy enough for a foot rest, the post on the back look small and too weak for that. Pretty sure as others have said, it's off of a wood stove, a warming rack for bread. Or a wood heating stove foot warmer, the sloped front looks more similar to those. Look on the right side of this "Majestic" wood stove. -Ron

Everybody has there own way of doing it. First of all, if the PC is 32 bit, I would definitely not be using that on the internet in this day and age, it's too leaky and there is a mountain of malware out there written to attack 32 bit systems. 64 bit systems are much more difficult to penetrate. To find out system type, click on the "Start" or Globe icon in the lower left and in the command box type "dxdiag". A menu will pop up and show all the specs on the PC. For back up, I just use another hard drive in the PC for storage labeled F. Then I use shortcuts on the desktop to access folders in that drive. Backing up the system occasionally is great if we remember to do it. I don't, I get lazy and over confident and it goes for months without a backup. By using shortcuts off the desktop and using the backup drive on a daily basis, everything I cannot afford to lose stays backed up current all the time. I store all of my pictures, video, documents, anything I don't want to lose and for added insurance, I back up some of it to a flash drive occasionally. I had a Samsung drive fail and I lost thousands of pictures and documents, learned that lesson the hard way. The back up is a 2 terabyte which is around 2000 Gig, plenty of space to store video. In the event the maindrive crashes, I would just have to reload the programs, but I still have all of the pictures and videos etc. Main drives for the Windows OS are solid state type and are very fast and reliable. -Ron

This happens, my ex Father in law got some bug to buy a corvette after he retired, he bought it and then realized how difficult it was to get in and out of and all around impractical for a 70 year old guy to be driving, it sat for close to 20 years with less than a thousand miles on it. It was an early 80's model (less desirable as I understand it), but it still sold for quite a bit out of his estate. -Ron

Alert, this seller is apparently very motivated, just slashed the price $50,000. If ya want it, ya better snap it up. Some years ago a guy found a Locomobile steam engine and he listed it for 100k. That must be the sweetspot price when the seller knows it's worth something but not sure how much. A decent Locomobile steam engine is worth about 3k You viewed at $99,999.99. It’s now $49,999.99! Save $50,000.00 Rolls Royce Hood Ornament Vintage Feb 6 1911 Charles Sykes Spir… $49,999.99 $99,999.99 For a limited time Only 1 left at this reduced price.

Baby boomers are retiring. 1957 was the peak and if we do the math, they are all turning 62 right now and eligible for retirement. -Ron

I've noticed that too. I think a lot of it is people have their money tied up in the stock market and bonds and don't want to touch it. Around Detroit, which has some decent suburbs, the job market is still fair and better, the real estate market prices are dropping, real estate is slow gain compared to the stock market. The Dow is back up over 26k today. One thing that doesn't help is the media continually reporting a crash is coming, a little research often shows it's a few economists out of several claiming that. The dollar is very strong right now compared to what it was, which is a good economic indicator. -Ron

Jay Leno said the Model T is the best antique car to own. Inexpensive, cool antique look and parts availability. I've seen T coupes on Ebay in drive away condition, unrestored but serviceable for 8000. I'd love to have a Model S boat tail roadster, but I don't think they are too inexpensive. I'd like to do the Woodward cruise, but steam cars don't like parades or traffic jams. Gotta keep the fuel moving or she carbons up. -Ron

The Brecht steamer looks almost identical to the Conrad Model 70 Dos-a-Dos. -Ron

In response to your original inquiry about the steamer. I have done quite a bit of research regarding these early steamers and have ran across the Brecht several times and am unaware of any surviving examples. I can add this: All of these early steam carriages including the Stanley were built on the Whitney Motorette design. George Whitney held the patent on this vehicle design in it's entirety which he transferred to Locomobile. It was applied for in 1897 but not granted until 1900. There were close to 70 different manufacturers that clamored to bring a steam vehicle of this design to market either unknowingly or disregarding the patent applied for by Whitney. When the patent was granted it was at that time held by the Locomobile Company which some of these early steamers were an almost exact copy of. They immediately issued cease and desist orders to companies that were building on their now licensed design. That is likely why Brecht like all the others dropped that steamer design in 1902. Locomobile licensed a few others like Mobile to continue building for steep royalties. Some closed up shop, most of them simply changed their design to another steamer and the majority started building "gas engine" cars. Stanley only held a few patents on the early steam carriage (wire wound boiler and a few other items) that they sold to Locomobile, Whitney applied for the patent for the whole vehicle which he originally built in 1896. Locomobile sold all of their steam car patents to Stanley in 1904. The Stanley's originally only built 2 or 3 "rather crude" cars in 1897 that were exact copies of the Whitney which they took orders for 200. Locomobile stepped in and purchased their automobile business parts and orders for 200 cars, originally named it the Automobile Company of America, that name was already taken so they named it Locomobile Company of America. -Ron

Just my opinion. I used to use Norton's (Symantec) and was very disappointed with it. Maybe it's better now, but it's a resource hog and wasn't very effective. McAfee's is/was better. That is exactly how my Norton's worked. Looks great, but not too effective. Since PC's have went to 64 bit systems (which secured the ports) and later Windows versions have a much more effective firewall and security features, those 3rd party virus softwares are often not needed. Unless someone is operating with total disregard for malware threats, downloading free software, opening attachments that have been circulated extensively, the threat level is pretty low. Windows XP And Windows 7 are generally 32 bit. There is also a 64 bit version of Windows 7 and then Windows 8 and Windows 10 are both 64 bit. -Ron

That is likely still happening because they are not ads, those popup scams are likely a PUP on your PC. If you haven't, I would run the Malwarebytes scan. Also, if you've installed anything recently, it may be attached to that. Gaming software or any sort of free entertainment based software is notorious for those sorts of attachments. Make sure your Windows firewall is turned on. -Ron

I like how they faked installing and focusing that reflector on the surface of the moon during one of those fake moonwalks so we could shoot a laser from earth and have it bounce back to measure and monitor the distance the moon is from earth. It is still used to this day.

They often didn't, fatalities from train and car collisions at crossing was almost a daily occurrence back then, pedestrians too. Even today there are about a thousand people per year that get killed by trains. Study old traffic laws, Most cities and states, Cars were required to stop at every cross road and alert any on coming cars to their crossing, fire a gun, yell loudly etc. There were no stop signs because the driver was supposed to stop anyway. Cities became jammed and that was the introduction of the traffic cop at the intersection to keep the traffic moving. Then someone invented the multi color stop lamp. I think the first ones were Green and red only. A green "Proceed" and a red "Stop", the traffic officer stood on the corner and operated it. Then someone invented the automatic control for it and added the yellow. Most cities had speed limits of 10-12 miles per hour, anything over 15 mph was considered "furious driving" There is a DVD video that is/was available on Amazon (Was on Netflix too) called "Merrily we roll along" that covers the early motor car, made back in the early 60's and narrated by of all people, Groucho Marx. It is a good comprehensive look at the early motor car and how the people of the day resisted it's introduction. It's on YouTube: Part 1 -Ron

I was only 50% wrong, but I was 50% right, I can live with that -Ron