Greedy & ignorant

That headline applied to me just yesterday. I walked by this giant thriftstore and there is all this delicious junk, used furniture, surplus inventory and entire households lying around like a huge yardsale. And there in a corner is a neat glass display that contains jewelry, porcelain, watches and other 'precious objects'. I naturally gravitate towards the case and instantly spot the familiar and most desirable black metal shafts: 'lens alert!'


So I take them out for inspection and they are not fast lenses but both in very good shape. The Vivitar 75-200mm 3.5 looks completely unused and the Raynox 25mm 3.5 looks barely used and has a UV-filter. There is also a 2x Panagor Tele Convertor for the Vivitar. The Vivitar zoom is 10,- (the bigger, the more expensive is obviously the reasoning here...), the Raynox 5,- and the converter 5,-
I buy all three, not really knowing what or why.

Now I don't 'need' these lenses.  I already have a Vivitar Series 1 70-210mm 3.5 so why do I need a 75-205mm, f3.5? But it looked so brandnew and lost between these piles of junk I went ahead and adopted it for the meager 10,- (Later on eBay I learned the going price for this lens is around 40,-) But the Raynox looked like it could be something special. At least it's rare: I could find no information on it when I googled it. And there was only one hit on eBay: a German store that listed the 'rare' Raynox for 100,-
So now I'm a little less ignorant. I'll continue to work on the greedy part. It's just that I love a good deal, even if I'm not sure it is one. I confess to a gambler's heart...