I have signed up for email notifications with several local Estate Sale Liquidation Companies. They send out emails with dates and locations of upcoming estate sales. One email I received this week peeked my interest. Here is one of the thumbnail photos from the email.
I figure if someone had a vintage corn and tater ring, they more than likely had a vintage Weber kettle to go with it. The estate sale was today at 9 AM in Cupertino. That's 38 miles from my house and in the heart of the Silicon Valley. Well, living in the San Francisco Bay Area has it's benefits and detractors. One of the detractors is that traffic sucks on weekdays during the commute. I got on the road at 6 AM to get ahead of the traffic. On the way I drove by this big billboard that someone had graffitied.
Also drove past Apple and Google. Their buildings stretch for miles. Anyway, arrived at the estate sale at 7 AM. I knew I was going to have time to burn so I stopped in at a local restaurant about a mile away and had breakfast. Headed back to the estate sale at 8:10 AM and arrived to find I was #23 in line. I wasn't worried because I have yet to find someone ahead of me running to find Webers and BBQ accessories at a estate sale. The folks running the sale were nice enough to open about 10 minutes early, letting everyone in. I headed straight to the garage where the C&T ring was on the wall in the photo. It wasn't there. Walked to the backyard and found this in the corner.
It's a metal wheel, Pat Pending Coppermist that is in fantastic shape. It does not have thumbscrews but with metal wheels figure its a 1969-1971.
Inside, I found the owner had covered the inside of the bowl and wrapped the charcoal grate in aluminum foil.
There was also a piece of cardboard wrapped in aluminum foil, resting on the charcoal grate. The foil was so tight, it would have cut off any air coming from the bottom bowl vents. Other than to repel aliens, what was the purpose of all the aluminum ?
Even the cooking grate had a little foil wrapped around the sides.
Even got a vintage bag of Kingsford with it, all for $5.
Never found out where the C&T ring went but ended up with a nice metal wheel kettle. Should clean up really nice. Thanks for listening and playing along.