WHEN TO TURN A PROJECT DOWN

I spend a lot of time on Ebay searching for new percussion restoration projects to undertake.  Sometimes there are many that interest me and I have to decide which ones I really want to chase after.  Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose.

Then every once in a while there are items I come across like this vintage Tama metal snare that make me laugh out loud.

Now, a Tama snare from the 1980s is not really all that vintage, especially a bottom-of-the-line "Swingstar," but when the starting bid is only $4.99 I will stop and take a closer look just in case.  Five bucks for a drum can sometimes be a good deal if you can pull off a miraculous restoration.  I enjoy a hard challenge once in a while.

That's when I discover "the catch" to this particular item: $25.00 shipping.  So now I'm considering $30.00 for this piece of rusted-out crap, which the seller has so cleverly described as "in working shape with patina and age on the chrome."

There's that horrendous word: patina.  Yeah.  When someone insults my intelligence by incorrectly assuming I don't know the difference between RUST and PATINA (which only occurs on copper and bronze, by the way, not chrome!), I lose all desire to undertake a project like this.  When a seller tries to pass off years of neglect as some wonderful aging process, it just pisses me off.  Now I wouldn't even want to pay the five dollars if the shipping was free.

Besides, it wasn't that great of a drum when it was brand new, bud.  I'm passing this one up.