Sold! I was 21 years old and unemployed. Ebay was the best place to make a quick two hundred dollars on a Monday. I had had those sneakers in my closet for weeks, and thought I'd never be able to sell them to anyone. You can always count on buyer "daises86" when money is tight. I wondered what she did with all those items she had purchased from my online shop. My phone wouldn’t stop vibrating every time she won an item. Daises86 would send me countless emails about her package seconds after.
"Here you are, young man," said the sales clerk, “that one is extremely hard to find."
I had just purchased a Michael Jordan rookie card from Oakland’s Local Thrift. I never had a chance to keep the items I purchased. As for the ones that I really liked, I’d use them for a few weeks or sometimes a few days, to avoid any signs of wear. For years, my parents seen what they called “junk” enter and leave our small Lake Merritt home.
Before I could thank the clerk, the sound of the shopkeeper's bell disturbed the sudden silence. A very tall man with a muscular build dressed in a heather grey suit entered the thrift shop. He couldn’t have been any older than 40, but no younger than 30. He had a beard as thick as Abraham Lincoln’s, and a bow-tie the color of red wine. He came bearing a bag small enough to fit into the palm of his hand.
“How much can I get for this?” he asked. The sales clerk whipped off the sweat from his forehead using his sleeves and picked up his glasses on the glass counter to get a closer look. He examined the item for no less than a minute. “It’s an explorer 300,” the man said impatiently.
“I can’t sell this to someone else,” said the sales clerk, “in fact, I probably can’t afford to pay you what it is really worth.”
The man’s arms were like a fence blocking me from seeing the other side. I decided that I was no longer interested in seeing what this strange man was trying to sell, so I turned around and made my way towards the exit. The creaks of the wooden floors caused the man to suddenly turn towards the footsteps.
“Hey kid, you interested in a watch?” he asked.
“Yeah, sure?” I hesitated.
“Check this out,” he said, “you know anything about Rolex watches?”
“I do.” I said passionately, “I only have $200 to offer.”
“Sold!” the man said wildly.
"Thank you," I replied, "I'm sure someone else will enjoy it even more than I will."
I was so excited about this new watch that I didn’t bother examining it before paying the strange man. As he handed me the old Rolex watch covered in a small plastic bag, I received an email. It was daises86 and I couldn’t wait to tell her about the new watch.
"Great doing business with you again, Trevor," she wrote.
"Yeah, anytime, daises86," I replied.
"It's Lauren, by the way. Let me know when you'll have some new items on your page."
"I'll have something big real soon. Just got a good deal, so hopefully I'll make a great profit from it."
"What'd you get?"
"A new Rolex Explorer 300," I replied, "one of the very first ones made in 1931. Hopefully, I can sell this one for much more than $200."
"You've got to be kidding!” she said astonishingly. “You've never heard what those watches do? Don’t play around with it until you know what you’re doing."
The last thing I remembered was adjusting the hands on the watch that I had purchased from this strange man. Suddenly, I found myself sitting in a stroller as my mother pushed me around the toy store. “Guess whose fourth birthday is tomorrow!” she said ecstatically. “Trevor, where did you pick up that dirty watch from? Put it down!”
