Hey everybody. Welcome to Retell Seller, an ephemera podcast where I uncover forgotten stories and the ephemera people leave behind. I’m Angie a reseller of 10 years, and I’ll share one of those snippets with you. Let’s see what today’s find has to say.
Click here to see the YouTube video with more images to go alongside the podcast.
This one is about a doctor’s short note left for his staff. It’s dated October 25th, 2001 and says:
“$350 per hour bring check for first hour. We will bill for additional time. Told Peggy we would need to see Rachel week or so before offered 12/4 or 12/11. Will call me back.”
This note was found stuck to the bottom side of a metal drawer, and the metal drawer was one of five drawers in a single Neumade brand storage cabinet I’d purchased full of slides.
I picked up not only one five drawer cabinet of slides, I picked up two along with multiple briefcase style holders and a couple of small totes, which were bursting out of the lid and in pragmatic doctor style, were taped shut with medical tape.
The cabinets, photo slides, a couple of vintage TVs were what I’d acquired at an estate sale of a doctor of plastic surgery who had died. His house was full of slides. I bought thousands and I left thousands more behind.
Once I got home with my finds, I noticed every time I pulled out a particular drawer. Something was making somewhat of a snapping sound, and it ended up being a pink 3” x 3” sticky note.
While at the sale and rummaging through the boxes of totes and slides, a man walked into the room I was in and said, “He was such a great doctor.” and I replied with some sort of, “Was he?” Then he said, “Yeah, he did my surgeries.” I didn’t push as to what the surgeries were or anything because I didn’t get the feeling he actually wanted to talk. It was more of a reminiscing and according to the note again, $350 per hour sounds like a lot of money, but you’re paying for expertise, right? Then hearing a former patient speak of the doctor in such a thankful way makes me think whatever service was being done for $350 20 years ago was most likely worth it to them, and I hope that it was.
I’ve not even gone through half of what I have, but so far I’ve seen a mix of educational for the local hospital, closeup images of moles, of varying sizes, stitches, rashes to the more gruesome imagery of injuries that were sustained from accidents.
Not all are dated, but I saw some from the eighties with the most recent being from the early two thousands. Unfortunately, some have names written on them, and I’ll need to see if I can run a marker or something over it although have you ever crossed a word out in marker before and in certain angles, you can still tell exactly what it says? I’ll have to double check those.
Since these are medical related, there’s no way I’ll be selling anything with someone’s name on them. Etsy is the only place I sell on in which I feel comfortable listing these types of items.
They’re very specific as to how you’re supposed to list. You basically need to make a cover photo or warning image stating what the listing is, about like “graphic medical photographic slides” or something along those lines. That way, when they click on it, they’re fully aware of what they could see.
I’ve also thought about reaching out to a few Facebook admins on a couple of ephemera, buy, sell, trade groups I’m in to see if they have any issues with it. I did find one person that had sold a grouping, described in a way that sounds just like what I have. They didn’t show anything but the least graphic images, but they did say they would send a small sampling of the more gruesome ones via messenger if interested.
So I’ll just have to check, although I’m not in any rush and I will wanna look through all of them myself because I’m just as curious as anybody else.
As far as doctors go, personally, I’ve only been upset about losing one. He’d resigned and I was indeed devastated. Although the place he worked at was also a shit show, so I couldn’t blame him. He was fairly young. He thought outside the box and went against the norms, and I’m sure the higher ups just hated that. But, that’s exactly what I loved about him.
My questions to you are, have you ever had a doctor you’d miss if they were gone? And why would you miss them?
Would you ever allow photos to be taken of a procedure of any kind? How does the fact that knowing photos could be left up for grabs at an estate sale come into play?
I’m thinking I could do a follow-up at some point when I go through all the slides and if you’d be interested in another episode on them, including the more graphic ones I’d like to know.
Thank you for joining me. As I shared a snippet of the past, I’d love to know if it connected with you in some way. Did it spark a memory or make you see something differently? If so, consider sharing it. Be sure to check out the show notes for additional info, links and ways to connect. It’s not nostalgia, it’s human.
Until next time, may you find something worth holding onto.
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PINNY PLEASE
ADDITIONAL LINKS & INFO:
Some Facebook Ephemera Groups.
I’ve only had experience purchasing from The Ephemera Collective group.
