I hear you. You arrive at 6 AM for an 8 AM opening around here and you're lucky to be in the top 20 for a lot of them.

Sorry to hear that as well, Rob. In looking at the pics closely, I see a few red flags that would lead me to believe there won't be a lot of deals. (yeah hindsight, right?) However having said that, I probably would have gone myself anyway. :) I'm a sucker that way. LOL. Or at least tried the 1/2 off day. Some times you can get things lower than that as well, depending on how bad they need to move the stuff.

Have heard many stories but never picked up anything even remotely close to significant at a garage or estate sale...

It is super competitive in Lincoln for good sales. You have to be very early to be top 10. Only 50 miles away up in Omaha in a town three times the size of Lincoln you can get there a couple hours early and get top 10. Heck, my brother and I went up to a sale there about a month ago filled with vintage 1960-70s toys and got there 3 hours after the sale started and completely loaded our van up with awesome stuff. We went up the next day for half price day, got there about a half hour before opening and we were first in line.

Yea, we weren't expecting much when we saw the pics they posted the night before...the 54 Spahn was priced about right, everything else was a smash & grab for them hoping to run into a sucker.

KC Estate Sales are apparently unique because people place markers in their place in line and then go back and wait in their cars...There were probably 40 people there at 8:45, 20 of us had used markers to reserve our spots, the rest were just arriving.