I bought some vintage slides and projectors yesterday and it reminded me of a funny story from a few weeks ago. I’d found a box full of old slide boxes in a charity shop, labelled with things like ‘Miami 1977’ ‘Botswana, 1978’ ‘Chicago, 1974’. There were loads of them – for 50p each. I was so excited, I practically ran to the till. The rest of the morning, I was walking around thinking of what I could do with my slides. I was thinking I could get the pictures printed out, and where could I get an old slide from to project them. The excitement lasted until I got back to my car and thought, “I can’t wait any longer, I’ll just have a look at one…”

Every box was empty.
I was gutted.

It’s like the vintage collectors version of ‘Don’t count your chickens until they’ve hatched.” I took then back to the shop and casually asked if they happened to have the slides still. They looked at me like I was demented and said, “No.”

So I slunk off back to my car without my slides of life in Miami, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, Paris and Wales. And the lesson I’ve learned is always check what you’ve bought carefully before getting too excited.

Have you ever counted your vintage slides before they were shown? Any embarrassing vintage related story to tell?