It's the season for garage sale stories as well as all the wheeling and wheedling. dealing and dabbling in bargainspotting.

From the savviest antique dealer to the casual buyer, everyone loves to hear about the "one that didn't get away."

Here are five stories that will entertain, and if you’re a garage saler, inspire. Plus, I get to tell my own best story:

In the era shortly before e Bay, I was about 10th in line at a church rummage sale. A few people behind me was a really aggressive competitor.

Then I spotted a treasure on a bookshelf inside a fenced area: "The Adventures of Superman," the first hardcover novel based on a comic book superhero. Published in 1942, four years after the icon-to-be debuted in the comics, the book was complete with four gorgeous color plates illustrated by co-creator Joe Shuster. What made this copy worth nearly $1,000 was the rare dust jacket - in near-new condition!

Three elderly women were right behind me in line. I knew that not even my voracious competitor, if he had indeed spotted the same book, would dare to knock these women aside (though I was wrong). I, too, was delayed by two slow-moving people in front of me, but I scrambled to the bookshelf as quickly as I could, grabbing the book and holding it close. I heard him five seconds behind me, uttering an obscenity because he could not possibly grab the treasured tome or steal it away from me.

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