We know that not everyone spends as much time at auctions and junkyards as, say, Murilee. But that doesn't mean most of us don't occasionally wander around junkyards or auction sites searching for whatever we can find. Sometimes, you strike gold as with Murilee's 1970 & 1971 T-Bird adventure. And sometimes you end up in Project Car Hell. I once spent an afternoon looking around for a replacement wheel for my beater Escort and found a pair of white older-gen Escort GT wheels that would look awesome on the front against the old rear black rims. The pattern looked right so I grabbed them and took them home.
It wasn't until I got home that I noticed the pattern was ever-so-slightly off, meaning that I'd just invested in a pair of tetherball bases and was still without an unbent rim. It would have looked awesome, though. That qualifies as both my best and worst find, though feel free to separate yours out.