Batesville Casket – $1500
December 9th, 2009
20 Gauge Steel Casket
Ivory interior
I know this is a weird posting.
But, I bought the casket, and had my husband viewed in it for 1 day.
Then decided to cremate him.
I paid over $1,900 for the casket
I am asking $1,500 OBO
I need to pay off the funeral bill and this is the only way I can.
If interested please call #
We’ve featured a casket before, but while it was described as “used,” I’m not sure that it had actually been occupied by a corpse, like this one. I think that you might have to knock more than 20% off the price of a formerly-corpse-inhabited casket, no matter how short the corpse-tenancy was. After all, this isn’t a 2007 Honda with a clean service record we’re talking about.
Hmm, looks like the one they sell on the Wal-Mart website.
This is one of those cases where I blame American society for making it seem as if a funeral (including viewing the corpse) is in the tiniest bit necessary. Have a cheap cremation and a reception at your home. No formal funeral required. And for God’s sakes stop putting corpses on display!!!!!!
I agree. When you’re gone, you’re gone, no need for anyone to put you on display like you’re sleeping or something.
But… but… but… I like looking at the bodies.
I’d say it’s really more of a western society thing than an American one, but I agree with you in principle.
People can see how you treat them after they leave.
It looks in better nick than the last one, but that fact that it’s ACTUALLY HAD A BODY IN IT would still put me off. I mean, yuck.
Because whoever ends up in it will really care if it’s been used?
If a casket is too icky to re-use after it’s been touched by a dead body then . . . surely no casket could ever be used at all for more than about five minutes? Dude. If you’re gonna stick it on display and hang out with your dead relative, does it really matter if someone else’s dead relative was in there earlier?
Personally I don’t think I want to stare at a corpse in a pretty box at all, but if I did I wouldn’t mind if the pretty box was pre-used.
I’m with you guys. I don’t get the waste of resources. And then there’s that whole pumping people full of preservatives thing, and piling on the makeup so they’ll look like they’re just sleeping. Did you know that they sew the lips and eyelids shut? What wacky customs we have. Rodney Dangerfield’s character in Caddyshack said it best with the line about country clubs and cemetaries being the biggest waste of real estate.
Screw that. My plans are already set. After I die, it’s straight off to the crematorium, then spread my ashes in my garden (good for the soil) and then my friends will have a serious kegger.
Many US states allow the re-use of a casket (in fact, you can rent them for visitations), but they require that the liner be replaced for each new “occupant”. Since the liner alone can cost $600 – $800, this seller’s price is too high.
If she really needs money and can’t sell the thing, she should check out the value of the casket as scrap steel.
Now does that make a bit of sense? Why replace the liner? It’s not like #2 is going to catch anything from #1 – well, not anything FATAL. And, other than the color (baby blue? although I suppose it’s a matter of taste, like choc vs vanilla), I don’t see much wrong or icky here. I buried my mother a couple of months ago – no casket, no viewing, just cremation and a modest urn ($400 modest!). And still the bill from the funeral home was over $5K. So yes, she probably has a heck of a bill on her hands. The home might help her with a payment plan – it’s not like they’ve never seen anyone in her financial straits before, and I would guess that they tend to sympathetic?
The liner has to be replaced because if the coffin is re-used, other people have to touch the coffin. It’s a safety hazard because an embalmed body can still have bacteria on it from fluids that were removed during the process. Plus bodies undergo a rather nasty phenomenon called purge if the embalmer skimped on proper procedure. Anyone who has to come in contact with the coffin is subject to possible transfer of bacteria, which will have multiplied infinity after a few days.
Nothing like spending all of eternity wearing second-hand!
ewww. pass.
I bet she was one of those brides who bought two dresses, too.
Yeah, just knowing that a body has laid in it even for a day kinda ups the “ick” factor.
Additional “ew” factor: It’s the “Bates”ville model. I wonder if her husband’s name was Norman???
Batesville is the 900 lb gorilla of casket manufacturers. Biggest outfit in the world
@ Walt: Knew that. Just throwing out a Norman to match up with the Bates for a Psycho reference. Work with me.
Many states do not allow the resale of a coffin after use. That’s aside from the whole skeez factor.
Honestly, I wouldn’t care if a body had been in it for a day. It’s not like he was eating potatoes in their and got chips all over.
Whoa, I meant “eating potato chips in there and got crumbs all over.” Shouldn’t post before coffee.
Although I like the idea of eating potatoes and getting chips all over.
Er, this smells of bullshit.
No funeral home would sell someone a metal casket if the funeral home knew the deceased is being cremated. Crematoria don’t allow it. If dipshit really is a dipshit and decided to change her mind afterward, well, frankly, she signed a contract, and too damned bad if she changed her mind. The funeral home is not allowed, by law, to re-use or re-sell a casket once someone’s been in it. They can re-use rental caskets that have removable cremation container liners inside them.
They’ll sell solid metal caskets for someone being buried in a Jewish cemetery, this happened to a client when Mom was working for the law firm. Rather, for someone who was supposed to be buried in a Jewish cemetery — the family had to find another grave site in a hurry.
I’m wondering if she was planning a big funeral, found out halfway through what the bill would be, and started seeing what she could cancel/return; much like shoppers who forgot the credit card.
Or like me when my husband died — wanted the best for him because I love(d) him so much, and that best ended up being about $10,000 for the marker and $3,000 for the casket, plus I got a metal one over it, a vault or something, so I could protect him in his casket. The plots were $1,800. Anyway, you might start out trying to do the right thing by your own emotions for that person and realize part of the way through that you can’t.
Holy crap!
You know, when you die you have a tube stuck in your groin to drain your blood, your eyelids glued shut, your nostrils plugged and a cork stuck up your ass. After all that a second-hand coffin doesn’t seem like such a big deal. I mean, you’ve long since crossed the border from icky to dadgum NASTY.
What I want to know is how you know that interesting bit of trivia.
I read a lot of books about what happens when people die. I guess it’s so I won’t be surprised with whatever happens. Assuming I’m paying attention, that is.
Am I the only one who finds it weird that you read mortician’s procedures for fun?
Or maybe just read “Spook” or any of the “find it at Barnes and Nobles” books on the subject that have popped up in the past few years? There was also an episode of Pen & Teller’s Bullshit about it.
It’s not as obscure a topic as it used it to be, is all I’m saying. Funerals are big business, and people are starting to get curious of what they (or their relatives) will get asked to pay for.
The book ‘Stiff’ by Mary Roach (I believe is her name) is a great book along with ‘Spook’ (same author). Really fascinating stuff explained in ‘Stiff’ about what happens to bodies donated to science and whatnot.
My late-ex-brother-in-law was in training to become a mortician, before he switched to ait traffic controller school. Annnddd… that’s pretty much what he said, too, plus some other trivia I don’t recall. Undertaking is a messy undertaking – you see the seamy underside if life… which is death. Kind of like the back side of a tapestry.
I’m not sure how you got anything about a tube being put in the groin.
Traditional embalming requires setting the features with eyecaps, wiring the mouth shut after stuffing the mouth with cotton. All orifices are stuff with absorbent materials actually.
Blood is removed through the neck in most cases, unless the body has been autopsied. In those cases, it requires five to six different places to insert embalming fluid to get the limbs and head. The body itself gets punctured with a trocar to remove bodily fluids in the guts. The groin isn’t touched aside from what I said about orifices.
Never would I ever have anticipated a debate on pre-funeral morticiary practices on a web site dedicated to funny pictures/topics.
Epic, man. Fucking epic. You sound like you’ve worked in the field before, jadey_lady.
I’m studying mortuary science right now to become a funeral director.
I have worked in a morgue and as an anatomy teacher at college/med schools, so I’ve seen a lot of seriously embalmed bodies. I have never once seen an incision in the neck, not once. Blood is ALWAYS drained through the femoral artery in the upper inside thigh and then replaced with embalming fluid.
My understanding is that this is more efficient and then you don’t have a gaping hole in the person’s neck. Thighs are much easier to cover up. Its not really a neat or small incision that you might just “not notice.”
I’ve seen lots of embalmings done actually….and they were done in the veins of the neck, low…by the clavicles. They aren’t hard to cover either as the incisions are very small (an inch or two max) and placed low where clothes will cover it. Obviously whoever is butchering your bodies is doing it poorly, lol.
Also, if you work in an anatomy lab or morgue, there’s kind of a difference if those bodies were used for science AND if those bodies were autopsied. If a body is autopsied, five to six spots are used to drain blood, one of which is the femoral artery in a leg.
decided to cremate huh….call CSI quick!
I don’t see how it matters as long as it looks clean – after all, you’re not going to be paying any attention if you’re dead in there!
It’s not a matter of how it looks, it’s a matter of the bacterial contamination. Even though a body is embalmed, it still breaks down and surface bacteria can still cling to the skin of the deceased due to insufficient washing.
And it’s a safety hazard for those who are still living that have to handle the coffin or even be in the same room.
I dunno. Strip out the lining and burn it, spray the hell out of the metal casket with a gallon of Lysol, re-upholster it in leather and voila, living room conversation piece. Bonus points if you had your deceased relative taken to the taxidermist first.
Lysol doesn’t actually manage to kill enough germs. Every microbiologist (my original degree) smiles every time they see the claim that xxxx product kills 99.99% of germs, because trust me that 0.001% is plenty to start a whole new festering population of bacteria.
The only way to actually sterilize anything is via autoclave, which uses a temperature of at least 121 degrees C, pressure of at least 15psi, and steam to kill absolutely everything. I don’t think you can autoclave a coffin.
And there are organisms that can survive even all that!
When she gets remarried, she’ll probably resell the urn with the ashes too. “Used urn for sale. Decided to marry another guy, so I don’t need the last one. Makes a nice flower pot”.
I am thinking this gal perhaps “snorted-up” her husband’s ashes….she is just CRAZY to think that someone would pay that outrageous overpriced price for that thing!
Ewww…ick…gag! I mean I like to “recycle” too, but I think I can safely say that I have to draw-the-line on this one!
I am thinking she FOUND OUT about something her husband did, and THEN decided to cremate (burn) him! Hmmmm
Either way, she is nutty to think someone is going to actually buy this…yuk!
I grew up in the same county in Indiana as Batesville. Those are quality caskets.
Speaking of reselling urns – I actually saw one at Value Village once, selling for $8.99. It was a wooden box with a name and a date of birth and date of death engraved on it. The person live to their late 60s. It was just a horribly depressing site.
This was about a month and a half ago. I wonder if it’s still there? Who would buy such a thing? Or give such a thing to Value Village?
Is Value Village a secondhand store like the Salvation Army or Goodwill retail stores? If so, my question is, why did Value Village put it on the shelf? That seems like it may be illegal, that is, if there are any of the ashes left inside.
I once saw a similar item not from a funeral, but a wedding. It was a homemade box, lovingly crafted with the name of the couple and the date- just one month ago. Why would they give it away? What if the person found it? How hurt would they be?
I cannot even begin to count the number of ways that this is wrong…
“The decided to cremate him”? Isn’t this a decision you’re supposed to have thought about for a while? With some input from the person concerned, preferably? “OK, I’ll just toss a coin: head you burn…”
Or maybe she killed him and realized they can exhume a buried body. Cremated ones must be impossible to use for evidence later, I’m guessing.
LOL Chris…..that’s what I was thinking! Uh..Mr. Mortician…change of plans, get ‘em outta there and gimmee the casket
BTW, the first coffin Stephen was referencing had rust stains (so, presumably was buried underground) and had been gutted (presumably because the body had rotted onto the lining). So I’m not sure why he thought that one had not been used and was thus less creepy. That first one looks like something from a movie like Deliverance.
Barbara Streisand should add another verse to “Second Hand Rose.” No, wait …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLyk0uSULwI
-Cougar :{)
DSASA
IN THE OLD DAYS, PEOPLE WERE BURIED IN A WOODEN BOX. AFTER ABOUT 2 YEARS THE BOX WOULD ROT AND THE TOP WOULD CAVE IN. WHEN WE SAW A HOLE IN THE GROUND, WE WOULD TAKE A STICK AND PUSH IT DOWN AS FAR AS IT WOULD GO. THEN WE WOULD TWIST THE STICK. WE THEN WOULD PULL UP THE STICK ANE PULL OUT CLOTHES ETC.
IF YOU GOT A WHOLE SHIRT OR PANTS, THEN YOU HAD NEW CLOTHES TO WEAR.
WHAT! YOU NEVER BEEN POOR? THIS GENERATION HAS NO CLUE WHAT POOR IS.
STICK AROUND……..POOR IS COMING BACK IN STYLE.
NEXT WEEK……….EATING THE NEIGHBOR’S DOG.
this isnt really funny…this is actually extremely sad. she cant even afford the casket. its not being cheap, its necessary for her situation, she has no alternatives
wow you guys are all just like assholes. i really liked this site