INTERNET Band gear marches far afield

COLUMBUS (AP) -- Who would want to buy old high school marching band uniforms? Eileen Reidinger has found takers among a circus troupe, a Pennsylvania grandmother, a cash-strapped middle school and a Boston advertising company.
Reidinger, who has two children in the band at Worthington Kilbourne High School in suburban Columbus, wanted to help the band raise money by selling its old uniforms.
The school already had tried to get parents and boosters to buy them -- without much luck.
"We didn't have a whole lot of takers," Reidinger said.
So Reidinger, who had experience selling items online -- "I sold a wet suit, which in Ohio no one would buy" -- put the uniforms on the Internet auction site eBay.
The uniforms went for $25 to $40 each. Other buyers included the leader of a Myrtle Beach bagpipe band, a rock-band leader in Alliance, a Dutchman planning to march in a Mardi Gras festival, a first-grade teacher and actors at the Henry Clay Estate museum in Lexington, Ky.
To date, Reidinger has raised $4,501.07. Of 180 uniforms, only seven jackets and 14 pairs of pants remain. "Part of the fun of it was just to find out where they were going to go," Reidinger said. "So as each person was ordering one, I told them I had to know where it was going."
Sheila Mehaffy bought 70 uniforms to outfit the newly formed Golden Knights band at Lisbon Central School in New York. She paid $2,800 for the lot.
New uniforms would have cost at least $17,000, she said. The school didn't have that kind of money and was prepared to settle for khaki shorts and T-shirts.