Replacing my brakes came to a halt

I'll start by saying that I feel ridiculous and defeated. I went to a local bike swap Saturday to get a new helmet or at least see what was there. For those who don't know, a bike swap works like a yard sale where the bike shop hosting the event gets a percentage, in this case 15%, of the sale. For example, if I sold a $100 bike at the swap, I would take home $85 and the shop would get $15. In the end I determined that buying a used helmet would be stupid but not before I determined that I needed new brakes for my late 80s road bike. I should mention that I've never had any problems stopping and have never felt unsafe on my current setup, so it makes this all the more humiliating. I asked a mechanic at the shop if brakes were universal and he told me that they were for the most part. I don't have an unusual bike, so I got a set of Ultegras for $25 and an obnoxious yellow Tinker Juarez saddle because it was $3 (how can you pass that up...you can't). I set off home to install my new brakes. Several hours and a few beers later, I am the proud owner of a late 80s road bike with no brakes and an obnoxious yellow Tinker Juarez saddle. It seemed easy enough...just remember what the brakes looked like before you took them off and get them to look the same, but with new brakes. Not so easy. It turns out that they are not compatible at all with my bike and I had to go back to the old ones, so at least it wasn't completely my fault, however I am stuck with a pair of brakes that I can't use.
On a different note, the bike shop wouldn't take them back, which I kinda understand because, being a bike swap, they didn't actually own the brakes they sold and they had already posted the sale. At that point, I just figured I'd sell them on Craigslist.com or something and hopefully even turn a profit, though I was a bit miffed at the bad advice that got me into the mess in the first place. The guy at the shop had a better idea and suggested that I try to sell them at the swap which still had one day left. I made sure to clarify before I assumed he had just made the most ridiculous suggestion ever and asked if they were going to waive the 15% commission for the sale. He said, "No, we would still have to take the standard 15%." My clarification process was complete, he had just made the most ridiculous suggestion ever. He wanted to take 15% of a sale that should never happened in the first place and turn it into 30% by trying to take two commissions off the same product...bastards. Anyway, if you're looking for some new nice ultegra brakes for your road bike, I'm selling them for $270. Actually it doesn't matter what kind of bike you have, they should fit your mountain bike too, in fact you can even use them on your car as long as it's not a Datsun, so just send me an email if you're interested.

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