Welcome to my first Blog. I started this blog to talk about my treasure hunting adventures. You may be familiar with the new show on the History Channel called American Pickers. Well I started picking as a boy in the 60's that turned into a passion for collecting. My early collections were rocks, matchbox cars, fossils, pocket knives and Boy Scout items, especially patches. My mom even helped me buy my first metal detector and we scoured many a beach and playground finding coins and jewelry. I still detect today also, mostly for relics or underwater treasures.
In the early years I concentrated my picking on what I was collecting at the time. In the early 90's I bought some toys that required some research prior to Ebay. I used a book back then entitled "How to Sell it". I took Polaroid pictures of the items, described them and sent them off via snail mail. Several buyers called me back and we worked out the sale on the phone. This helped me develop a customer list. I started picking up items for other collectors as well as items I thought someone might want. In 1996 I entered my first Antique/Collectibles show. With my items in stored banana boxes I borrowed a van and hauled them to the show. At the end of the weekend I was several hundred dollars in the black and hooked on finding more treasures to sell.
I enjoyed selling at three or four shows a year, all here in Virginia. Eventually the toll of packing, toting, setting up and breaking it all down in a weekend was too much back work for the reward. I continued to buy and sell on Ebay but left the show circuit. In 2006 I acquired a 12x12 stall at a pickers paradise the Red Barn in Oak Grove VA in Westmoreland County. We added another stall in 2007 and a third in 2009. Want to know more about the Red Barn? See my next blog about it.
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