Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Good Yard Sale Treasure Hunt

    This past weekend was a pretty good treasure hunting one in a strange way.  My significant other is the antique hunter and yard sale shopper extraordinaire.  I am more the coin and ring hunter, although I've developed a decent eye for antique styles, vintages, and marks over the years. Anyone who spends time pursuing the hobby of treasure hunting in all its forms has "inventory" collected up at home. So when a neighbor announced she was having an impromptu yard sale, we jumped onboard, a good opportunity to sell off some stuff and clear some space.  We didn't set up a lot of stuff, and it was a girls thing, so I was dispatched off to do the yard sale hunting, while she conducted the sale.  Perhaps a  bit perverse, but she didn't want to miss a Saturday's worth of sales, and I was ordered out.

  So off I went, and once I scored a $20 Hartstone checked mixing bowl at a moving sale for $1, the blood was flowing.  If you are into antiques at all, you know you can never know everything, and you can't be an expert in all fields.  At another moving sale, I pulled a porcelain doll out of a bin of junk. The person running the sale had no idea, and thought $1 sounded fair, so the doll came with me too.  Dolls are one area I know nothing about, but since she was in good shape, with porcelain head and hands, I figured she's worth more than that.  Things slowed down after that as the heat of the day rose.  I finally met a nice lady who just wanted to move some items.  I got a nice framed print and a wood dough bowl for $1 apiece, and a hanging corner cupboard for $2 (behind the blue pitcher).  We kind of lean towards colonial things, so these were all good captures.  Finally, as the morning wore down, at a sale with mostly household stuff and perfumes, I saw some old glassware on a table and inspected the blue carnival glass pitcher. Good shape.  "Are these cups a set with the pitcher?"  "Yes, $10"  Hem, haw, but don't put down the pitcher, "OK". done.  The blue punch cups are not actually a set with the pitcher, but they are all the same grape leaf pattern.  The cups are worth $8 a piece on Replacements.com, and I knew the pitcher was worth a few dollars since we have some experience with carnival glass.  Looked it up, it's worth $15-$35 on Ebay.  Not bad. 
   Wife was happy, guess I've still got it LOL.  It's all treasure.

Friday, July 16, 2010

How To Find Coins in Machines

I've been keeping up with the daily walks at lunchtime, although it's been in the 90's several days this month. Since I am walking, I am also always on the lookout for stray coins. I'm still surprised that there are so many coins out there in the wild. I've been able to find $5 to $8 consistently over the last few months.  I keep a jar in my desk and add coins to it that I find every day on my walks. Here is a link to a short article I wrote about strategies that I've been using successfully to find coins in machines.  You won't believe it until you try.  I just shake my head sometimes when coins come tumbling out of a machine.

I have to also say that I KNOW there are coins heading into my pocket if I just keep looking.  I know that because it's a rare day that I don't find any.  For that reason, I don't worry about it, I know they will come.  Interesting, but so far I haven't been proved wrong.  
Read the entire article, How To Find Coins in Machines

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Treasure Hunter Digs Up 52,000 Roman Coins Worth Over $1 Million

A treasure hunter armed with a metal detector struck it rich in England recently, digging up a pot filled with over 52,000 Roman coins dated from the 3rd century AD. The pot weighed 350 pounds.  The finder, Dave Crisp, dug up a few of the coins, but then called archeologists.  The pot and contents have been transferred to the British Museum to be cleaned and catalogued.
Under Britain's Treasure Act, the finder and the landowner will split any proceeds of the sale of the treasure. Experts have not yet figured out why the coins were buried, or how they got there. According to Roger Bland, a coins expert at the museum, "No one individual could possibly have carried them to the field in the pot, it must have been buried first and then filled up." Not a bad day's work for that treasure hunter!  Read more here.