Treasure Maps

Shipwreck salvage crews spend hours in research. Finding a ship that hundreds of years earlier succombed to a savage storm and sunk to the bottom of the ocean is partly luck - and mostly alot of time with your nose in a book - or online - or studying maps! But the payoff - perhaps a chest of gold coins - is worth every minute!
Vintage treasure hunters can learn from these hard working ship searchers. Getting to the sale is only a small part of actually finding a treasure. I've watched a line of people pass by a table filled with treasures, but because they hadn't done thier homework - well let's just say they missed the chest of gold coins!
Spend an afternoon wandering through an antique store. What appeals to you? Concentrate on those items and look in books or online to find as much information as you can on the items you were drawn to. The next time you go to a sale and you see one of them you will know it's value - and if you should be taking it straight to the check out line!
Here's a book I recommend if you are trying to figure out what treasure you'd like to pursue:

"Garage Sale and Flea Market Annual" Collectors Books published by Schroeder Publishing Co.

I purchased my copy through www.Amazon.com . There are other books along the same line, but I liked all the pictures in this one.

The research pays off - your eyes will be opened to a whole world of treasures once you know what you are looking for!



Road Hunting

Jump into the car with your gear and head for a country road. Your friend drives while you keep your eyes focused on the ditch at either side. Looking for that elusive gamebird. It took a trained eye to find him hiding in the winter bleached grass.
Same principle applies to vintage treasure hunting. The gear is slightly different. Newspaper classifieds from the Garage Sale section. Estate sale listings from Estatesales.net for your city. Something to carry your treasures home in. Watching for the signs on the side of the road that advertise a yard sale takes a trained eye - one that can see which direction the arrow on the sign is pointing so you can get in the right lane and make that quick turn.
I bagged this treasure last week during a hunt:

A beautiful vintage SANDOR brooch and earrings set!

Day two of an estate sale, and I could hardly believe that this enameled Sandor set was still available! I added it to my eBay store http://stores.ebay.com/Caryd-Away-Treasures  today at $19.99. I thought it would add a charming vintage touch to something summery!

This time my road hunting skills landed a treasure! But that's not always the case; sometimes, my husband told me, the bird would fly away before getting caught. That's how it feels when I pull up to a sale and someone is walking away with just the thing I was hunting for! The bird that got away!