Accomplished appraiser Leigh Keno has worked in the fine and decorative arts field for more than 40 years. Throughout this time, he has been a regular appraiser on Antiques Roadshow and overseen operations at Keno Auctions as president. Leigh Keno also has co-authored a book about discovering hidden treasures with his brother and maintains a site detailing antiques and art discoveries he finds in barns and houses.
Places where antiques pickers can find vintage items, antiques, and collectibles include:
- Thrift stores. Pickers who are looking for vintage toys, glassware, planters, or sterling silverware can often find something at thrift stores. These stores, whether small or large, are great places for finding hidden treasures at low prices, especially right after new merchandise is put out. It helps to get to know the owner of the store so that they can tell you about the latest additions to the store.
- Estate sales. Craigslist and local papers typically list upcoming estate and yard sales. These events are perfect for finding hidden treasures. However, pickers must focus on estate sales that are put on by the family and not an estate-liquidation company. These companies have a better idea of how much certain items are worth and will price them higher than usual. However, a liquidation company can't know about every type of object, so if you are a specialist in, for instance, Chinese porcelain, you may just be lucky enough to find a bargain.
- Curbside. When people move or clean out their homes, they often leave unwanted furniture and other items on the curb. Many of these items can be good finds for pickers. Leigh Keno recalls an Antiques Roadshow segment filmed at the Anaheim, Ca. convention center where the owner told a story of her father finding an unsigned shadow box containing marbles, an ivory pool ball and sand on top of a pile of garbage next to the sidewalk. Under a glass plate, one could see a mapped constellation from an old book affixed to the inside of the backboard. Leigh did some quick homework and discovered that Ferus Gallery had a show of the famous artist Joseph Cornell's (1903- 1972) work in 1962 in Los Angeles, not far from where the box was found. He gave it a preliminary on-air auction estimate of $100-200,000 dollars and recommended further research. Not ad for being plucked fromt he top of the garbage!
Below is the link to where she tells of her father finding it in the trash:
http://urs.pbs.org/redirect/256ffb98ae6419eb45d2d487a/
- Online. There are literally thousands of auctions on several auction platforms each year. There are so many, by hundreds of small to large auction houses, that a simple search may turn up a gem that gets missed.
