Find the treasure before someone else does: "Garage Sale America"

Hi Gatherers,    

I wanted to share an excerpt from my new book "Garage Sale America" with you.  I will be posting an excerpt each week leading up to my live chat in the Ask The Author group on Tuesday, May 29, from 1-3pm ET.

Garage Sale.  Yard Sale.  Tag Sale.  Barn Sale.  Rummage Sale.  Estate Sale.  Stoop sale.  Call it what you want sale; it describes one thing - the best deal in America. There’s hidden treasure out there if you're willing to go hunting, track down the prize, and drag it home. Certainly, if you’re looking to make money and have a good eye, you can do it by rummaging at garage sales - many an eBay multipower seller has been born at a garage sale. But for me, it’s not about making money.  It's about the adventure, the discovery of something I didn't know, and finding treasures I can use.   

There are, of course, legendary stories of garage sale finds so great they've funded early retirement or so precious they were sent to a museum.  We'd all like to land one of those.  They are the bejeweled carrots, dangling deliciously before us as a sort of motivating taunt.  In June 2005 a woman in Omaha bought a chair at a garage sale.  When she got it home, she found $3,000 stuffed inside its cushions.  In 1993, Jay and Gail Harley bought a box of yellowed sheet music at a garage sale in Orlando for $2, only to discover later that the lot was from the Civil War and worth thousands.

Others have found things that have become mysteries to solve.  Twenty years after Paul Burks bought an old wooden box covered in leather for $5 at a sale in Philadelphia, he accidentally discovered something tucked inside a hidden compartment.  What it is or isn’t has inspired much debate, and now, after Paul’s untimely death, his son, Ashley, has taken up the quest to get to the bottom of what was in the false top of the box.

I looked Ashley up after reading about the item in Alabama’s Montgomery Advertiser, and called him.  "Dad had thrown the box into the back of his truck to take to the dump," Ashley told me.  "He was cleaning out his workshop, and when he went back out with another load, he saw the box had broken and something was hidden inside.  It was a scroll of paper tied with a piece of gold cord, an empty velvet bag, and a wasp nest." When his father unrolled the paper, what he discovered was an ink-stained copy of the Declaration of Independence.

What he found might not just be any copy, it may be what is known as a Dunlap broadside, one of the original copies of the Declaration printed on July 4 and 5, 1776, by Philadelphia printer John Dunlap.  There’s speculation he created anywhere from two hundred to five hundred of the things so that they could be sent out by horseback to the thirteen colonies before colonial leaders met to sign it officially. Historians assume that nervous recipients might have hidden the treasonous sheets immediately upon receipt for fear of being discovered by the British. There are only twenty-five copies in existence.

Ashley Burks' father told his friend Bert Bodiford, a history buff who worked for the Sheriff’s Office, and the two men sought out experts to weigh in on its authenticity.  Their hunt yielded more questions than answers.  While other copies have the printed name of Continental Congress president John Hancock, the Burks' copy appears to have Hancock's actual signature as well as ink-stained handprints on the back.  One expert suggests it could be the first Dunlap broadside printed, and a handwriting expert believes the Hancock signature is real.  But others think it’s a cleverly doctored reproduction, and that though the paper appears genuine, it seems artificially aged and was in contact with chemicals that weren’t around in the eighteenth century.  "That box was in my dad's shop where he worked on cars," Ashley counters.  "Of course there were chemicals in there."  Not to mention that somebody probably sprayed that wasp's nest too. "Why don’t you get it appraised by Sotheby's or take it to one of the museums?" I asked him. "My dad was told it was too expensive," he said.  "And he also didn’t like taking it out of the bank vault."  Reading between the lines, I realized that some of the "experts" might have been interested in a piece of the action.  Not wanting him to think I was one of those, I treaded lightly in my advice, but I did make sure he knew about perhaps the greatest garage sale find ever and its remarkable similarities.

In 1989, a Pennsylvania man bought an old painting at a sale because he liked the frame, only to get home and discover that beneath the painting, was a folded 15 ¾ by 19 ¾” Declaration of Independence behind the canvas.  He was so sure it was a reproduction he sat on it for two years.  Finally, a friend convinced him to go have it appraised at Sotheby’s.  It sold in 1991 for $2.4 million, and nine years later was sold again for $8.1 million during an online auction.

Ashley vows to persist.  "It’s not about the money," he told me.  "I just know my dad would want me to get to the bottom of this." It is this kind of hopeful riddle that makes for great garage saling lore.

Yes, we all can fantasize about the "Antiques Road Show" moment in which someone tells us the lamp we bought for $4 at a yard sale is a $50,000 piece made by Dirk van Erp, a master of the Arts and Crafts movement.  (It happened.) Or dream of discovering an original copy of the Declaration of Independence hidden beneath the false frame of an old box, like the one sitting guardedly in an Alabama bank vault. Moments like that are like winning the lottery.  But, hey, you never know.  There's always next weekend!

(copyright 2007, Bruce Littlefield, reprinted with permission from Harper Collins)

I look forward to speaking with all of you during my live chat on Gather.com, Tuesday May 29, from 1-3pm ET. You can find the chat at asktheauthor.gather.com