[Ed. Note: My new life running estate sales, buying and selling anitiques and collectibles and trying to build a successful business -- Orion's Attic -- leads to all kinds of adventures. I thought I would start sharing some of them here as they're personal in nature. For those who may be interested, there's a link at the bottom to the full post.]
Won-ok and I got up early on a recent Saturday and pounded the streets in our Silver Spring, Maryland neighborhood during a community-wide yard sale. We're always on the prowl for great stuff to buy and sell and it's not often that we get to do so in our own back yard. The first dozen sales we visited tanked. Nothing there for us.
We hit pay dirt on the next stop, catching a former foreign correspondent for a newspaper (yes, that job used to exist) just as he was setting up. He was late to the party and it worked out perfectly for us. We had a pocket full of cash we were itching to spend. He had a bunch of stuff he brought home from around the globe that he wanted to ditch and he didn't much care about the money. We bought a bunch of beautiful wooden masks from Central America, African spears, Central American knives and a killer lamp from Haiti in the form of a face.
Our new friend told us about his career as an old-fashioned news man and I couldn't get enough. I was a journalist once and still miss it to this day. Then he pointed me to a stunning stone sculpture of a green bear eating a white fish while standing in a river running through a mountain. I absolutely loved it. I stood in waters exactly like that in Alaska in 1991 and wish I had been able to witness a scene like that in person. I wanted the piece.
"I picked this up in Anchorage," the scribe said.
Oh my goodness. I no longer wanted it: I needed it.
"I paid $300 for it," he said. I'd take $100."
I almost sprained my fingers ... [Read the rest of this blog post on the Orion's Attic blog!]
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