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Killer Stuff and Tons of Money
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Killer Stuff and Tons of Money (2011) (edit title/settings)

Seeking History and Hidden Gems in Flea-Market America

by Maureen Stanton (Author) (edit contributors)

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One dealer's journey from the populist mayhem of flea markets to the rarefied realm of auctions reveals the rich, often outrageous subculture of antiques and collectibles. Millions of Americans are drawn to antiques and flea-market culture, whether as participants or as viewers of the... read more

Summary edit see section history

Award-winning nonfiction writer Maureen Stanton spent years shadowing a self-taught antiques and flea market dealer, Curt Avery, on his adventures as an itinerant dealer ("modern day gypsy). Readers journey behind-the-scenes to find out what really goes on at auctions, flea markets (before the... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

Award-winning nonfiction writer Maureen Stanton spent years shadowing a self-taught antiques and flea market dealer, Curt Avery, on his adventures as an itinerant dealer ("modern day gypsy). Readers journey behind-the-scenes to find out what really goes on at auctions, flea markets (before the public arrives), and antiques shows, waking up at dawn to unearth treasures or set up to "sell antiques in a cow pasture," and "shopping by flashlight" at midnight after setting up at outdoor shows. Stanton takes reader on the set of an "Antiques Roadshow" taping, to one of the largest flea markest in the world, Brimfield. She profiles a dealer who tripled his income buying "mistakes" on eBay, a real-life master "restoration" expert whose doctored antiques pass as "real" through major auctions, a high-level dealer of tribal arts who also collects macabre objects (he owns one of the world's largest collections of shrunken human heads). In between the action and adventure, readers learn the history and pitfalls of auctions, the strange theories on why people collect, the best fakes and fakers across time and today, the oddities sold on eBay (William Shatner's kidney stone, a human soul), and weird and wonderful micro-histories of odd, beautiful, rare and ordinary objects: forks, six-board blanket chests, shrunken heads, opium bottles, Windsor chairs, nutcrackers, marbles, African American heritage objects, comic books and other "treasures" sought by collectors--people in love with objects.

Reviewer Annie Groer wrote in The Washington post, "<A>fter whipping through Maureen Stanton's utterly engaging, heavily researched account of her old college buddy's life on the yard-sale flea-market antiques-show auction-house circuit, I wanted to invite myself into his multi-state universe and hang out with all those dealers, collectors, sport shoppers, decorators, scholars... Not since Larry McMurtry's fictitious rogue 'Cadillac Jack' has there been such a charming emissary from the world of the previously owned."

Diane Bostick of Florida's Coastal Breeze News wrote: "This book is full of interesting tidbits of information told in a fascinating way...I found this book hard to put down. It is a non-fiction book that is so full of unbelievable stories you will think you are reading a novel."

Jonathan Lopez wrote in the Wall Street Journal, "Ms. Stanton devotes an engaging chapter to the New England six-board blanket chest--an original American furniture type from the colonial era...Equally fascinating is the book's portrait of Avery's day-to-day business... Ms. Stanton enlivens her narrative with periodic departures into related topics of interest...Ms. Stanton's visit with a master forger of high-end antique furniture is absolutely riveting...Ms. Stanton captures the lower and middle echelons of the business with great skill, and her diverting and wholly unpretentious book makes a fine companion for a day at the beach--or a weekend spent treasure hunting."

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  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • mislistings—Fetchbid.com, Oktshun.com, or Branica.com.
    Highlighted by 13 Kindle customers
  • “Collecting is a way of linking past, present, and future. Objects from the past get collected in the present to preserve them for the future.”
    Highlighted by 12 Kindle customers
  • Wallace Nutting’s Furniture Treasury. “That’s an eye trainer,” he says, as is the McKearins’ “bible of glass,” Two Hundred Years of American Blown Glass.
    Highlighted by 12 Kindle customers
  • In Objects of Desire, Thatcher Freund’s tale of top-tier antiques dealers in the 1980s, he writes of the self-discipline needed.
    Highlighted by 9 Kindle customers
  • An online clearinghouse for handmade crafts, Etsy, founded in 2005, earned $1.7 million in sales monthly by 2008; these figures doubled in 2009. Its founder believes the desire for artisanal and handmade objects is a rebuttal to the Walmartization of consumer culture.
    Highlighted by 8 Kindle customers
  • “Buy any Boston crock with a fish incision,” he says. “If you see Paul Cushman on any ovoid crock, buy it.”
    Highlighted by 7 Kindle customers
  • “There is no secret, there are no shortcuts,” Avery says. “Outlast your opponent. Just do more work than your opponent.”
    Highlighted by 6 Kindle customers
  • Collections take on a life of their own, have a magnetic force. Like attracts like. A single thing is an oddity, lonely. One object with its twin is interesting, a pair. Three is a crowd, four is a family, five or more a community—then a village, a world, a universe, and now, the collector is its ruler, its god.
    Highlighted by 6 Kindle customers
  • Neat & Tidy: Boxes and Their Contents Used in Early American Households by Nina Fletcher Little.
    Highlighted by 5 Kindle customers
  • Paco Underhill’s Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping. Underhill demonstrated that minor but
    Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers
Show all 16 quotes from this book

Table of Contents edit see section history

Prologue: Treasure Hunters: The Reality
Chapter 1: Opium Bottles and Knuckleheads
Chapter 2: One Man's Trash
Chapter 3: Boot Camp
Chapter 4: An Antiques Dealer is Made
Chapter 5: That Good, Good Thing
Chapter 6: Everything Rich and Strange
Chapter 7: Ovoid Nuts and Southern Belles
Chapter 8: All Sad Things are Just Like This
Chapter 9: Hot Potato
Chapter 10: Tea for Two
Chapter 11: Crowded House
Chapter 12: Two Heads are Better than One
Chapter 13: Stump the Dealer
Chapter 14: Shop Victoriously
Chapter 15: Gold is Where You Find It
Chapter 16: Roadshow Rage
Chapter 17: Wilmington, a.k.a. The John Malkovich Show
Chapter 18: Living the Pilgrim-Century Life
Chapter 19: Red Carpet Affair
Chapter 20: Captain Antiques
Chapter 21: Life with Principle
Coda: A Thousand Years

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Maureen Stanton (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: Add the language.
Publisher: The Penguin Press
Country: U.S.A.
Publication Date: June 2011
ISBN: 978-1-59420-293-3
Page Count: 326

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