Early Attic and Old Basement

If you have never watched the traveling “Antiques Road Show” on PBS, you are missing a good program. Besides entertaining you with other people’s accents and emotional surprises on the part of some, it can teach you a little history. The old items showcased run the gamut from personal letters of the famous, perhaps on fragile paper, to porcelains, to clocks and firearms, to big pieces of furniture. You can also learn how to care for a piece of old furniture so that its value is not lowered just because you changed it a bit.

I recently gave away two postcards that went through the mail around 1917-18. In another eight years they will be antiques. They were not from famous people, but they still might be valuable. I just didn’t have the time to fool with them. One was from Persia and one from Ulm, Germany, both written in pencil, not easily legible, but I’m quite sure some man serving in the Army in Europe, probably my mother’s brother Nelson, sent them to her. I’d kept waiting to have something else to accompany these before having them assessed. I donated them to the Idaho Youth Ranch store, where I unload much of my stuff, not antique.

Today’s younger generations do not seem to care about old stuff such as a bureau that might be worth $45,000. Why not? Are today’s gadgets so snooty they wouldn’t be caught in the company of such? It’s the new technological trinkets that die first, being constantly replaced by the next bright idea. I just wonder how freakish an antique cell phone will look like in a hundred years. If our planet lasts that long.

If you have a crammed-full attic or basement, why not check it out. You might be rich and not know it.

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