There`s gold in them thar attics.
At least that`s what Anthony Curtis, an antiques dealer and author, says. Curtis` new book, ”There`s a Fortune in Your Attic” (Perigree Books, $12.95), is an eclectic collection of antique items that have recently sold for sometimes astronomical amounts.
And, he says, similar ones could also be lying around your house.
”All the things in that book, there`s others waiting out there, and they keep turning up,” says Curtis, who lives in a 50-room castle ”full-up” with antiques in Galashiels, Scotland.
”It really is open season to find a fortune in the antiques and collecting trade these days because there`s a million and one things out there worth fortunes just waiting to be found. And not everybody knows it.”
The book examines the stories behind thousands of items, from anatomical devices to wineglasses.
Many of the entries fetched astounding amounts of money. A stick bought at an antiques shop for $10 turns out to be a rare Hawaiian god stick and sells for $82,250. A $265,000 vase. A teddy bear worth $96,000. After awhile, the numbers start sounding like lottery jackpots.
”But there`s no X`s marking the spot where they are,” Curtis says.
”You`ve got to keep your eyes open. You really need to be in touch with what`s happening. . . . They don`t have to be centuries old. There`s a lot of recent things worth money.
”I`m talking about big money. I`m really talking about megabucks these days. There`s a lot of things out there worth hundreds of thousands of dollars just waiting to be found.”
Curtis has spent 25 years dealing, collecting and writing 164 books about antiques, in addition to publishing 22 editions of The Lyle Official Antiques Review, a guide listing prices and descriptions.
”There`s a Fortune in Your Attic,” a compilation of the most interesting finds he has come across, is his first work not meant exclusively for the professional dealer, he says.
He likens his home to a ”props department” without any ”rhyme or reason with what`s in the rooms. It`s full-up basically with everything, everything from very, very cheap antiques to very, very expensive things.”
The book is organized alphabetically, but it has a random feel.
”Globes,” for example, follows ”Glass” and precedes ”Golfing items”
in the table of contents. Curtis plans to write an updated version with new discoveries next year.
”The more you tell people about them, and the more I talk about them and say what to look for, things turn up,” he says. ”This book will reap things from America.”
Curtis uses the Declaration of Independence as an example of a surprise find. A Declaration bought for $4 at a flea market in Adamstown, Pa., sold for $2.42 million at a Sotheby`s auction in New York on June 14.
”There`s 200 of those printed,” he says; ”so far only 24 have been found. There`s another 176 out there somewhere waiting to be found. They wouldn`t have been destroyed. People would have hidden them. They`d have kept them somewhere. There`s definitely 176 more Declarations of Independence waiting to be found, and that`s the basis of the things in the book.”
Curtis attempts to find a medium between history and story-telling. Instead of merely giving the value of a rare deck of cards from the 15th Century ($180,000), he details the origins of playing cards and some interesting variations.
The book also is designed to show that anyone can become an antiques collector.
”You don`t have to be an old man with long hair with kind of a lifetime`s worth of experience,” Curtis says. ”You can be a young boy of 10 who can find these things. You don`t have to be a fuddy-duddy kind of intellectual to make money from antiques. You`ve just got to be aware of what`s happening and keep your eyes open, and you really could come across a fortune quite easily.
”It`s like a treasure hunt. It`s like panning for gold, but it`s better. You can get richer doing it.”
