How Antiques Work

At what point does something become an antique? Could that old piece of furniture in the attic be worth millions of dollars? Join Josh and Chuck as they break down all the Stuff You Should Know about antiques.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know?
From House stoff Works dot com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. Yes, it's about antiques on Josh Clark. There's

(00:20):
a very eager, strangely eager Charles W. Chuck Bryant, uh,
and this is stuff you should know. The podcast, the
hundred year old podcast at least makes us an antique.
Do you can tell though from the hair in my
ears that I'm getting up there? Yeah? Nose hair, ear hair.
That's That's the joke about man, right, is that hair

(00:42):
leaves the places you want it and accumulates where you
don't want so, Chuck Um, you know how you think
about certain things, and uh, you come across like a
concept like antiques. You're collecting and buying and selling of
old stuff. That's my definition. But I think it's pretty

(01:03):
much dead on um And you think this has always
been around and you stop and think, no, that's probably
not true. So when did it start? And I am
very gratified to say we know when the popular obsession
with antiques began? Isn't that weird? I didn't know this
until I read this, and it actually ties in with

(01:24):
the other one recording today, Volcanos. So here's a little
piece of trivia for you that will eventually appear on
a quiz. How are antiques and the volcanoes podcast related?
Strange glue Herculaneum and Pompeii. Mount Vesuvius binds these two, right,
So tell them about it, Chuckers. Well, there was a

(01:45):
big old eruption in seventy nine, a d of Vesuvius,
and it pretty much buried Pompeii and the sister city,
Herculaneum between about twenty ft of junk of ash. Well,
we'll get to that in the vault, which is not
you know, that's a bad thing for all the people there,
but the bad thing who died screaming, but it preserved

(02:06):
them dying screaming. I used to be so obsessed with that,
with national anything I could get my hands on, and
it was like, look at that skeleton crawling towards the sea.
Look at this guy who was caught in a boat's yeah,
I loved it. So uh many years after that, Charles
the third of Spain and the seventeen early sevent undred

(02:27):
said hey, let's go dig this stuff up and see
what we can find. And it turns out they found
a bunch of well preserved antiques and they became like, wow,
old stuff is cool. Right, So these two entire cities
were basically frozen in time and protected from looters, and
they started bringing these treasures up and it actually sparked

(02:47):
the neo classical period or movement, I guess in Europe,
and that was like the antiques right, and then in America.
So that's worldwide antiques or at least western uh popularity
of antiques. Right, what about American? Right? We can actually
trace the moment where Americans get interested in antiques too.

(03:08):
It's it's I love this very cool. Once again, our
our seventeen seventy six. You know, America is a young,
budding country. A hundred years later, we celebrate our first
little centennial in Philadelphia and they said, hey, you know what,
We've got a hundred years worth of stuff we've been
making and let's let's showcase this. And all of a
sudden people were like the same thing, like wow, this

(03:30):
is kind of cool. I like this old stuff that
we've got. That's exactly right, And that sparked an interest
in early American furniture, I think to start with, right,
I'm gonna start buying it and I'm gonna start collecting it,
and it became a commodity. Right. So, Um, the the
eighteen seventies six exposition was what sparked an interest in
antiques in the US. Uh. And if you so, we're

(03:50):
going to focus mostly on American antiques, and by mostly
I mean exclusively, right, Well, a little Europe thrown in, Okay,
so not exclusively, but mostly was. Um. But if you
are an antique collector today, and you are a very
puritanical one could say antique collector, um, you're probably going
to say that anything prior to eighteen thirty, UM, in

(04:14):
America and probably anywhere is an antique. Anything after it's
kind of up in the air. And the reason being
is around eighteen thirty the Industrial Revolution started. People stopped
using like dovetailed joints that they sawed by hand or
whittled down by hand and using wooden pegs and started
using machines. Stopped. But yeah, well it fell for mass

(04:36):
manufacturing exactly. So this advent of mass manufacturing led to
a huge boom in um in in production. Coupled with
this new interest post like eighteen seventy six in early
American furniture, and so a revival of these styles, right,
So you have mass manufacturing and a revival of interest

(04:58):
in early American styles mean that you have a lot
of reproduction furniture being produced. Yeah, but reproduction furniture is
is what you want us the real deal, right, which
is period. So period is something made in the style
of the period in the age in that age like
Queen Anne. Sure not Queen Anne reproduction or Chippendale reproduction, which,

(05:18):
by the way, is the sexiest furniture period in American
history if you ask me. Those uh the little cuffs
and nothing. But yeah, yeah, I'll a picture when I
hear that is swayzy and what a classic one. Heppa White, Cheriton,
Duncan Fife, just a name of you, Yes, of our heroes. Yeah,

(05:38):
those are the those are the big ones. And I'm
sure if you're really into this you could you can
be like Duncan Fife. Yeah. I go for Duncan Hines. Yeah,
Duncan Chic. Remember that guy. It sounds really familiar. He
hes a singer. He had a song which one I
can't remember he was. He's a one hit guy. Well, Chuck, yes, Uh,
if you are getting in do antiques, right, you probably

(06:02):
already know all this stuff. Um way into it. But
let's say let's say that you are you really uh no,
I'm into walking around antique flea markets, but I'm not.
I don't know you know what I'm doing. I just
like tooling around and poking things. Yeah, you know, it's funny. Um.
I think Billy Bob Thornton wrote possibly one of the

(06:23):
greatest lines in the history of film, and he said
something about he made um Dwight yoakum saying sling blade
that he can barely drink a glass water around a
piece of antique furniture. So awful and so funny in
that movie at the same time. It's a good line. Um.
I like walking around antique places too. I don't like
encountering antique wheelchairs or antique medical equipment. I love that stuff.

(06:48):
It's so freaky. Well, I don't use it. But yeah,
well you really shouldn't like probably not sterile any longer. Um.
But okay, so let's let's say that you are not
completely versed in in antiques what to look for. We're
gonna give you a brief primer here, and since we
are owned by Discovery Communications aka the Discovery Channel, we

(07:08):
get to draw from the company well and talk to
people once in a while who have shows on Discovery,
specifically in this one, a guy named Paul Brown who
heads up a show called Auction Kings. Right, he owns
a Gallery sixty three which is literally just up the
road a piece from a San Roswell road. I'm gonna
have to visit that. And he is a an auction king.

(07:28):
I've seen it myself with my own eyes, and we
talked to him actually, so he's gonna come in a
little bit um here there. When you hear someone that
sounds like they're on the telephone and it's not us, right, yeah,
well we'll we'll teake him up a little better than that.
But that to give rule of thumb I think for
this one. Um. But what Paul says and what it
what it expresses in this article how antiques work, um,

(07:51):
is that the first way to differentiate a real antique,
a period piece from a reproduction piece, um and kind
of get an idea of how much value this thing
is gonna hold ultimately is just by looking it over.
That's the first best thing you can do is take
a really good hard look at it, right, So, uh,
what are some of the things we're looking for? Well, uh,

(08:14):
just at first glance, I would say overall condition, like
what kind of shape it's in. And this is not
to determine whether it's real or fake. This is just
if you're assuming it's a real antique because apparently high
quality fakes. Don't be afraid of that, because it's pretty
rare to to pass one off, to try and pass
one off, although Paul said in an interview that he

(08:35):
just came across one right, like he had gotten off
a call with a buddy who informed him that something
he was thinking about or somebody was trying to sell
him was in fact a fake faberge, like right before
we interviewed him. So he said, it does happen. It's
very uncommon, especially with furniture too. It's so difficult to
do this. So what you're really looking for is not

(08:56):
necessarily a counterfeit, but a reproduction, right it exactly? So,
um here here's here are a couple of tips that
Paul gave us. Right, a cursory glance will tell you'll
tell a lot of tales I mean even to to
an inexperienced eye, if you open up the doors and
you see there, you know, nails or uh holding it
together rather than dovetails in Morrison tennant joints, and you

(09:18):
know it's probably of later manufacturer. Um. You know, evenly
evenly cut nails were not even made until you know
this center. We're not this century, laugh, it's the twentieth century.
It's probably that the most nails were handmade. And so
if you've got a lot of evenly cut nails looks
like they were driven in there with a nail gun,
you know, that's that's a big that's a big tip off.

(09:39):
So there's a couple of things you look for in Yeah,
I mean craftsmanship, how it was put together is uh.
I mean they're still craftsman today doing things in the
old school way, but by and large when you look
at the joints and the tools might leave marks, yes, um,
hardware used like nails, Like Paul said, Yeah, so that's

(09:59):
what you're gonna look forward to determine if it was
you know, probably a reproduction or not. And then what
the stuff is made out of is actually going to
um leave a lot of clues to specifically with furniture. Um,
the wood used, it's very important. Right, So for example, chuck,
you've got um. Like walnut was very popular with Queen Anne,
which apparently ran from the early eighteenth century to about

(10:22):
seventeen fifty when Chippendale took over. Right, we know so
much about the wood used an antique furniture. It's a uh,
Mahogany came in the fashion after that, right, and then
a cherry, which is sort of like mahogany, it's just
a little paler, very strong and abundant here in the
old us of A. So that was pretty popular as well. Yeah,
oak has always been popular. Yeah. Oka is especially popular

(10:44):
among Europeans before the beginning of the eighteenth century, and
then it had some renewed popularity in America around nineteen hundred.
I personally don't go for oak that much. I like
either really pale blonde maple, hate wind. Do you really
like maple? I just don't like pale. I don't like
blond wood. It reminds me of ikea. Yeah, I think

(11:07):
it's one of the reasons I like it that look
it's like minimal and it's really cold outside. Uh. And
then Chuck there's also um pine, right, poor pine. Pine
is um. Well, let's just go ahead and say it.
It's the the poor person's would when you're manufacturing furniture,
your country folk, your rural you just want a chair

(11:27):
to sit in. Maybe you're really good at making a chair,
so a hundred and fifty two hundred years later, somebody
wants to pay top dollar for that. But for the
most part, pine is used for the undersides of the backings, uh,
the drawers, insides of of a piece of furniture. Right, yeah,
but wood floor is actually hard to pine floors. That's
what we have in our house. That's those are. Yeah,

(11:48):
those are like a find. Apparently there's a guy done
in Florida. Um. Apparently there's a logging operation in like
the nineteenth century in Florida, and they would fell this
pine and float it down the river to the sawmill.
Every once in a while, something would be Uh it
was so dense it would just sink. And it happened
a lot and they just leave them. But for some reason,
the composition of the water, I think it was like

(12:09):
this brackish combination of stea and fresh water. Um, somehow
preserve these these trees these huge trees, and there's a
company that brings these things up in salvages, these this
nineteenth century heart pine and sells it for like top
dollars lumber. Yeah, we haven't had this exact conversation before.

(12:30):
It was a while ago though, which which pod. It
was a long time ago, but it bears saying. I
think I think I'm going in saying this is so cool.
So it's like, why are you laughing? But I like pines,
So that's why I said, poor pine, um, plywood and
particle board. That's a dead giveaway that it's not an antique.
Don't be stupid. As our staples, we should mention staples

(12:52):
are a hallmark of twentieth century manufacture. Exactly, condition of
the wood you should look at that is what shrink Yeah,
so it shrinks and it leaves a lot of clues. Right,
so you know the bottom of a drawer, you know
how in a really good construction it's kind of slatted in. Yeah,
so as it shrinks, it's not going to be flush
any longer. And not only will that shrinkage be a

(13:15):
dead giveaway, but that that portion, that the shrunken part,
the now exposed part, should be lighter in color and
the stuff that's been exposed to underwear for the last
two years underwear. Yeah. Um. Also that you know, they
used to use a pegs a lot of times to
as simple furniture. So if if the pegs are have

(13:36):
worked their themselves out a little bit, that's probably a
good uh sign that there's been some shrinkage going on
in the underwear drawer. Uh. What else we talked about pegs,
dovetail joints. I think Paul mentioned dovetail joints and mortis
and tenon joints are really, you know, a hallmark of
early craftsmanship. So you look for those tools handstanding. It's

(14:01):
gonna look different than machine standing, as is a hand
saw rather than like the perfect straight edge of a
saw mill saw. You can actually, if you know what
you're doing, you can kind of roughly date what like
the age of your piece of furniture by the saw marks. Right. Um.
So you're gonna want to look at the back of
a chair or the drawer. It's an inconspicuous area that

(14:22):
they probably didn't bother to sand. Um. If there are straight,
irregular marks, that's pre eighteen thirty. Uh. If they're straight
even marks. That means that it was around eighteen thirty sawmills.
We're cutting these straight even marks, perfectly straight. And then
circular marks came in about eighteen fifty, when the Industrial

(14:43):
Revolution was really starting to take off. People like, our
furniture doesn't have to be square anymore. Yes, you know,
it really took me. And this one was when I
read this sentence. Nails were originally made forged individually. I mean,
does that really hit home? Do you think how many
nails it takes to build a structure, and the blacksmith

(15:05):
had to make every nail one at a time. That's
why the blacksmith was usually the man to go crazy
on the rest of the town and kill everyone in
their sleep. Yeah, with something made of heavy metal, probably
that's what I would use. Uh, where are we here
buying them? You wanna talk about buying antiques? Yeah, and um,
we should probably say that. You know, if you're into antiques,
especially if you're really an antiques, you're probably doing it

(15:26):
at least partially for profit, right, hoping to maybe make
a little money off of it. Well, Paul pointed out
that you should buy you should only buy something if
you like it. At excellent point. I thought that was
a great point. Usually you're looking you know, you think
it's worth something as well, right, And we asked him
about value, like how does an antique get valued? And
here's what he said. For worth is what you can

(15:47):
get somebody to pay for it on a given day,
not what in you know, insurance company or a museum
or in you know, a quote expert says it's worth.
So you know what the biggest factor is, supplying the man,
how many people in the audience want it. You know,
I bring something up that five people want, it's going
to bring more than than somebody might have thought it
was worth if it comes out and it's you know,

(16:08):
only one person wants it or nobody wants it, whether
it's going to bring less, but the reality is that's
that's what it was worth that day in this building.
So you know, it's it's just kind of a weird dynamic.
Worth is a is a real funny thing. It's it's
it's like trying to nail jello. So that was Paul
once again, Josh I could tell he was on the phone.
He was on the phone. Uh, if you if you

(16:30):
don't know anything and you want to learn something, about antiques.
Here's some advice from how staff works dot com. Just
start buying things. Will now go to a museum, because
museums are a great place to You're gonna you're gonna
know it's real, it's authenticated by pro It's probably gonna
be grouped by either the manufacturer of the period, so

(16:50):
you get like a really specific view of what you're
looking at it and then probably be identified by the maker.
And you might have a docent there that has some
like history. So that's a really good place to learn
about this stuff. Yeah, there's usually somebody there you can
say what does this mean? Or why is that there?
And they go move along. Yeah uh. And then the
next thing, you know, that chairs out there any longer

(17:11):
because you just exposed it as a fraud, much like
the um Brewster chair. Right, yes, have you heard about this?
And I talked about another podcast or something. No, that's
known as the greatest hoax of all time, greatest antique
hoax of all time, greatest antique furniture hoax of all time.
Let's get specific here, huh that let it know that well,

(17:31):
think about it's a chair. Surely there's other antique hoaxes. Well,
this is the greatest, This is the Ali This is
the O. J. Simpson Trial of Antiques. So the Ford
Museum was taken by a chair that was supposedly created
by pilgrims from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Right, Yeah, but
they weren't taken by the chair. They were taken by

(17:53):
La Montaigne armand Lamont. He sounds like a fake furniture guy.
He sounds like a forger armand La Montaigne faked the
Brewster chair just to see if he could fool the experts.
And he did. Yeah, which apparently is quite popular and
especially was in the seventies or hoaxx all over the place.
Have you seen f is for fake? No? Okay, you
know our buddy recommended this movie. It's the Orson Wells

(18:15):
documentary on art forgery. Okay, so we saw it, right,
you mean I watched it. It's very interesting. It's the
Who's Well I thought he was talking about the Doors
and Walls TV show when he had Burt Reynolds on. No,
but it's in the it's in a similar stylus, really
edited very strangely, right, But the content of it is

(18:35):
um Clifford Irving, the guy who faked the biography of um.
Howard Hughes also wrote a biography on a great art
forger named Elmir, and Elmir is like this guy who's like,
I just do this to show that all the experts
are idiots and I've never signed anything, and I toss everything.
And his biographer, who actually turns out to be a

(18:57):
hoax himself, Clifford Irving, is like that, it's not true.
That guy is fraudulent and he's making money off of it.
But it makes a good point that we you said
in the museum, you're gonna be able to probably rely
on it being legitimate. That's where you can really learn
the point of this movie is that's not necessarily true.
I mean, like, if you can pass something by the experts,

(19:20):
then it's legitimate and in just about everyone's eyes, and
that apparently is fairly rampant in the art world. Yeah. Well,
the Brister chair, though, they put it through an X
ray and they were they were all of a sudden,
they were like, ah, yeah, La Montage, Yeah. La Montage
had said, like, you know, I faked the chair like
several a couple of decades ago, and you bought it.

(19:41):
Somebody bought it and then now they used that chair
though as an example of how to be not be duped.
I guess what do they? What does Oprah call that?
At a learning moment or a teaching moment? Yeah, I
think something like that. So uh, if you have learned
a few things here and you do want to buy antiques,
where should he go? H? Well, you said the museums,
and you're ready to buy and just start anywhere you can.

(20:03):
If you go to a small town in small in
America and you close your eyes and just start walking
forward and don't get hit by a car going around
the square, you're going to run into an antique store. Yes,
And depending on the size of the shop, if it's
like a smallest shop, then that means probably that the
shop owner picked out all the antiques because there's things

(20:24):
that they like in things that they think will sell.
Or like a flea market, they'll usually have little booths
and you can rent out your own little booth and
sell stuff. So you'll probably get like a big wide
variety there. That's right. Um where else? Well, auctions if
you want to, if you want to add a little
zing to your antiques or your antique buying experience, experience
right to the auction is very much like an experience,

(20:47):
and you get to buy stuff too, right. Um, And
we talked to Paul about this. We'll bring him back
in a second. But if you want to really kind
of hone your hangling skills or you know, just kind
of know your limits, you can start off in a
small store and just go basically abuse the store owner
and then hone and go to a couple of auctions

(21:10):
and by boom, by being you might be ready. But
this is what you're in for. It's not nearly as
um scary as we've been made to believe. Apparently what auctions, Yeah, listen,
listen to pul check. The auction can be Uh, it's
nature almost. I think maybe Howard did it or I
don't know what happened exactly, but um, you know, a
lot of people are intimidated by the auction process. What

(21:32):
I always encourage people do is come in early, you know,
maybe come in the week before and take a look around, preview,
you know, take some measurements, kick the tire, so to speak,
open the door, see if you're dovetail, see if it's
if you're buying, or if you're potentially buying what you
think you're potentially buying. Ask questions because we're always here
to answer them. And you know, if I don't know,
I'll say I don't know. But if I do know,
I'm happy to share and say so is my stuff.

(21:53):
But you know, and then as the auction be approaches,
you know, you come in, get settle in and kind
of watch it, kind of get a fearful. It's a
lucamic thing, and each auction is a dynamic and fluid.
It's almost organic the way it kind of grows, and
you see, okay, these things are going high, those things
are going kind of watch it a little bit and
then just don't be intimidated to to bid, don't don't
let me get you know, to your head. Just kind

(22:14):
of play play the game. It's like going to the
casino sort of. You kind of get a rush out
of it. It's fun. So that was some good advice.
Like they'll they'll usually have a display period where you
can go check it out up close before the auction,
and if you've never been to an auction, it can
get caught up in it. You know, have you ever
been doing auction of any kind? Silent auction at a church,
very low pressure. I mean one where the guys you

(22:35):
know doing the whole thing. Cattle auction, I've been to
those before. Did you buy for each catal auction? Kid?
You not? Did you buy a cow? I'm just a
do you want to check out beforehand? Know exactly what
you want, what you're willing to pay, and don't get
caught up in the auction fever because, as Paul pointed out,
and as anyone knows, something is worth what someone's gonna

(22:56):
pay for it. And and if you've got all these
people bidden on, it's just like eBay, it's the same thing.
You get all these I never understood the eBay people
that you know in an auctions for like a week
and on day one they start throwing bids in. Yeah,
I've never understood anything. Well. Sellers love it because it
just drives up the price. But I mean as a
as a buyer, it doesn't make none at all. On eBay.

(23:17):
I go in the last like second and a half
my first bid, right and we we also talked to
Paul about um, you know what what you should buy
or if there's something in your home, and he was
saying like it's very surprising how something that seems like
it would never sell, or something you take his ordinary
commonplace because you grew up around it and it's now

(23:38):
in your home and you walk past it every day,
that that suddenly takes on value when a guy like
him creates a market by taking a seller and putting
them together and putting his stuff in front of buyers. Right, So,
so you're absolutely right. I mean, like there, things do
have value even if they don't seem like they have value.
And you can make some dough it in auction, or
you can spend a bunch of dough it in auction.

(24:00):
You can also do an internet auction, which requires a
tremendous amount of faith. Yeah, I mean eBay has their
little rules of you gotta be on the upend up,
but you can really kind of do anything on there
if you want. Yeah, there's antique shows that are you know,
like this weekend and North Georgia there's a show and

(24:20):
the Georgia Mountain fair Grounds. It's a big deal. Everyone
brings their stuff and from them once a year and
not just made it up. And obviously a state sales.
Keep your eyes peeled in the newspaper and Craigslist and
stuff for state sales, you get some good fine and
the cool thing about the state sales, especially if you
if you find an estate sale and the sign for
it is on like a piece of poster board with

(24:41):
black sharpie, that means it's a yard sale. That means
that it's well, it could be there. There could be
some really great stuff there, and it's being sold by
people who don't know anything, and there's probably no reserve price,
which is the minimum bid that will be accepted. Um.
So yeah, state sales can be treasure troves, especially if
you like stuff that smell like um that elderly. Right,

(25:02):
let me say that, I think so mothballs. Yeah. Uh.
If you're checking things out at these places, look for
a signature of the maker to help authenticate it. That's
kind of a dead giveaway. If you see like a
brand on furniture like on the underside, or um on
glassware and ceramics is usually on the on the bottom.

(25:23):
What else. Well, yeah, that's a that's a good point
that there's there should be a signature there because the difference,
the only difference really between a reproduction and a counterfeit, uh,
is the stamp of the craftsman. Right, the mark of
the craftsman saying like I made this in. I'm not
trying to pass it off as something made in. Yeah. Well,

(25:45):
sometimes there's other documentation too that someone will include, like
this is uh a photo of my great great grandmother
with this chest of drawers or chiffer robe, and um,
here's a and then here's it's included in the ill
from too. And there's a letter um from my great
grandfather to my great grandmother about the chiff robe. And

(26:06):
I'm gonna give you all this saying bust up that
chiffer robe to help to help document that it is
in fact. Yes, and if you have that much documentation,
you're in like full in because apparently being able to
prove providence, especially famous providence, can apparently just drive the
price up. There's a story in this article about a

(26:28):
person who attended the two thousand to Tucson Antiques roadshow
of it and showed up with a you first phase
chief's blanket, which is rare enough, like this thing was
appraised that three and fifty five hundred thousand dollars, but
the person said that it once belonged to Kick Carson,
but couldn't prove it, but had he or she proven it,

(26:49):
then it would have increased the value by another hundred
and fifty grand just because Kick Carson slept in it
for a while. Al Right, pretty sweet. Huh. Yeah, there's
I look at a lot of Craigslist guitars, you know,
just I'm not in the market, but I always just look,
and there's always every day there's always some two that
has a really cheap CREDI guitar and he's like it

(27:09):
was signed by the Kip Winger and there's just the
scrawl and sharpie on it. And you know, there're as
some like five hundred bucks for hundred dollar guitar with
Inger maybe don doc into Uh what else can you
look for, Josh? If you have a CT scan in
your house, or an X ray machine or infrared analysis

(27:30):
or ultra violet analysis, you can do it that way, Yes,
if you're so lucky to have those kind of things
in your home or your medical clinic. Or look at
the antique dealer. If they're on the up and up,
they're probably a member of one of the professional associations.
And then also if you follow Paul Brown's advice and
buy what you like, and you're you're pretty much buying
for yourself. Uh, then you may end up using your antiques,

(27:53):
displaying it, keeping it out in the opening your normal house.
And if you do that, you're gonna want to keep
up with it. Right, So if you have an antique clock,
you're gonna want to wind it regularly. Uh. If you
have a rug or blanket or something like that, maybe
up on the walls better place than on the floor, right. Um.
And uh then other uh kind of more fragile stuff

(28:13):
like books, sheet music, manuscripts. Um, you wanna store these
upright out of the sun. Yeah, we want to make
sure there's no newspaper pressing between them. Highly acidic, bad
for an antique book. Probably not in the basement or
the attic. You want a good neutral temperature. Your books
want to be in the same climate you're in. Yeah.

(28:34):
Did you like that it's a T shirt right there.
Photographs you should store in their own individual envelope and
then that envelope in a box. Don't like out of
the sun. Yeah, don't stick them all together and like
put a brick on top of them. They're gonna end
up being a goooey mess. It's not a good way
to store your photos and you're also gonna want to

(28:54):
buy a nice pair of cotton gloves when you start
collecting antique photographs of any kind, whether it's glass or
metal degarat type. If you're into Matthew Brady or being
a mime, remember the Brady Bunch where it turned out
that Matthew Brady was related to Mr Brady and they
showed like a picture it was a de Garat type
of Abraham Lincoln in the background is Mike Brady. Yeah,

(29:16):
it's a good one. I do remember that. I'm like,
this is like the second Chris Farley reference. Yeah, we
did the Chip Indels thing and then like the remember
when he a text Scorsese. Do you remember you got
anything else? Set it for auctions and uh antiques and
that kind of thing. I think it is. We want

(29:39):
to give a hearty thanks to Paul Brown. Congratulations and
good luck. It's nice to see another Atlanta boy making
good that's right, um, And we're gonna drop by Gallery
sixty three one day, maybe a good picture made with him.
How about that he invited us so it wouldn't be
like stalking, and you know, check out auction Kings obviously
if you want to learn more about antiques. You can

(29:59):
type word antiques or antiquities is as it's also called
antiques is slang for antiquities. You know that that was it? Yeah,
you can type that into the search bar at how
stuff works dot com the dusty old search bar and
needed polishing found in our attic. All right, Yes, that's
what I'm trying. Now, how does it work? I think
it's great that brings up then listener male, I'm gonna

(30:25):
call this, uh polyamory A polyamorous young lady. Yeah, hello
from a polyamoroust. Yeah, hi, guys. Today I was feverishly
sewing tiny pieces of silk together and cursing myself for
attempting such an elaborate Christmas gift for my sister. When
why would anyone want? Multiple spouses started playing? I put

(30:48):
down my thumble and listen even more intently than usual
for I myself and a polyamoroust. I'm a twenty one
year old female living in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, which I believe
is in America's hat. I've flown over that. I have
two partners, Jesse and Kumarn, and of two three and
two years, respectively. Jesse and I lived together. We all

(31:10):
happened to be humanitarian atheists. Jesse and Komb have been
friends since well before I met either of them, but
they do not have a physical relationship together. Both of
them are able to pursue relationships with other people, and
I have had a lady friend in the last three
years to boot as well. To minimize the risk of
s t I s, we maintain a fluid bond and

(31:33):
no one has intercourse with someone outside the bond without
an s t I test. Jealousy has never been an issue.
For some reason. Jesse actually encouraged me to start dating Komb,
and when Jesse was dating his lady friend, I was
really pleased and excited. All of our parents know we
are out to our co workers and friends. I have
no desire to get married, but I know of many

(31:55):
polyamorous families who do or are. I would say the
benefits of polyN me for us, at least, because a
twentysomething family with no children boils down to more more
people to love, more people to be loved by, more
sources of support, more ideas, more perspective or Christmas gifts.
The most importantly, more people to gun down, zombies and

(32:17):
left for dead. Is that one of the safe places,
one of the safe areas in the Zombie Apocalypse Saskatoon. Yeah,
I'm sure three shotguns are better than two. I would
also like to point out that living communally where everyone
has sexual access quote unquote to everyone else is relatively
rare in polyamory. More commonly it's just three or four

(32:39):
or four person relationships or quote unquote open relationships, or
even primary and secondary relationships. So that in tertiary is
from lydia Well, thanks a lot, lydia Um is very
nice to have that little peek into your life. Thank
you up there. Plus also she left out and say

(33:00):
s cartoon it gets really cold up there. Yeah, real cold.
Imagine a three person snuggle is pretty warm. It's like
three dog night, do you know? That's where that came
from the Aborigines in Australia. On a particularly cold night,
they would sleep with three dogs around him. The three
dog night is a really really cold night, and that's
where the bank got their name. Yes, okay, if you

(33:20):
have any cool interesting stories, we didn't really touch about
a touch on it, but if we if you have
any cool stories about something that was found in your
attic or in your neighbor's attic that turned out to
be really valuable and cool. We want to hear about it.
And in the meantime, here's a little um watching homework
for you. Everyone goes see The Red Violin, probably the
coolest auction movie of all time. You've seen it? Oh, chuck,

(33:43):
you gotta send a cube? Okay? Uh? Anyways, send us
your cool stories, put it in an email, spec it
on the bottom, and send it to stuffed podcast at
how stuff works dot com for moral nos and thousands
of other topics. Is how stuff works dot com. To
learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon

(34:04):
in the upper right corner of our homepage. The house
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