HOW TO MAKE A MILLION A YEAR AS an "ATTIC SWEEP ANTIQUARIAN!"

My net pen pal, Brad the Pirate, was a chimney sweep. He drives a new truck, bought the Maine property he lives on, a huge farm. His email name is The Pyrate. He’s a happy camper. He tells me that while cleaning chimneys was lucrative, it's not as much fun as his new business, ATTIC CLEANING! Lately he tells me about all the great antiques and collectibles he gets. Elderly clients say ‘Brad, take this junk outta here’ and he has found that 'junk' is quite valuable and these country folk don't know it. Table linens go on EBAY, costume jewelry, old 20’s clothing. Kitchen tools, old magazines, vintage patterns and clothing, vintage tablecloths, all worth a fortune.

Today’s email from Brad read: " Had a good day of work on an attic, cellar, and barn-cleaning job. I got a nice Jotul wood-stove and 3 huge boxes of old photographs and cards and valentines out of it. I’m finding out that in New York, these old photos are worth hundreds each!

"When you sell a house, it has to be clean, attics, cellars, etc. They call me and say "I just sold my Dad’s place for a million dollars and I need someone to clean out the cellar, and it hasn’t been cleaned in 100 years, and we can’t get anyone to go down there..." 

"And I look ‘em in the eye, and I tell ‘em "this ain’t gonna be cheap, we have to wear respirators and tyvek suits, there’s rat shit, bat shit, bird shit, poo!!!" and brown recluse spiders and black widows. I tell ‘em that it’s $60/hr plus expenses for a 2 man crew, the truck and trailer, etc. I pay the help $12/hr. That’s about X amt and I need half in front.”

They pay and some even want to pay the whole sum in front. I load everything in a truck, telling my workers which goodies go into my cab. I keep the goodies, too. This is the best "scam" I’ve ever come up with. On the old drugstore contract that I did, she paid me over $2,000 for bringing home a ton of antiques I later sold for $10,000. 

If you had a pick-up truck you could schmooze all of the realtors, they are the ones that really want all that junk removed, a trip to the licensing board for a print-out of all the realtors, send them all a nice letter and a handful of business cards that says "Deep-cleaners of attics, cellars, and barns", and watch the phone start ringing. 

My friend went on to say “I made $45,000 once, in 5 days, doing this. Here, the cellars have dirt floors in the old places, and I do a quick metal-detector scan of the cellar before I leave! Antique coins in every one of them. I look in every nook and cranny, rafters, holes in plaster and you would NOT believe me if I told you what I have found. Antique boxes with coins, maps, antique deeds. But spiders can be bad, so fumigate with a spritz of flea spray first, into any crevices and into the head spaces and wear a big long glove when you stick a hand in a hole.

Even as a woman, you could do the attic cleaning biz if you knew a Mexican with a truck and found two HOME DEPOT laborers because a woman easily does the hard part, the client finding. 

This is an ultimate career for a frugal pack-rat with an eye for collectibles and NO one else is doing it. Remember, it’s $60/hr PLUS EXPENSES.”

Now, that week, that I heard from Brad, it happened that I had a Feb l995 Readers Digest with an article called "MONEY IN YOUR ATTIC" that tells of a woman who bought junk jewelry at swap meets and garage sales, took it to a NYC jeweler and was offered $275 for a brooch and two bracelets. COSTUME JEWELRY can always be bought from families selling their home, when you're doing their clean up.

The article went about how old Wind-up toys, comic book tie-in products, went for big money. Magazines, lunch pails, a vintage TV Guide magazine from the 50's, ($2000 each) Then coke or other soft drink memorabilia, even the bottles, are worth money. Try this: an old Orphan Annie ring from a cereal box, $14,000 or an old Batman comic from '39 for 49 thousand dollars, Hummels for 300$ each, depression glass for $140 to 800$ a single piece. Antique toys, musical instruments. An old Les Paul electric Guitar for $40,000, a cookie jar for $8,000. They suggest you get Supnick's "Wonderful World of Cookie Jars" and Warman's "Country Antiques and Collectibles" catalogue. 

TO FIND OUT WHAT your nostalgia treasures are worth, go into the best SECOND HAND STORES and ask the owner if you can look at his COLLECTIBLE BOOK for a second. Write the titles down, search for them at this really cut rate online bookstore ABE BOOKS.COM and if you don't want to buy them, sit in the guy's second hand store reading them and making notes. If you say you're going to bring him and his store the art and collectibles that you trash up, he'll let you! He'll probably even make coffee.

LAST if you find tons of old books, SELL your books to collectors by becoming a vendor at http://www.abebooks.com used. Attick cleaning for books gives you a hundred books for a buck maybe. People like me find books reasonably at garage sales, a quarter each. The Thrift stores in our California area offer used books at 45c each. Abe books gets a buck each but you have to pay 2$ for media rate shipping.

I speak of books as to readers, writers, they are treasures. But you’re going to make your lucky strikes with antiques and costume jewelry. So here’s to a Ford Pick-Up and two muscley boys!