He looked at the empty glass vial on his workbench. Then he looked at the thousands of sealed ones still resting in their dark mahogany beds.
Arthur's heart did a small, familiar skip. This piece alone, once cleaned and waxed, was worth more than he had paid for the entire truckload. It was the jackpot that made wholesale buying a drug.
To anyone else, it was a mountain of junk. To Arthur, it was a math problem. buy wholesale antiques
For thirty years, Arthur had reduced the past to cubic feet and profit margins. He had stripped estates bare, turned family histories into line items, and sold off the remnants of lives to the highest bidder.
Forty-eight volumes of The Annual Register , 1758–1806. Good condition. Target: interior designer. Profit: $400.Three brass-and-iron surveyor's levels. Target: boutique shop. Profit: $600.A crate of assorted daguerreotypes, mostly unidentified stern-faced families. Target: collectors and artists. Profit: $300. He looked at the empty glass vial on his workbench
He pulled another. June 3, 1891. The specific shade of blue of the sky over Marseille before the thunderstorm.
He knew exactly what the local decorators would pay for three yards of green leather books to fill the shelves of a rich man's study. He knew the price of brass transit levels among the hipsters who wanted their apartments to look like 19th-century laboratories. He looked at the plastic-wrapped blocks and calculated the margin. "I'll take the four pallets on the left," Arthur said. This piece alone, once cleaned and waxed, was
Arthur did the math again. The risk was higher, but the margin on the first four was fat enough to cover a total loss on the last two. He nodded. "Load 'em up."