Visiting Otto and Susan Smith was like going "home." Probably because I spent many a days and nights at their house during my teenage years. Why, you may ask? Well you see, Otto and Susan are the parents of BFF, Kara. And Why, you may ask again, am I interviewing them for R-Town? That's easy….Otto is an antiquer, (I may have just made up that word) and has been doing so for over 40 years! You might even say he's a professional! People summon him to their garage sales when they have items they think he might be interested in! Really...I'm not lying! So why did he start antiquing?
"When I was kid, I used to collect comic books, marbles, and little toys, and I think it just grew from that." He went on to tell me that when he was dating Susan, her mother had a lot of antiques around the house and she had an old camelback trunk that he was fascinated by! It got him thinking that maybe this is something he is REALLY interested in. He then met a man who had a collection of old advertising tins, and he said "once I saw that collection and thought, that's what I want to do!" He began collecting the tins by initially going to swap meets (San Bernardino Swap Meet was the closest one at the time) and he would occasionally run across an old tin from the early 1900's. "In those days you could buy tins, tobacco tins, coffee cans, for about $5. There are some tins worth thousands of dollars now a days." As time progressed he was able to start buying items off the internet.
At some point, Otto went from simply a collector and lover of antiques, to selling them. "We had a bunch of older items that we would want to sell, right after the time Kara was born, and at one point we had a garage sale and made about $200, and I thought, what a great way to make some extra money and offset my hobby." He didn't realize, at the time, how valuable some of his items were, and then decided to go out to the bigger swap meets, to find more valuable items. "I went every weekend just to see if I could find the items I wanted," he said. Otto would run into other collectors and they would talk and give him tips, or let him know other places he could go to find his antiques and where he could go to sell his items. He met a man who let him know that he could go to the Costa Mesa Swap Meet and would be able to set up and sell his antiques. He recalls one of his best days out at Costa Mesa, he returned with $600 and thought, "This is great! I have some play money!" This eventually evolved and he started going to the Rose Bowl. "You hit the big time!" I said. Otto still has his permanent spot at the Rose Bowl and goes once a month with items he purchases from Estate Sales, garage sales, swap meets, etc. "What started off as a little hobby has become a pretty good source of income, in my retirement years."
I wondered what the most fascinating item he has ever found was, and before I could ask Susan asked me if I remembered the Oscar that sat on their hearth for years. I vaguely remembered it and they told me it didn't have a name on it, and wasn't painted gold, but it was indeed an Oscar. Otto told me the story about how he bought it off a guy in Palm Springs for $25 and after years of having it, he ended up selling it to a place in Hollywood (Hollywood Book Store) that collected old Hollywood memorabilia and found out it WAS an Oscar. They advertised it in an antique magazine (this is before the days of internet) and a buyer called and gave Otto $1300 for it! Years later, a gentleman contacted Otto about the Oscar and offered him $5000 for it! Unfortunately, he didn't have it anymore.
"Was that the most lucrative item you've found?" I wondered. Surprisingly, it was not. Otto told me the story of how he came across a Salesman Sample (which I had no idea what this was). "In the old days, when salesman would go around to various stores or what not, they would bring miniature items of what they were selling. It's an actual working model, just miniaturized, of what they are selling." Otto had found a Salesman Sample of an early horse-drawn road grater, in the original wooden box that was about 4 feet long, and bought it for $200 and ended up selling it for $2000. "Long story short, we were able to take a nice little vacation after that!"
As time has progressed, antiquing has become quite popular. Even TV has capitalized on it with shows such as Antique Road Show, which Otto and Susan visited about a year or so ago. Otto had an old porcelain sign that he knew was rare and was in great condition. He wanted to see what the "professional" appraisers thought it would be worth. Once they got down there, they waited in line for 4 hours, and were separated by the various items people had. When Otto reached his appraiser, the guy said he had never seen this sign before, which told Otto this sign is extremely rare. He was told it was worth $1000, but Otto knew it was worth much more. Susan had an old antique box, and when they sat down with the lady who appraised such items, all the lady had to say was "well, sometimes a box is just a box." Very disappointing.
Now that the internet is here, the whole process of antiquing has become a lot easier. Susan recalled the days when, "he would come home with items and we wouldn't know what they were. We would have to go to the Smiley Library and look things up! Now it's as simple as looking it up online and seeing what the item is and then finding out the value."
