In October 1997, I sold my first item on eBay: a vintage apple green Peter Max fondue pot (with matching forks), in mint condition for which I'd paid $5 at a tag sale. I didn't even know how to include pictures back then, but it sold for something like $200, and I was hooked.

Two months later, Gloria Vanderbilt (on whom I'd just finished a story for People magazine) and I held an auction of her vintage costume jewelry and other memorabilia. Ebay was so new then that when Liz Smith wrote us up in her column, she actually had to explain what eBay was! Gloria is still an amazing person, as busy as ever at 85 years old, with a new book out entitled "Obsession," a recent art show in Vermont, and myriad other projects.

By 1999, I'd made a complete career switch. After 23 years as a reporter and writer for The New York Times, the Hartford Courant (CT), People magazine and many other publications, I gave it all up for a life of flea markets, antiques shows, auctions, and shops searching for "stuff."

Life in this business is as rewarding as my writing was for so long. I love the research, creating the listings, discovering others' interests, and corresponding with people all over the world. _____________________________________________________

By far the best times are when my items go to just the right people...like the filled-to-brimming 1920s scrapbook from Glenolden, PA that sold to two women who happened to be in the midst of writing the town's history.

Or the man from the Royal Titanic Society in England, who won my postcard from the Carpathia sent to my great-grandmother just two days after the tragedy.

I once found a 1910s souvenir plate from Zumbrota, Minnesota showing the local library. "Who will want this?" I thought, but listed it anyway, and now it's back in Zumbrota, with a woman who had just bought the very same building for her store.

Another time I listed two daguerreotypes, both identified, and they went to a fellow who had figured out they were his great-great-great uncle and cousin.

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One of my favorite experiences involved the scrapbook kept by a young man from Wisconsin during high school and college in the 1930s-40s. The pages were filled with the most amazing memories, photos, documents, souvenirs, clippings, etc., and I couldn't bear to list it without trying to find him first and give it back. Thanks to his alma mater, I found him living in New Hampshire, where I sent him the book.

"Dear Anne," he wrote a week later. "You will never know what you have restored to my family..." going on to explain that his parents had died when he was a soldier in WWII, and everything in the house had been sold. He had not seen his book for more than 50 years.

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Four years ago I bought an old photo album at the great Brimfield, MA flea market. The only clue to the original owner (it was from the 1920s) was the unusual name of woman on a gravestone: Olea Bull.

This led me to discover that her grandfather had been the great Norwegian violinist Ole Bull. Through various ancestral records, I was able to track down her daughters and return the album -- and that's when I learned it had been among many items stolen from the family estate earlier that year, and so far, this was the only thing that had turned up!

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The best scrapbook reunion revolved around one kept in the 1940s by a teenager named Mary Ann Pfeiffer, who chronicled in AMAZING detail her life through all 4 years of high school -- particularly with her boyfriend, Stanley Gould. There were 30-some odd pages of photos, souvenirs, etc. -- starting when they first met and ending when they both went off to college.

After a week of searching, I finally found Stan, the boyfriend -- 74 years old and living in North Carolina. Incredibly, he'd NEVER KNOWN Mary Ann had kept such a scrapbook! Well, I couldn't send it off fast enough, and he wrote a week or so later to say he'd spent a whole weekend reveling in those long-ago school days, and how much they meant to him now. (He also learned that Mary Ann, sadly, died about 10 years earlier).

A couple of months later, Stan and his wife, Sue, came to NY for his 55th high school reunion; they invited me to lunch, and for 2 hours we sat and talked like we'd known each other forever. (He was also the hit of the reunion that night with the scrapbook in tow.)

Stan has added a page to the book with photos we took that day at lunch -- and the story of how it came back into his life.

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It is an incomparable feeling to return these memories. I don't charge anyone, of course, and they can't believe they have in their hands something that was lost 30, 40, even 50 years ago -- and in many cases, like Stan's -- didn't even know about.

Hey, if I could pay the bills doing that all day, I wouldn't have to list ebay, but then again, maybe that's what helps bring these things into my life. Speaking of which, I must get back to work.. Thanks for looking and enjoy. _____________________________________________________________

Below is photo of my wonderful son and me recently when he made a surprise visit for Mom's birthday...and our dog Maddie who just HAD to be in the picture too.

The other is of our beloved 'Sconset on Nantucket Island, where my family has gone since the late 1800s...where my parents met...and where we all had the most amazing childhoods that we'll treasure forever.

Trifari sterling, Schiaparelli, Hattie Carnegie, Tiffany, Cartier, Victor Higgins, Maynard Dixon, LeCoultre, Patek Philippe, Hubley, Marx, toys, watches, jewelry, paintings, Gruppe, rockport artists, new hope artists, john folinsbee, harry leith-ross

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