Thirteen years ago, my husband Richard and I left our jobs in Massachusetts, hired a moving truck, packed up the car and moved to Florida. We left in early January which should tell you right off the bat why we made such a drastic change. Yep. The weather. The year we moved, I swear it snowed every single day. Even if it was just a flurry, something fell from the sky between the time we got up in the morning and the time we went to bed at night. Our last official act as residents of Massachusetts was to throw away the windshield scraper. By the time we got to Virginia, we were able to shut off the defroster. It had been some time since the inside of the car had been so quiet.

We bought an apartment in the oldest co-op in the state of Florida. Although it's vintage, it is just beautiful and right near the water. More importantly, the expenses are much lower than they are in those brand new high rises that have sprouted up all around us. Even with the new high rises, we still have a spectacular view of Tampa Bay from the roof deck. It's just heaven! 

We were very fiscally responsible when it came to choosing a place to live but not so much when it came to generating income. Since it would be a number of years before either of us reached retirement age, it was necessary to place getting jobs at the very top of our "to do" list. However, having worked our whole lives with almost no time off, a short vacation to check out the new digs was definitely in order. 

During this mini vacation, friends of ours from Maine came to visit. In addition to having full time jobs, our friends also had an avocation. They were part-time antique dealers who rented booth space in a couple of malls back home. All I really knew about antiques was that I was going to be one in a very short time. I also didn't know much about antique malls so I smiled and yawned my way through their explanation of how they got started in this so-called side business of theirs. 

While they were here, we took them to all the local sites but after a couple of days we had run out of ideas. My husband and I decided to let them choose what they wanted to do on the last day of their visit. They had been checking the newspaper and saw that there was a local antiques & collectibles auction scheduled for that evening. Needless to say, they wanted to go. Had I been given a say in the matter I would have preferred to watch paint dry, but I immediately reminded myself that they were our guests so my reaction was, "Oh that sounds like great fun!" 

At the auction, which would be my first and last if I had anything to do with it, I bid on and got an item that was an exact duplicate of something we had in my house when I was a child. In all the years since then, I had never seen another one. I was hooked! Our friends went back to Maine, but our association with auctions was far from over.

After that initial experience, we continued to attend local auctions and continued to buy what could be called nostalgic memorabilia, at least it was nostalgic to us. Before we knew it, we were out of space in our co-op. Every square inch was filled with a "treasure" of some sort. We had met many wonderful people and did not want to give up our place on the local auction circuit but how could we continue to buy more things if we had nowhere to put them? All of a sudden, we both slapped our foreheads and cried, "An antique mall!" If we rented space in a mall, we could keep buying. Our friends had become antique dealers. Why couldn't we be dealers? The fact that we had no idea what we were doing wasn't going to stop us. The "addiction" had taken over.

Right down the street from where we live, we found a beautiful and very large antique mall that had roughly 80 dealers. We rented a very small space from the mall manager who has become a very good friend for life. After a couple of weeks, we started selling a few things. None of what we were selling could be called high end but we were selling none the less. We were officially antique dealers! 

Gradually the size of our space grew until we had the largest space in the mall - roughly 1,300 square feet. After all, there was a different auction in our area almost every night. We were managing to pay our mall rent and cover the cost of the merchandise we were buying but there wasn't much profit coming in. Unfortunately, not knowing what we were doing was catching up with us. My husband, who is the practical and rational member of this dynamic duo, would periodically look at me and say, "Real jobs?" I would grunt and head out to another auction.

Then it happened! One of the other mall dealers was looking at one of our items and said she could not get over the fact that it hadn't sold yet. Yeah, well, that's how we felt about every item we had in our space. She then uttered the most profound words we would ever hear. "You should sell this on eBay." "eBay? What the heck is eBay?", I asked. This was in 1996 and at that time eBay was still a relatively unknown entity so she explained that it was an online auction venue. It had been started by some guy named Pierre who was trying to sell his wife's Pez collection. Why couldn't we have had a Pez collection? Well, we did have a computer and we did have an email address. How hard could it be? 

The item our fellow dealer suggested we list on eBay was a plastic 20 Mule Team Borax kit in its original box as seen on the 1950s TV show Death Valley Days. It had a $25 price tag and a lot of dust on it. We had bought it for $7. Having finally mastered email, I signed up as a seller on eBay. My husband bought a digital camera which, in the world of digital cameras, would now qualify as an antique. We have been through several makes and models of digital cameras since then. He was in charge of the camera and I was in charge of the listing. The picture of the 20 Mule Team Borax kit was done, the copy was written, it was time. 

Back then, sellers had to be able to write their own html code to put up pictures and text. Just clicking on a picture in a folder and having it magically show up on your listing didn't exist yet. I had decided to list our item at midnight EST so that the auction would end at 9 PM on the West Coast. After reading the appropriate tutorial, I did the coding for our picture and was finally ready to click the "list your item" button. Not only was I now an antique dealer, wow, I was a webmaster! I did a final check, hit the button and there it was. The dreaded red "x". I stared at that red "x" for the next three hours while I rewrote my picture code over and over and over again. Although I had followed the instructions on the tutorial perfectly, I still had that horrible red "x". It was now 3 AM and I was in tears but I wasn't about to give up my new found status as the next Bill Gates without a fight. 

What I am about to tell you is a true story, I swear. On the real time community boards that eBay had back then, I saw someone who had the same Internet provider I did so I sent this person an instant message. The fact that this person was a complete stranger didn't matter - I was just about hysterical. I wrote to him, "If you don't help me, I am going to kill myself." There was no hi, how are you or let me introduce myself - I got right to the point. He answered me and said, "Well, I can't let that happen can I? Give me your phone number and I will call you." I was so desperate I gave it to him. 

He immediately called me. His name was Mike and he lived in California. He very patiently walked me through the entire coding process and identified the one tiny mistake I had been continually making for three long hours. Gone was the red "x" and there was the 20 Mule Team Borax kit in full color! Our career as full time eBay sellers was off and running. Needless to say, I am forever in Mike's debt. Once in a while we would run into each other on one of the eBay boards and we would laugh about our "unusual" meeting. At the time this happened, my husband was hyperventilating to think that I would tell a perfect stranger to call me at three o'clock in the morning. No sense of adventure. 

That kit that no one would buy for $25 in our mall space sold on eBay for $150. My husband and I looked at each other and off to the mall we went to collect all the small and not so small items from our space for immediate listing on eBay. We gave up the mall, did some studying about antiques and for the next four years, we did very well selling on eBay. Part of the reason why this business can be so habit forming is when you can make $100, $200 or $300 profit on one item without much effort, you can't help but think about how many hours you would have to work at a traditional job to make the same money. 

During that four-year period, my husband and I sold thousands of items and made very good money doing it. Since eBay was still relatively new it was a real seller's market. Up until that time, people could spend years looking for a specific item in their local area and never find it. Suddenly they could find that item being offered on the Internet by someone who lived hundreds or maybe thousands of miles away. 

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. Don't get me wrong, there are still many sellers on eBay making big money but the make-up of those sellers has changed drastically. In my opinion, once buyers no longer outnumbered sellers and once the number of buyers and sellers grew to what was once unthinkable numbers, the value of many of the items being sold dropped dramatically. At the end of our four-year run on eBay, we were no longer making enough money to pay the bills. We were going to have to reinvent ourselves once again.

One of the local weekly auction houses was suddenly on the market. We attended this auction every week and had bought some wonderful things at great prices. The owner of this auction was old school and not very customer friendly which, of course, eventually hurt his bottom line. One day he decided he just wanted out. Once we determined that he was really misunderstood and not as bad as he had let on, he too became a very good friend. 

His auction was for sale at the exact same time that my husband and I had decided that we could no longer make it on just our eBay sales. Deciding that it must be fate, we made him an offer. He accepted it and suddenly we were the owners of a pretty large weekly auction house. Good customer service was back and so were the customers. A lot of networking and a weekly Internet flyer with text and pictures also helped to turn things around. It took about a year but it was once again a thriving business and my husband was no longer muttering the words, " Real jobs". 

After seven years of a very successful run we sold the auction house and I continued to work for the new owners until just recently. We can't say enough about the wonderful staff that worked for us when we owned it. They were just the best - to us they are family. 

Now my husband and I are entering the next chapter of our lives and this chapter also revolves around auctions, antiques and collectibles. Like I said earlier, it's an addiction. There is no 12-step program. We would like to help other people learn some of the things we learned the hard way - that is what this site is all about. Hope you will enjoy your visit and will come back often.