"The Saga of an Antiques Addict"
Chapter 3

There comes a time in a person's life when they must decide "what now?" Here I was, a (fairly successful) advertising copywriter, making what is known in the jargon as "nice money" (did you ever know money that wasn't "nice?"), and I was giving it all up for what friends and family alike considered "worthless junk." But I knew better ... or at least I pretended to ... just to keep them off my back.

Little did they (or even I) know that I was actually on my way to a whole new career. I jokingly told my advertising clients that I had started dabbling in antiques because I had read in some journal (ironically, I don't remember which one) that changing one's career in mid-life was a good way of averting Alzheimer's.

Slowly, but surely, my library of advertising and marketing books were replaced by antiques reference books and price guides ... books on everything from Lalique to Lladro, Ming to Minton, Faience to Faberge. I had no special preferences, no specific direction, no clue, actually. In the throes of my buying frenzy, I bought everything: Asian, Oriental, Art Deco, Art Nouveau, art whatever. I bought anything that didn't move (and a few things that did if you wound them up). I bought big things, little things, expensive things, cheap things ... as long as they fit into my apartment.

Then, one day, a day that started out like any other, I received yet another large Asian vase in the mail. Oh joy! But I was soon to sink into the depths of despair, when, after walking around the apartment for about an hour with this monstrosity in my hands, I realized that I had absolutely no place to put it! That was the moment the alarm went off in my antiques-anesthetized brain. The moment in which I came face to face with the fact that I was (if this were a script, this is where the scary music would come in) an antiques addict!

Is this a cliffhanger, or what?

Stay tuned for Chapter 4 in the continuing Saga of an "Antiques Addict"