Some of the most fun I’ve had while taking road trips around the East Coast is stopping in small towns and shopping for antiques. Probably my best find was in upper New Jersey (on my way camping near the Delaware Water Gap). We were a bit lost so we stopped at a garage to ask for directions. Out front was a sign saying “estate sale” so I decided to take a peak. It took a while to rummage through a bunch of the junk, but then I saw something shiny and metallic. In an old dusty box I found two stainless steel Nikkor darkroom canisters, complete with intact stainless steel reels (you use these to develop film in a darkroom). I’m a photo geek so this was a find - Nikon doesn’t make these things anymore. Anyways, the guy had no idea what they were so he sold them to me for five bucks each. In a store (if they still sold them), they would run you about 40 dollars each, without the reels. I still use the canisters to develop my film to this day.

Antiques and collectors go hand in hand and whereas I am far from a connoisseur of antiquities, I do like to find functional old things. There is something special about using something that I know is older than I am. Shows on television like “The Antiques Roadshow” have spurred an interest in finding the valuable and websites like Ebay do make it easier to find certain things, but I find joy in traveling to rural areas, finding those small sales run by kind people, rummaging through dusty boxes, and discovering that gem.

As a testament to how kind the people are that run these sales: Kelli found these two old metal cans for storing tea and sugar; she couldn’t find the lid to one of them so the guy said that if he ever found it later, he would mail it to her. Two months later, there it was in a padded envelope.

On a side note, for antique books about travel, The Complete Traveller Antiquarian Bookstore is a New York City find (Madison Ave. @ 35th Street). They also have a great website.