when i was 15 yers old i saw an ad in the help wanted section which read "wanted two ambitus students to move antiques" well being one eager young person living with  a family of five and a father and mother only bringing home $75.00 a week i would do  anything  for a (silver) quater like mow lawns or wash windows and here is this ad paying $1.50 a day plus tips.  well i talked to a friend of mine and togheter we answered the ad, along with ten or twleve other kids from the neighborhood. we were introduced to a very nice man who held antique exebitions accross the country. this guy told both of us that he would be in town every six months and needed two people to help move the exibitionerss into and out of the union hall in town and the these two people needed to be available every time the show was in town and since my buddy and i were bigger than the rest of the applicants we were offered the position of movers, knowing that the job would be somewhat steady and held on weekends we took the jobs. this is where my whole antique ediquite started and where i learned how to make thousands of dollars over the years buying and selling antiques. one of the exibitioners i helped move saw my intrest and very cxarefull handling of a beautiful tiffany table lamp (marked at $2900.00, it was 1968 and that was a lot of cash in those days) asked if i wanted to go to work for them in between the shows moving estastes that were purchased and of course i said yes. this antique dealer would advertise for estates and offered to help sell estates for a percentage of the sales and they did a great bussiness of this. this is where and how i found out how to deal with people and got my skills honed to a fine edge. i did this type of work every weekend all through high school and saw how to develope my own skills on buying and selling  antiques and fine merchadise and now i am going to share my secrets with all who read this. my method is not complicated or do you need to be an expert, just ambitious. when the thursday news papers arrive (i subscribe to all the local papers in my region) i startreading through all the garagre sales and estate slaes that are going on durring the upcomming weekend and then i sit down with a map of the area( that i have photocopied for convience) and a highlighter and i make a route to follow, this way i am not meandering around. Then on friday i get up at 5:30 am and start out to the furthist sale away from my home. when  i can i purchase the whole lot whith one offer, other times i purchase one or two items. by the time i get home i have a pickup full of items. now what i did was purchase a twenty four feet by twenty foot prebuilt shed, built shelves inside and this way i have room for storeing and sorting the items i have purchased. my next step is to photograph the items and start listing them on ebay and so far i have sold over $1000.00 a month, cosistantly and that is only with ebay, there are other sources that i use depending on the size of the items. some i place for sale in a  want ad digests others i place in front  of my home and still others i sell directly through my newspapers or penny savers. the biggest way i make my money is to adverise for estates, beleive me when people call me and i look at their offerings from the merchandise they wish to sell you would be amazed what they want to get rid of, one purchase was for a 2.75 carat solitare at a quater of what it was worth and all because the executor of the estate did not want his sister to have it and in the will he had the right to either sell it or give the purchase price to the recepiant of the piece so i went to hawwii for a month on the profit alone all because a brother and sister did not get along, this  does not happen all the time but there are exceptions. the one thing when purchasing an entire estate is to make a fair estimate to what in contained within the estate and how much time and muscle it will take to clean out. my  way is offering one third the value of everything and a contract that includes a clean sweeping of the entire house yes that includes all that junk too. the contract includes for a broom sweeping of the property and a no fee agreement for a dumpster to remove the trash that remains. the thinking here is that the owner of the estate only gets one third of the contents value and also knows that they do not have to do any cleanng of the junk. there is anoher thought here also the cost of coppper and scrap meatles has risen tremendously so there is money to make there also. hope this helps and good luck treasure hunting, there is plenty  of unfound treaures out there.