Patricia Penke – Author

I was born in Massachusetts to a father and mother who had a passion to search for different types of buried treasure. Whether it was searching in caves, or forests of New England in search of semi-precious gemstones; mining for gold in Alaska, digging for 18th century relics in dump sites in Virginia; or metal-detecting for Blackbeard’s buried treasure off the coast of North Carolina, my childhood was always full of adventure.

As time went on, my parents introduced me to a new form of treasure hunting: The world of discovering and selling valuable antiques and collectibles. It wasn’t but a few years later I learned about the wonderful “World Wide Web.” Since 2002, I have been generating a substantial profit margin by selling collectibles and antiques online.

During the last 17 years of being a vintage merchandise retailer, I acquired an abundance of experience evaluating, and appraising vintage and antique merchandise. Additionally, I began studying current and up-to-date buying trends in the second-hand consumer market.

I attribute my success in selling collectibles in researching, and discovering where to find these bargained hidden gems. With endless hours of research found in resources, such as the internet, and reading antique reference books. Additionally, by observing buyers at auctions and attending countless garage-tag sales, estate sales and auctions, were all necessary to being in the “know.” My research and excellent reputation in the community, as well as my experiences finding and selling second-hand merchandise, has tremendously helped to me to start my own estate sale company: Assisting Hands Estate Sales and Services, located in Omaha, NE.

Since I started this business most clients would call and state, “We have tossed away most of the JUNK before the estate sale – into a dumpster.” I thought to myself, “Oh, I hope nothing valuable was thrown away by mistake.” Family members or acquaintances are unfortunately tossing some unknown cash away – not trash.

I decided it was time to try and educate the public on how to find these hidden treasures among household castoffs, and writing a book entered my mind.

In 2013 and 2014, I wrote a successful weekly article titled “Creating Cash from Trash” in Fuse Weekly’s Digital Entertainment Magazine. The articles were a success, which helped me make my decision to write this book with hopes of more volumes to follow.

I have hopeful expectations of educating a much larger audience about making money by finding and selling what is believed to be worthless castoffs.

My readers will be able recognize some of those “low-cost” hidden gems, and how to properly resell them for a substantial amount of CASH profit.