My Best Antique Shop Find in 30 Years

I’ve browsed antique shops for thirty years. My best find cost twelve dollars. It wasn’t a silver tea set or a rare first edition, and it won’t ever appear on a television appraisal show. But nothing I’ve ever carried home has meant more to me, and nothing has taught me more about why I love old things.

It was a small wooden box with a bundle of letters inside, all from the same town, all from 1919. I found it on a rainy Saturday in a cluttered shop off a two-lane highway in middle Tennessee, wedged between a stack of old seed catalogs and a cracked butter churn. The tag, written in pencil, said only “Box w/ papers, $12.” I almost walked right past it.

A box on the bottom shelf

The shop was the kind I like best: no music, no fancy lighting and an owner who seemed mildly surprised to see a customer. Her name was Mrs. Doris Keel, and she told me she’d bought the box as part of a house clearing two counties over. She hadn’t read the letters. “Didn’t seem right,” she said, and I liked her immediately for that.