Well, it's official.  My name is Denise, and I am a picker!  I always have been a "picker" even before the term was fashionable.  In case you don't know what a "picker" is, let me explain.  I scour thrift shops, garage sales, flea markets, auctions, and estate sales for reasonably priced items that I can resell for a profit.  I never  really knew there was a name for what I love to do, until Mike Wolfe & Frank Fritz brought it into popularity with the show American Pickers.  Garage saling had always been a part of my life since I was a little girl.  My late Grandfather Christopherson was a garage sale fanatic & I went with him every chance I could.  His love for the "sport"  was passed on to my Mommy & we continued our adventures into my teenage years.  At first. I really wasn't into reselling, I was just looking for things I liked & I had an art for negotiating, so I bought my treasures & loved them.  I expanded my territory into thrift stores & junk shops as I got older.  I educated myself as to what was what as my journey continued.  It wasn't long before I realized my specialty, if you will, was vintage jewelry.  I immersed myself in it & bought all I  could.  I would buy bulk bags of jewelry  pick out what I liked for myself, toss the junk & save the rest.  I also discovered eBay & started selling things I had previously acquired during this time.  eBay was like a dream come true for me!  As I continued to obsess over jewelry, I sold off a lot of other things I had acquired & refilled my spending kitty for my beloved jewelry.  Picking was an ongoing education assisted by watching different antique appraisal shows.   Let me talk about a few of my most memorable finds...  I bought a Bessie Pease Guttmann print called "His Majesty" for $5.00 that I sold for $125.00.  I bought an untagged Steiff cat for .29 cents that I sold for $83.00.  I bought an old Schick razor for $1.00 that I sold for $51.00.  I bought a Gigali bronze statue for .89 that I sold for $56.00.  That's just a few.   Mind you, I knew the names Bessie Pease Guttmann, & Steiff, but I had no idea what the items were actually worth when I bought them.  It was a hunch & it paid off.  To this day, I still have no idea what the appeal of the Gigali statue was, but, I had a hunch, I followed it, and I was right.  I guess I just have that instinct.  I also bought a box of Tiger Beat magazines from the 70's for $5.00 & sold them for over $250.00.  Those were kind of hard to let go since they were filled with pictures of my own idols...  :)  My most favorite of all my acquisitions was when I finally got around to selling all the jewelry I had picked out from my bulk bags of jewelry & sold all 1700 pieces for $2800.00.   Everything I had wanted from these bags was in my personal collection, so that sale was pure profit!  Yup.  My name is Denise, and I am a picker & a grinner.  This is my passion & I will do it until I no longer can.