Treasure hunter: ‘It’s not the money’

AT an estate sale, longtime friend Bobbee Finkel led Sarah Collins to a closet full of items hidden from visitors. Collins let out a shout in excitement as she spotted a vintage fur jacket in the corner.

Collins, 60, considers herself a modern-day treasure hunter.

As one of the co-owners of Main Street Peddlers Antique Mall in downtown Las Vegas, Collins is constantly looking for antique goods to sell in the store and will take “anything I can make money on.”

Collins said she has been selling things her whole life. At 10, she would make necklaces for Barbie dolls with beads her dad bought her from a former Woolworth department store. Then she’d sell them to her friends for a nickel each, she recalled.

“This is what I do; it’s born in me,” she said of selling.

She discovered her first estate sales in Fort Wayne, Indiana, when she was in her late 20s, she said, adding that she still has jewelry and other finds in her house from those early days.

“And when I came to Las Vegas I discovered the auctions, and I had to have an outlet for the enormous amount of great stuff that I was finding.”

Collins moved to Las Vegas in 1994 from Boston to be near her parents, who had retired in Las Vegas.

Seeking out the city’s hidden antique gems takes time. Collins finds herself going all over — auctions, neighborhood thrift stores, estate and yard sales and swap meets — to find something that catches her eye.

“It’s human nature to be curious,” Collins said. “You can see a store full of beautifully displayed items, and there’s a couple boxes shoved in the corner in the back; you want to know what’s in ’em.”

Some of her favorite finds were not necessarily the items, but the stories attached to them.

Collins recalled picking up a free box of pictures while at an auction and going through them at her home.

“This person’s whole family history was in there. Things from his father, his grandfather. I looked him up and found the guy’s brother in Hawaii,” she said, and ultimately helped to

reunite the belongings with their owner.

To Collins, finding antique goods is far more than a job. Las Vegas is home to a plethora of antique and secondhand stores, and a community of buyers and sellers with a shared passion for discovering unusual items. Collins said that they are constantly challenging one another with their finds.

“It’s not the money; it’s the triumph,” Collins said. “I feel triumphant that somebody saw value in the same thing I did, especially when I can sell it for three, four times what I paid for it. Yay.”

Sarah Collins, one of the owners of Main Street Peddlers Antique Mall, is seen in her favorite part of the store: The costume room.

Sarah Collins looks through a closet of items Dec. 14 at an estate sale in Las Vegas.

Sarah Collins looks at a desk she’d just bought at the Clark County Public Auction on Dec. 15.

Las Vegas-themed jewelry lays out for sale Dec. 14 at the Not Just Antiques Mart in Las Vegas. Sarah Collins often goes to local thrift and antique stores, like Not Just Antiques Mart, to look for items to sell back at Main Street Peddlers Antique Mall.