Reed Talonario

I've always loved to read and to learn new things.  When I was little, my big sister made fun of me because I would sit and read encyclopedias in my spare time!  I was a geek, but I did really well when we played Trivial Pursuit. 

Nowadays, I love to do things with my family but I have also managed to work my love of learning into the things I do every day.  I started selling items on eBay a while back as a way to make extra money.  I soon found that there was a lot of research involved in the process because I was dealing with a lot of old collectible items that I would purchase at estate sales, yard sales and flea markets.  As a result, I've learned a lot about a very wide variety of collectible items.

One of my favorite parts of going out looking for old stuff to sell is the interactions I have with the people doing the selling.  There have been several times that I stood and listened to an older man or woman go on for several minutes (over an hour a couple of times) about all of the old things they were selling.  This can be bittersweet to listen to though because often they are selling off things so that they can move in with a relative, or because one of their older loved ones passed away. 

I try to keep moving along on Saturday mornings, but sometimes I can see that these people just need to talk so badly that I stick around and try to learn from what they are sharing.  It is almost always worth the trade off in time.