8 Sneaky Hiding Spots in Old Furniture (Check Before You Sell)

👉 How to find out what your things are really worth → https://mrwalterashford.com A chest of drawers is not a solid object. It only looks like one. It is a wooden box with smaller boxes sliding inside it, and between them there is AIR — behind the drawers, under the bottom one, inside the thickness of things. For a hundred years things have been falling into that air, and people have been putting things into it on purpose. 🗄️ ⚠️ HONEST FIRST: this is not a treasure hunt. In forty years the tally is mostly dust, mouse nests, hairpins, pencils and buttons. But it is also letters, photographs, a savings passbook, a ring in an envelope, two pistols, a deed — and far more often, PAPER that told me what the piece was and where it came from, which changes the price of the furniture itself. 🔦 8 — Under the bottom drawer and BEHIND all of them. Take the drawer fully out, put your phone in with the camera pointing back at you, and take three photos: left, middle, right. Forty seconds, and you have seen the entire inside of the piece without lying on the floor. 📏 7 — The drawer that is shallower inside than out. You do not find a false bottom by tapping. You find it with a RULER, TWICE. Outside depth minus inside depth should be the thickness of one board. 🪞 6 — Behind the mirror. A gap the whole height of it, and within living memory a great many Americans did not trust banks and had no reason to. 🪑 5 — Under the chair. The dust cover is the only removable part of an upholstered piece, and forty years of what fell down the sides is lying in a line along it. Press it from underneath with your fingers. 🗝️ 4 — The desk that was SOLD with hiding places as a feature: the well under the pigeonholes, the pillars that are secretly narrow drawers, the prospect door that slides out as a block. No force, ever. 🕰️ 3 — The clock: the bottom of the trunk, beside the seat board, and the paper label glued inside the back that is the most valuable square of paper in a lot of American houses — and it goes in the trash when the clock stops. 🧳 2 — The trunk till has a LID, and under it a compartment the full depth. That is where the documents went. ⭐ 1 — The only one where somebody CHOSE: taped, tacked and screwed to the surfaces that face down and backwards. Twelve minutes with two people, a flashlight and a phone, and you will have seen every square inch of a thing you have owned for forty years. 🚫 If you find a firearm: do not touch it, assume it is loaded, get somebody who handles them for a living. Two in forty years and both were loaded. If you find a bond, deed, policy or will: that is your attorney's job, not a dealer's. Turn it over. Read the bottom. Believe what it tells you. 📕📗📘 The three books — Turn It Over · Never Take the First Offer · The Ashford Ledger https://mrwalterashford.com #WalterAshford #Antiques #Furniture #EstateSale #Downsizing #KnowWhatYouOwn