In a huge warehouse in Kearny Mesa on a sparkling California day, a special auction is taking place. The estate of a well-known San Diegan is on the block and the sale is drawing huge crowds. Men and women from throughout the County are on hand as well as collectors from Southern California.

    When the auction begins in the collectibles area, a small group of men dressed in levis and T-shirts appears uninterested. In fact, one can hear laughter from several when someone pays too much. But every now and then, the group is silent as one or two of them raises their auction numbers high in the air, winning the bid for a seemingly unimportant item.

    These men are called "pickers" -- and if you visit estate sales, thrift stores and auctions on a regular basis, you’ll see them there--buying antiques and collectibles they can sell at a profit to dealers with shops. They earn a very good living knocking on the doors of families who host estate sales, combing through junk at garage sales or swap meets and hanging out at auctions. These men (picking is primarily a male profession) are crucial to the antique business and it isn’t just a San Diego County phenomena--pickers are busy throughout the United States.

    Leaning against a chair behind the other pickers is David Dennison, a short, lean man of 45 with a thinning crop of light brown hair. Dennison has been a picker for around eight years. He used to be a seller at Koby’s Swap Meet and one of his best friends opened an antique store on Adams Avenue in San Diego. His aunt was an antique dealer on the East Coast and his mother collected everything from old radios to crystal glassware. As one of San Diego’s most successful pickers, he doesn’t really specialize. "I can’t really do that because I sell to several antique dealers and they are all looking for certain items." What that means for Dennison is that he needs to know a great deal about almost everything.

    At this auction, hosted by the Public Administrator’s Office which auctions off the estates of those without heirs, Dennison spots a country store wooden cabinet. It auctioned at $200 and Dennison sold it several months later for $2000. Then he saw the same cabinet on display in an antique store on the East Coast. The price? $6000! "You can’t win them all," he says with a grin. "Sometimes you break even, sometimes you make a little and then there’s that big surprise, where you earn lots of money. But in the end, it all works out."

    What is true for this picker is true for bargain hunters in San Diego. It isn’t all about money. It’s about the hunt. "If I’m not at an auction or an estate sale or out there prowling through thrift stores, something will catch my eye as I drive by a garage sale. It may be the neighborhood, it could be one table on the edge of the driveway or it may be a pile of books. If I have a hunch about the sale, I stop, no matter where I’m going!"

    Yet as glamorous and exciting as this business may sound, pickers are not particularly popular -- among private buyers, that is. The first American pickers were European immigrants who bought furniture and household items from people who were probably in desperate circumstances. Many early pickers were unsavory characters who swindled families out of heirlooms and antiques. One of them talked a family into accepting $1000 for a pair of decoys which the picker later sold for $65,000. The picker was sued yet the family only received half of the decoy’s value.

    Years ago pickers would have approached you and offered to help clean out your garage in exchange for buying some of the contents. Today home owners are wiser, partly due to the internet and party due to education. "I have a friend in the mid-West who used to fill his truck for $100," Dennison recalls. "Now, it would cost him $10,000 or more."

    What kind of money do these guys earn? Dennison says he can earn over $30,000 a year, sometimes more, sometimes less. "I’m after what others may miss," he says with a grin. "I keep hunting, keep searching and I get there early--before everyone else." Then he tells a story about a woman shop owner who regularly visited South Bay Salvation Army stores. "She went down there around ten years ago," he says. "She came out with a very valuable painting, so valuable that it allowed her to close her business and purchase a new home. Sure, that’s rare but that’s what it’s all about and that’s what we’re after--one very large score."

(The Public Administrator’s Auction is held on the third Saturday, every other month (next sale is May 21), at 5201 Ruffin Rd., San Diego, CA (858) 694-3500. Visit our Calendar of Events, Auctions   for more information.)