Treasure-Hunter Mark Brown Presents

Materials: Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Chocolate, Milk, (Chocolate Bars); 50% Post-Consumer Recycled Paper, Soy-Based Inks in Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black (Brochure).

Dig site: Waiting room of a plastic surgeon’s office in the Upper East Side, between Park and Madison.

Retail value: 7 cents per chocolate, half a dollar per brochure.

Appeal: Amusingly perverse demonstration of the inherent conflict between Gluttony and Vanity.

Materials: 20 lb. paper, staple, graphite.

Author: Wayne Propst.

Dig site: Bathroom ( Unisex ) of the Bourgeois Pig in Lawrence, Kansas.

Retail value: Unknown.

Appeal: Bluntness, repetition, quickness of read.

Materials: Sugar, natural and artificial flavoring, red dye number 5.

Dig site: Isola di San Michele, the cemetery island of Venice, Italy, about a dozen meters to the right of Ezra Pound (R.I.P.)—an arm’s length from her dead husband Igor (composer).

Retail value: 10 cents.

Appeal: The candy is laid out in the center of a plastic wreath, and looks delicious. The owner obviously has no use for it, but it’s difficult to riddle whether it’s fair game. Was Vera famous for her sweet tooth, you wonder, or is the candy simply the trace of some Czech punk with a fascination for the Neo-Classical smoking a joint on her grave?

Dig site: The Kansas State Fair, an annual event in Hutchinson, Kansas, just North of the Love Meter, about fifteen feet East of a strength-testing game where players punch a mechanical sensor with all they’ve got, trying to beat their buddies’ high scores.

Retail value: Three dollars.

Appeal: Why didn’t this couple wait for their portraits to develop, I wonder. Two and half minutes, the machine’s advertised processing time, is hardly a wait for a record of a day of Tilt-A-Whirl, livestock exhibitions, and funnel cakes under a shady tree with your sweetheart. Did they go at it in the photo booth, only to be whisked away by security? It seems impossible that two people might simply forget why they’re staring at a small chute, waiting for something to happen. Did he propose to her while she tapped impatiently on the aluminum wall of the booth? Were they in the pick-up truck, bee-lined for Vegas, by the time I found their captured visages?

Dig site: Antique mall in downtown Lawrence, Kansas.

Retail value: Ten bucks.

Appeal: The first thing to catch me was this volume’s horizontal orientation; I was about fifteen feet away and it pulled my attention away from a bakelite Art Deco telephone. As I approached I latched on to the salmon and linen colors, and realized I’d have to thumb through its pages. I raised an eyebrow when I was close enough to discern the semi-nude illustration. When I read the title, The Lure of the Limerick, I suspected I’d be making a purchase.

This book chronicles the history of the limerick and provides hundreds of examples and dozens of illustrations. The topic is interesting and has mass appeal—we all love raunchy rhymes—but what really makes this book a treasure, that something that compelled me fork over ten dollars, was that this particular copy smells like cinnamon. Old books have a particular smell, and I was taken aback as I leaned in to take a whiff. Cinnamon! If all books could so stimulate the olfactory we’d be a literate nation.

Dig site: “The Thing,” a junk shop in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Retail value: Two dollars for the bunch.

Appeal: It’s strange and fascinating, digging through a drawer of other people’s photographs—scrapbooks, photo albums, loose snapshots and the odd headshots of unknown actors. How did they wind up at a tiny junk store? You wonder whether the picture-taker moved and forgot a box in the attic, whether they’re dead and their memories got sold at auction, whether the explanation’s one that isn’t crossing your mind. You find yourself making up stories to explain the image, and asking questions. Did the girl in stockings suggest the photoshoot, or her lover? Did the happy couple stay married? What’s the horse’s name?

Size: About three inches, tail to beak.

Materials: Machine-painted ceramic.

Dig site: Disabled American Verterans Thrift Store.

Retail value: Thirty-five cents.

Appeal: Requires less emotional and temporal investment than a mainstream pet. Microwavable.