Compassion is contagious!

When people open their hearts to help a cause, their gesture can go viral and the community is inspired to make their own contributions. So we're thankful for businesses like Antique Trove in Roseville, CA for going beyond business-as-usual in memory of a child. 
The Trove is hosting a Thanks-for-Giving Bake Sale Saturday, April 2, with 100% of the proceeds going to the Collin McDaniel Hope Foundation to help stomp out Neuromyelitis Optica (NMO) a rare autoimmune disease. Collin McDaniel loved Super Mario, so in his honor it'll be a Mario-themed event, and kids will get a chance to pose for photos with Mario & Friends.

The Antique Trove is at 236 Harding Blvd in Roseville. View their website at www.antiquetrove.com. For more information on NMO, visit NMO foundation-guthyjacksonfoundation.org 

Here to make friends in Niles

My Friends & I, a 14-dealer co-op on Niles Boulevard in Fremont, CA is going the extra mile, marketing-wise, by having a gift basket drawing every month. You get a chance to win with any purchase. Gift baskets are a popular drawing prize, and the prospect of winning one assures that shoppers coming to the well-known Niles Boulevard antique row will likely include My Friends & I in their stops. 

Another marketing tool that takes a little effort but potentially could help attract more clientele is the blog that Carol, the store owner, maintains at www.myfriendsandiniles.blogspot.com. Blogspot is a free blog hosting site, and she posts anything from photos of newly-arrived items to open house sales like the one they held a couple of weeks ago, to uplifting quotes or even photos of special dishes being served at nearby restaurants...shoppers have to eat too, you know.

Here's a photo of the gift basket for the drawing in April.

Tongue-in-Cheek Advertising

Wouldn't this be sweet in the powder room? A tintype image of a nun with soulful eyes was used to promote Cherry Blossom perfume, toilet powder and soap in this antique advertisement, with the promise, "Nun Nicer." Found at Susantiques in Aloha, OR. 

Some good news, some bad news

The good news is, Cochran's Collector's Guide's 2016 edition has been uploaded to this website and is now available for your use, and to download to a mobile device if you want an even more portable version than our travel-size hardcopy book for your next road trip.

The bad news is, this edition was late in getting uploaded thanks to some major changes in the software we have been using for years to create this online Guide, which required us over weeks of trial-and-error to 1) figure out our former procedures were no longer going to work, and 2) figure out how to change what we were doing so it would be acceptable to the new software, and 3) get it all done.

The Guide's website is unlike most, in that it has in addition to several introductory pages that show you how to participate in the book, the free web pages for our advertisers who don't have their own websites, the 142 pages of the actual book. It's not easy to find instructions for a publication like this, and our webmaster had to work out several steps on his own. Maybe he should write a tutorial! Or not...

Hopefully next year's edition will proceed more smoothly! Thanks for your patience.

Bliss and Jim Cochran
Editor and Publisher