Lin relies on her 25 years of experience in dealing with secondhand goods to determine the worth of each piece. When she makes a buying trip, Lin also visits local antique dealers to see how much they are selling items for. She says she then slices a bit off that amount so that her Taiwanese shoppers don’t feel like they are paying a premium for imported goods.
“If your prices are too high, then your store is just a museum with stuff on display that no one buys,” says Lin. “Besides, anyone can go on eBay and see how much something is really worth.”
Before opening Treasure Hunt, Lin worked in the real estate market. For 20 years she purchased, refurbished and resold foreclosed properties.
“That’s how I first became interested in interior decoration and that is also one of the reasons I really got into searching for secondhand items. The previous owners of those properties often left a lot of things behind, so I’d take them out, restore them and use them myself or give them to friends,” says Lin.
Every piece of furniture in Lin’s nearby apartment is secondhand, including her son’s bed. One of her favorite periods is the 1950s and she is especially fond of a dining booth in her store from that era, which was purchased at an estate sale in Texas. The set, which now sits in the back of Treasure Hunt, was Lin’s own dining room table in her US home.
“I was born in 1962, so I grew up surrounded by things made in the 1950s, like the refrigerators in my store. I feel a real connection with those things,” says Lin. Her other interests include items produced during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, which mix traditional styles with an art deco influence.
Despite the rarity of thrift stores in Taiwan, Lin says that Taiwanese consumers have become more accepting of used goods over the last two decades. “I couldn’t have opened this store 20 years ago, but seven years ago it wasn’t particularly difficult. I just built it up step by step,” says Lin.
Aside from the charm of vintage styles, Lin also touts the environmental benefits of buying secondhand things.
“If something like a lamp with a crystal lampshade is still intact after a hundred years, the reason someone took care of it is probably because it is a special item,” says Lin. “Sometimes people spend a lot of money on trendy home decor, only to get sick of it when it’s no longer in fashion and trash it. That’s a burden on the planet. Vintage goods, on the other hand, have proven their worth.”
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