Having been in the antiques business for over twenty years -- buying and selling, owning my own antiques store -- I made the assumption that I know something about antiques. I purchased this book before Christmas and decided I was the idiot this book was written for. It is very well written, funny, insightful and clear. The sections were applicable to my needs, and to put it very simply, I have learned a great deal in a very short time. I will keep this book on hand for reference, it purports to be for idiots, but the benefit will be for all levels -- regardless of your expertise, you will find something that you did not know.

Yes, this is just the book you are looking for. Whether an experienced antique enthusiast looking for a quick reference, or a novice looking for a jump start (like I am) - the Complete Idiot's Guide to Buying and Selling Antiques is informative and concise and better yet, a pleasure to read. How can a study guide be so much fun?! Helpful pictures and "AntiqClues" are found throughout.

Emyl Jenkins tells you what it is, how to find it and (the fun part) how to investigate your treasure before you take it home. The quick reference card is invaluable.

Well, here is another great book by Emyl Jenkins! She covers in detail the history of American reproduction furniture from the 1850s through the 1920s. The chapters give detail descriptions of the various periods of furniture design and instruct the reader in how to determine good and bad design. A great book that is well worth buying.

This book was a lot like "Fake, Fraud or Genuine" in terms of identification content. I was hoping for a book that would help me find out where some of the odd old things I have came from.

This book tells the reader how to recognize pieces that are truly old, and explains the differences between truly old furniture, new furniture made from pieces of old furniture, reproductions, and other categories of collectible pieces.

It also has vast sections on cataloging and documenting for insurance and other valuation purposes, and working with appraisers.

Well worth adding to your antiques library! Emyl Jenkins covers both antiques of today plus which items will become the antiques of tomorrow. Well written with good pictures.

This book does just what the title says. An excellent reference book for just about everything a person might come across in garage sales, collectible stores, auctions, and attics. Fun to read and indexed very well. Learned a great deal from it.

This is a goulash of a cookbook, consisting of beef, potatoes, grapes, kumquats and an old boot found by the side of the road.

Emyl Jenkins, whose previous experience with cooking appear to be derived from books on antiques, celebrating Christmas and gracious living, seems to be setting herself up as a Southern-fried Martha Stewart. But "From Storebought to Homemade" sometimes promises one thing and delivers another. It offers "fabulous food in minutes," but contains recipes that take an hour to cook. It promises cooking with convenience foods, but there are recipes that contain none.

What's most bizarre are Jenkins' wide-ranging assumptions about what we-all -- yes, 30 years in the South has affected my speech patterns -- are doing in our kitchens. "Somewhere along the way," she writes, "we seem to have forgotten that it's okay to use store-bought products to cook up delicious meals." Which, I guess, explains all those untouched frozen dinners icing over in the freezer cases.

Somewhere, Jenkins must have decided that we grocery shop by putting on a blindfold. "Everyone is so anxious to cook everything from scratch that we've turned out a generation of frustrated cooks." Reading this, I realized nothing less than a Messianic vision: a whole generation of men and women, unhappily chopping cilantro, basting London broil and rolling out our own pasta in abject misery. "Cooks of the world unite!" Jenkins shouts. "You have nothing to lose but your Calphalon chains!"

Her solution? Convenience foods. With the zeal of a convert, she offers nothing less than a three-page list of what you can find on the shelves if you'd only open your eyes: create-a-meals, ready-to-serve sauces, packets of seasonings. Why, she writes, there's even Welch's grape juice, available "preblended." She leads us over to the produce aisle to show us salad fixings, pre-washed, pre-chopped and already bagged. She suggests that we buy our mashed potatoes already cooked, and raid the salad bar for chopped celery. While her ideas are sound, it surely must have occurred to participants in life's rat race to buy that slab of frozen lasagna, a bag of chopped lettuce and a box of ice cream to make a meal.

As for the recipes, there are 200 of them, most of them printed one to a page, with plenty of room for spot illustrations and bits of trivia and suggestions. Most of them seem to be culled from the standard cookbooks, the Junior League productions, or from Emyl's friends. It's a mixed bag: For every extensive recipe for a Brunswick Stew, there's a page devoted to Frozen Oranges, Flan (buy it ready made, serve with berries and whipped cream), and grits. Name-dropping abounds, whether the author's friends, writers or celebrities. She even titles one recipe "Lynda Bird Johnson Robb's Hot Spinach Casserole." The bragging could be excused if they were followed with entertaining anecdotes, but it mostly consists of stories puffing the savoriness or ease of preparation of the recipes. Relax, Emyl, if they're reading this far, you've already made the sale.

If you're looking for fast and easy recipes, Peg Bracken's "The Complete I Hate to Cook Book," is cheaper, contains far more recipes and is funny as well. Compared to that classic, "From Storebought to Homemade" is mostly filler.

I LOVE this book. Just recieved it for christmas. It is full of simple recipes that convert common grocery store food to more homey treats. Further, there are alot of time saving tips. All in all a really good book for people who like to cook but don't have time to complete complex recipes on a regular basis.

This is one cookbook no kitchen should be without! Not only are the recipes fantastic (and EASY), but Emyl makes them such fun just to read! It's as if she is right there beside you giving advice as you go along with the preparations.
If you haven't gotten around to getting this book, do it ASAP!!
You won't regret it.