Cold-garage estate sales have a special kind of magic—especially when a forgotten drawer turns up a 1970s Trail Boss Club travel pouch packed with folded road maps and vintage stickers.

This week at Reading Vintage, we’re taking a quirky roadside ephemera hunt and turning it into practical collector guidance: how to judge paper condition fast (yes, the smell test), what actually helps musty odors, and why community cookbooks are some of the most personal, name-hunting, hometown-loving collectibles around.

Stop buying cookbooks you never open. Here’s my simple “Use-It Test” + 60-Second Flip Test for finding cookbooks you’ll actually cook from—especially when you’re thrift/estate-sale hunting. Bonus: why stains and scribbles can be a good thing. 💛