Dear Lee,

We recently visited San Francisco and spent an afternoon at a few area antique shops. First stop: a store that looked like an antique shop but carried only reproductions or fantasies. We recognized dozens of metal signs made by Desperate Enterprises, a Wadsworth, Ohio, company founded by the dealer who sold us one of our first old advertising signs. Sometime after we met him, he started making copies of old signs for gift shops. He has sold thousands.

Next stop: a mall where we saw a samovar with missing parts priced $45, a tin flour-sifter missing its inside wire marked $10, and bookends that had been recently copper-plated priced $100. But we also spotted some good buys. A 1920s Chinese advertising poster picturing attractive young women was only $20. Some of the other antiques we saw are pictured.

Terry