10 hot spots for vintage souvenirs

For one desultory hour, you've been running around the Mercado San Telmo antiques market in Buenos Aires, elbowing the crowds aside to rummage through boxes of faded gloves, shelves of broken cameras and cabinets of chipped china. Finally, the moment arrives. From a box shoved behind some moldering chess sets, you spy the one item that speaks to your heart: a working train set from the 1930s. You happily fork over the $600 and walk away with your prized possession.

Antique shopping is one of the great pleasures of travel: grand markets and hidden shops offer unexpected objects that can turn just another trip into an unforgettable expedition. And collecting isn't just for the experts any more. "Most serious collectors will tell you that their proudest moments were discovering the unexpected somewhere exotic, and returning from a distant country with something worth far more at home than abroad," says Marina Thompson, an editor at the Forbes Collector Newsletter.

"It's a treasure hunt, going to a big shop or a flea market and finding something that you didn't expect," said Terry Kovel, who with her husband Ralph authors the Kovels' Antiques and Collectibles Price List."

"You always remember where you found it — its part of your trip forever."

The Web may have made it easy to go antique shopping without stepping outside the cubicle, but nothing can replace the pleasure of happening upon something unusual at a tiny market stall.

"I can't buy that way," Kovel says of online antique shopping. "I really think to understand anything you collect, you have to be able to touch it. Also, you're missing the fun of the chase."

Indeed, that chase is what some people thrive on. The relationship between antiques hunter and dealer is a special one that begins the moment you clap eyes on a perfect item, heroically bargain down the price, prevail over a perilous taxi ride and imposing airport x-ray machines and place it lovingly on the mantle.

Mao and More

Mao and More in Sydney, Australia stocks new and old furniture and décor objects from Asia (mainly China), with everything from porcelain Chairman Mao statuettes to antique Buddas.

Just make sure it's real. "The fakes are so good that I would not buy anything expensive if it wasn't from a well-known shop," Kovel warns. But that's not your only option: cities like Hong Kong offer dedicated experts to help you assess the authenticity of a product.

Still, antiques shopping isn't just about the acquisition of items. Flea markets and secondhand stores can also offer an unguided tour through a city's or a people's history.

"Junk stands and antique markets are the perfect place to pick up clues about the history of a country, region or town," says Judith Miller, author of the "Antiques Price Guide 2007," and adds that port towns are especially rich.

"At a port you will see the sorts of items that were traded there in the past, as well as locally made goods. Hollandis a perfect example of this. From early in the 17th century, the Dutch East India Company imported Chinese ceramics, which in turn inspired potters in the town of Delft to create their blue-and-white wares."

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So where do the hard-core hunters go? There are countless stores and markets around the globe to shop for remnants of the past, of course, and each carries a bit of its city's history. Damascus was a major stop on the Silk Road, its merchants trading in swords, carpets, handcrafts and religious icons. And in Rome's Porta Portese Market, there are still plenty of secondhand Madonnas to go around. You may even stumble onto a historical find — in 2000 the market turned up some typed summaries of World War II radio reports proving that Pope Pius 12th knew quite well what the Nazis were inflicting on the Jews.

London is still the perennial place to go for antique dolls and toys, as well as nautical antiques like toy pond boats and ships in bottles, while Sydney has several stores specializing in Asian antiques and Chinese communist kitsch. Argentina's heyday saw the landed gentry importing cartloads of loot from the best European manufacturers, but after countless economic crises, it's now loaded up in the antique stores of San Telmo.

Thailand's Chiang Mai is the epicenter of the Southeast Asian furniture trade. The region's furniture-makers have adapted to the 1989 ban on teakwood logging by restoring reconditioning items from China — reconditioned teak chests and bed frames there sell at less than a third of the price they'd fetch in the US or Europe, and you'll also find ornately carved Indian doors and British colonial-era furniture.

While Paris' Clignancourt market is still one of the world's best antique markets, it's worth heading to the north of France for La Braderie. Not so much a market as bacchanal of trash and treasure, the annual event termed "Europe's second biggest after Oktoberfest" sees around two million shoppers descend on the city of Lille on the first weekend of September.

The Anglo- and Francophilia of New York's upper classes has ensured that you can find just about anything in the Big Apple's antiques stores, but some shops are worth a special look for their antique maps, prints and books. The Old Print Shop stocks maps and prints and specializes in Audubon prints. The Argosy Bookstore has seven floors' worth of antiquarian books and modern first editions, while The Complete Traveler Antiquarian Bookstore houses the world's largest Baedeker selection.

And sometimes a single store is enough to bring the vintage pilgrims flocking. Vintage clothing store C. Madeleine's of Miami is one such emporium. Lenny Kravitz is a fan, and Sex in the City stylist Patricia Field was known to trawl the aisles looking for Carrie's latest trend-setting style maneuver.

Whether you're a collector or just a souvenir hunter, here are some of the best spots around the world for vintage shopping discoveries.