I am sure many of us are dreaming of holidays and have been spurred on to create a less cluttered home in unequal measure. Happy home, happy holiday!

Well maybe it’s time to have a spring clean and maybe, just maybe, you’ll make some money towards your hols!

Several of my dealer friends are household names. You know their shows. Someone rocks up with an old treasure and either gets the shock of their life that it’s worth a fortune, or at a valuation day where an excited expert asks if they’d like to consign it to auction?

When it sells, whether for a lot or a little, we all know the question! What are you going to spend the money on? There’s always one wit comes up with an outpouring of inappropriate hedonistic dreams who then adds “And then I’m going to waste the rest!” We all laugh.

Well here’s an opportunity! Get on with your household clear out and you might be sat on a small fortune. 

Top tips are to start with your glass and ceramics. Militaria is also something we seem to hang onto and also ethnographic items! Presents from abroad. Masks, figures. 

Paul Martin seems ever present on our screens and I gave him a quick call to ask. We’re old pals.

He said: “I’ll always remember three Tibetan artefacts making £112,000, a teapot, plaque and a Buddha. So extraordinary! It just goes to show you the most unlikely things can be worth a fortune.”

If you’ve cleared out the Steptoe & Sons room, my next tip is look for treasures and go and have a mooch at a boot fair, antique fair or around the antique centres. 

My best purchase? A Regency wine table I bought for £15, spent £235 with a restorer on and then sold for £750 at the Blanchard Collective. A carving purchased for £30 sold for £500 online and a print for £20 which sold to an aristocrat as a wedding present for £750.

At Hansen Auctions a collection of coins found wrapped in linen and a sock recently sold for an amazing £112,000 too. 

If all this has inspired you to have a clear out, whether you do a boot fair, sell your finds on line or at an auction, or start looking around antique centres and fairs, it fathoms that some you are in for a happy holiday and the rest will have the pleasure of extra space in your homes to fill up again in time for next year’s tidy!

Battersea Car Boot Sale, London: Look out for high-end pre-owned items from midday.

Ardleigh Car Boot, Colchester, Essex from 6am Sundays.

Yorkshire’s biggest Sunday market and car boot? Try Skirlington, it’s about 40 minutes up the East Yorkshire coast from Hull.

In South West Wales, head to Carew near Tenby and a huge boot fair held on Sundays and Bank Holidays.

In Scotland there’s a huge boot fair on at Blochairn, Glasgow. It too is held on Sundays.

Andrew Blackall is an English antique dealer with more than 30 years of experience selling period furniture and quirky collector's items to clients across the globe. He has written and produced award-winning film and television productions. He was born in St John’s Wood, London and he grew up in and around London. He currently lives in Avebury, Wiltshire. His love of antiques stems from an early fascination with history and from visiting country homes throughout old England and the British Isles. Many of Andrew’s clients are well known on both sides of the pond, patronising his ability to source antiquities with provenance and appeal. His stock has appeared in a number of films and TV shows. Andrew has two styles of business: one selling high-end decorative antiques at The Blanchard Collective, the other selling affordable collectables at The Malthouse Collective.

His website is chairmanantiques.co.uk/

Instagram is: chairman_antiques