When Marburger Farm Antiques founder, Ed Gage was five years old, someone found him digging in an alley in St. Louis. When asked what he was doing, he had a perfectly reasonable explanation: “I’m looking for treasure.”
Decades later, that same curiosity has become the foundation of Marburger Farm Antique Show in Round Top, Texas, where more than 200 dealers gather to sell everything from fine art to objects whose appeal is a little harder to explain. The scene draws more than 100,000 visitors—including celebrities like Joanna Gaines and Matthew McConaughey—to a town of roughly 90 residents. This month, Marburger is unveiling Gage Hall, a new exhibition building named for its eccentric founder.
While reading about this town (and adding it to my bucket list), I thought about how much of modern marketing is designed to remove uncertainty: we tell people exactly what they’re getting, why they should want it, and what to expect along the way. But Gage has built a business around almost the opposite proposition—the possibility of finding something you didn’t know you were looking for.
And perhaps more interestingly, he’s made that uncertainty something people look forward to experiencing again and again. The objects change, the dealers bring their own personalities, and no two visits are quite the same. Yet the reason people return seems remarkably consistent.
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Ahead of Marburger’s milestone event, I spoke with Gage about how he turned a childhood treasure hunt into a business and what the rest of us might learn from it.
1. Be known for a specific taste
Gage knows exactly what he’s looking for, yet sometimes the right pieces seem to find him. Around 2013, the year he got sober and began getting back on his feet, he spotted two rough 19th-century works at a store and later identified them as Charles Russell’s famous “Indian Portrait” pieces. “For me, it was the holy grail,” he says. He still owns one. Another time, a stack of papers bought from an antiques dealer friend once turned up an original 1828 Andrew Jackson letter, which he later sold on eBay.
“My core value has always been that an object should carry intrinsic value,” he says. “I most like to look for fine art, mistaken-identity pieces, and folk art that’s made with good intention.” His advice to collectors is just as direct: “Buy what you love, and buy what you’re attracted to.” And because he’s clear about what he loves, so are the people around him.