A family-run antique house, a 22,000-square-foot showroom, and 12,400 hand-picked pieces — each photographed, condition-graded, and told the way it deserves to be told.
In the autumn of 1987, our daughter was six months old and our barn was three hundred and ninety-eight square feet. We had heat in one corner, electricity in the other, and a card table we used as both register and lunch counter. Howard had just been laid off from his machine-shop job, and Margaret had been haunting Bucks County estate sales since she was seventeen.
The first piece we ever sold, for forty-two dollars, was a dented tin breadbox with a faded Quaker Oats decal on the lid. A woman drove up from Philadelphia with the cash in her glove box, lifted it gently into the back seat, and cried a little in our driveway. She said it had belonged to her mother. We stood in the doorway and looked at each other and thought: this is what we are going to do for the rest of our lives.
Thirty-eight years on, we still believe that every dented breadbox, every chipped gravy boat, every sun-faded road sign has a story worth preserving — and a person out there waiting to take it home. We photograph every piece ourselves. We grade its condition honestly. We write down where it came from, who loved it, and why it matters. If we cannot tell you those things, we do not put it in the catalog.
If you are reading this from a desk in another state, or another country, thank you for trusting us with your collection. If you are reading it from the parking lot of our showroom in Quakertown, please come inside — the coffee is usually on.
We are not a weekend booth. We are not a side hustle. We are the Snyders of Quakertown, and we have been doing this, full-time, since the second Bush administration was a serious prospect.
Howard and Margaret Snyder open Snyder's Treasures in a 398-sq-ft timber-frame barn behind the family home in rural Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The entire catalog fits on four shelves. The first piece sold is a dented tin breadbox with a Quaker Oats decal — forty-two dollars, cash.
Snyder's Treasures is admitted to the Antique Dealers' Association of America, formalizing the cataloguing and provenance standards the shop was already practicing by hand. The first hire is a part-time driver who can also refinish a drawer slide.
The operation moves to a 22,000-square-foot converted textile mill on Heritage Mill Road in Quakertown. A dedicated restoration workshop opens next door, with a loading dock and the first proper climate-controlled archive in the building.
Snyder's Treasures receives the “Dealer of the Year” award from the Pennsylvania Antiques Show — the first recipient from outside the Philadelphia Main Line in the award's history. The third generation joins the buying team. The catalog passes 12,000 active listings.
Our condition grades are not auto-generated. Our gem certificates are not boilerplate. Every piece that ships from Quakertown has passed under the eye of at least one of the people below.
Co-founded the shop with Margaret in 1987 out of the back of a pickup truck and a borrowed card table. Still hits two estate sales every Saturday morning and personally inspects every piece above five hundred dollars.
GIA-trained in diamonds and colored stones. Reviews every jewelry listing, writes the certificate included with purchases over one carat, and keeps a small archive of estate jewelry that has not been entered into inventory because, in her words, “nobody has earned it yet.”
Twenty-two years restoring American period furniture. Leads the in-house workshop, signs off on every structural repair, and personally backs the two-year structural warranty on every restored piece we list.
Plus ten other full-time staff — three certified appraisers, two restoration specialists, four catalog photographers, a shipping lead, and a customer care desk that actually picks up the phone.
Average item age in inventory: 78 years. Oldest authenticated piece sold to date: an 1803 Pennsylvania militia document. Shipped to 48 U.S. states and 11 countries; 97.3% on-time delivery over the last 24 months.
Step through the loading dock and you are standing inside a 22,000-square-foot converted textile mill in Quakertown, Pennsylvania. Five aisles of curated furniture, four walls of original advertising signage, a glass case for estate jewelry, and a reading nook where collectors can sit with the archive books before they buy.
If you are within driving distance, please come by — the catalog is the catalog, but nothing replaces running a hand along a dovetail joint.
Twenty paces past the showroom floor, behind a sliding barn door, sits the in-house restoration shop — where every piece that needs a new drawer slide, a replaced veneer patch, or a careful wax and buff goes before it is photographed for the catalog.
Daniel Akers and his team of two restoration specialists hold the line on period-correct techniques: hide glue, hand-rubbed oil finishes, and brass patina left where it sits. Every restored piece we list is backed by a two-year structural warranty.
