Devona Wassil and her husband Mike sold many of their possessions and moved out to Australia when they were younger so Mike could take a new job for a few years. While they were gone, they rented out their Oxford home. When they returned, they had a house mostly vacant of any furniture and in need of fixing up.

So, Wassil started hitting up estate sales to affordably refurnish their home.

When she and her husband had their home all fixed up, Wassil knew she needed to find a job. Because she had found things like their stylish kitchen chairs and side tables, her husband suggested she go into selling antiques full-time.

“(Mike) said ‘You should just try this,’” Wassil recalled. “He said, ‘You like it, and that way your time would be really flexible.’ So he gave me the little shove and I said ‘Well, we can try it.’”

Today, she owns Michigan Mid Mod, an eBay store where she flips antiques she finds at estate sales. She sells everything from towels to art, and most of her items were made in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. Her customers range from people overseas to moviemakers in the U.S. looking for period items.

Wassil knows her way around an antique, so when the Emmy-winning “Antiques Roadshow” came to Rochester’s Meadow Brook Hall in August, she knew she had to go.

“I wanted to know what some of these things were worth so I knew what I could get for them,” she said.

She brought along the allowed four items with her, a signed “Tattoo You” Rolling Stones album, a copy of the “Red Corner Book” for children, a painting and a textile. She had an idea of the wealth they might hold, but she left the “Roadshow” knowing she had thousands of dollars’ worth of items.

Plus, that textile, made for laying over a table, landed she and her husband a small spot on the show’s third episode from the event at Meadow Brook Hall. It aired last Monday, Jan. 21.

Designed by the famous Swiss textile designer Marta Maas-Fjetterstrom in 1915, the textile was estimated by a “Roadshow” appraiser to be worth between $3,000 and $5,000, far more than Wassil originally bought it for at an estate sale.

“It’s got (Marta’s) initials on it, and it doesn’t say ‘A.D.’ after or before it, which means it was made when she was still alive,” Wassil explained. “It’s actually a table cover, like you would put it on a big farm table when you weren’t using it.”

She didn’t go to the “Roadshow” with any hopes of being on TV and was surprised when the appraiser called a camera crew over to their table.

“They filmed just while (the appraiser) was telling us about it… I’m kind of camera-shy. I would have been really nervous if they wanted me to wait and do a big segment.” Wassil said.

To her relief, the appraiser said she “knew too much” about the textile because of her line of work and prior research. Otherwise, he would have recommended her for a big segment.

She still hasn’t sold that tapestry, but is looking at sending it off to a textile store in New York that sells items similar to her original Fjetterstrom.

She has sold the “Red Corner Book,” a pro-communism book geared toward children from the 1930s in the Soviet Union. The book, which she sold for $100, was meant to give children an idea of what it was like to work for the Soviet cause.

“It was a weird book,” she said.

The painting, a 1940s calendar advertisement for the Detroit-based Altes Beer, is still for sale on her eBay store, and the timing for the piece couldn’t be better.

“(Atles) is actually starting to brew beer again,” she said.

But, Wassil’s second-most expensive item is one she has no plans of getting rid of.

Years ago, Wassil’s parents had a crazy night that ended up getting them dinner with the Rolling Stones and Iggy Pop while Wassil was in college. Her mom thought Iggy Pop was “really rude,” but the Stones were nice enough to send the couple home with a signed copy of “Tattoo You”, which they gave to their daughter, a huge fan a both artists, along with the backstage passes.

“That’s the piece that I’ll never get rid of,” Wassil said. “I mean, it’s in horrendous shape because I had it in college. There’s pin holes in every corner. The appraiser was laughing, she said ‘I can see this has been in every dorm room.’”

The record has stayed with her ever since and, though it’s a little beat up, “Roadshow” appraisers told her it’s worth between $2,000 and $3,000.

Those four items aren’t the only treasures Wassil has found throughout the years. She said people shouldn’t just throw things away when they have an estate to sell. After all, one man’s “trash” is another’s treasure.

“People don’t understand how much stuff can be worth,” she said.

As for the “Antiques Roadshow”, she plans on going back the next time it comes to the Mitten State.

“I would go again in a minute. It was so fun.”