A social place for collectors to buy and sell antiques and collectibles, and also to explore and find missing pieces to their collectibles or collections. Right now our biggest missing piece is you!
Our President and co-founder, Cynthia Cartier, has been an avid collector and upcycler for decades. The idea for Treasure Matching came to her over twenty years ago when she found the matching jar to a Depression Glass lid she’d been hanging on to because it was too beautiful to throw away. A few years ago, Cynthia told two friends how surprised she was that there still wasn’t a marketplace out there just for collectors, that made it easy to find and match missing pieces. Those two friends, Kim and Mandy, quickly got on board and they began working on creating the site.
As they got deeper into development, TM’s founders realized how serious of an issue online fraud has become and how it’s only getting worse. People are wary of scams on popular sites and feel unprotected and on their own when it comes to dealing with fraud and chargebacks. It became clear that in order to create the best community for its members, Treasure Matching needed to put a trusted Safer Transaction Process in place.
Each TM transaction goes through an escrow payment system to protect both buyers and sellers. We also have an escrow and a delivery confirmation process for local pickup. There’s no fee for the escrow service, or to list an item on Treasure Matching, and the transaction fee is always a flat, easy to calculate 10%, which includes all payment processing fees and there’s no hidden fees or adds-on for extra services.
Fun and unique features on Treasure Matching include a Matching feature; a Story feature where members can browse and submit stories about items, projects and treasure hunting adventures; and a ‘What is This?’ feature where they can solicit input about mystery items from other members and the TM staff, or just learn more about any antique or collectible they have.
We’re not just collectors, we’re also writers and we’ve done a bit of producing, so we’re so excited about our plans for multiple web TV series that feature TM members. But we need your help to create the kind of quality content we envision that will make Treasure Matching not just useful for collectors, but an enjoyable place to hang out as well.
So yes, we need you! Any donation you can make would go a long way to helping us have a successful launch and keep going. We need funds to pay for hosting, site maintenance, tech support and other costs associated with running an online start-up. Funds will also be used to develop new and existing features and to create written, photo and video content that’s inspiring and entertaining and that will get members involved in the community and with the TM staff. If you can’t make a donation, please support our campaign by sharing this page with your network once, twice or a dozen times!
The Goods we’re offering our supporters reflect the fun and interactive spirit of Treasure Matching. We’re so excited to be working with the performers of the Improv Mania comedy group to create fun thank you’s and rewards; you’ll learn more about them as the campaign progresses. Support us and receive things like T-shirts, party boxes, video thank you’s from the Improv Mania cast, and a treasure hunting excursion with your friends in a limo. Also, become a beta seller on the site and get some cool perks! We have another exciting Good that we’ll be adding if you help us reach our $10,000 goal–it will automatically be given to everyone who supported at the $250 level or above to get us to get us to $10,000–new supporters will receive this Good by contributing at the $350 level.
So please, will you help us with a donation and/or a share? We appreciate any support… at any level, and hope you’ll become a member of Treasure Matching once we launch. Thanks again for checking out our crowdfunding campaign; we look forward to connecting with you and we want to thank you in advance for your support!