About Us and some Digging photos

    Folks, I have come to a few realizations about business and finances. I am 31 years old and have a wife and four daughters.  We have a house and very big dog, (girl), a very small cat, (also a girl) and a small pond full of gold fish (that I just assume are also all girls).
I have parents that  love me. Until recently I did not understand there love and at times did not want there love in the way they were offering it. My father Is Army. A retired Command Sergeant Major who is a veteran of several armed conflicts and of four wars.   The first two wars were Vietnam and the 1st Gulf War.  The 2nd two wars were colon and then prostate cancer. With prayer he survived them all. My mother fought her own wars raising 3 kids alone while my father was stationed  in other states or countries.  
We lived in Swannanoa NC, just east of Asheville. My parents are Christians. They took us (my older sister and older brother) to church.
    My mom never moved with my dad. She did not want us relocating every 2 of 3 years. She chose, against my very strong disagreement, to give us stability in school and church.  I wanted to be with by dad. I wanted him to take me fishing and hunting not my uncle Freddy.  (Who I love and who did do a good job filling in while dad was gone)
    As I grew older and dad grew closer to retirement I could not wait for him to move back home, By this time I was 21 and in love with my soon to be wife.  A good friend of mine at the time was a student at a local collage and we were both served on the Swannanoa  volunteer fire department.   At the age of  about twenty my best Keller graduated and moved back to Charleston SC to fallow in his Fathers foot steps of  real-estate investing. Bridgette my former friend, girl friend, then fiancé,  then girl friend, then friend, the girlfriend again (this lasted for 8 years) finally got married.  One of the biggest mistakes of my life happened at my wedding, and I have regretted it from that day. My father flew home from California for the wedding. Instead of asking him to be my best man I had asked my best friend Keller to be. Keller was my best friend and I would trust my life to him in a burring building or in the middle of the night on top of a mountain on a rescue  mission, but he was not my dad.
    About two years a house and one daughter in the our marriage I was working for a lumber company and was offered the opportunity to take a management position near Charleston SC.  With my friend Keller in real-estate in Charleston  this seamed like a great opportunity.  I moved To Charleston in March of 2001 in June, My father retired and came back to Swannanoa.
    Over the past 7 years I have worked MANY jobs. Mostly in sale. We have paid the bills (some were paid with help and some were paid late). And tried to get out of debt.  This became a paycheck to paycheck life.  In sales and working on some times 100% commission we were a slave to money. We were always scraping around to try to pay off bills. Week to week, month to month.
    For my entire life there has not been a time that I have not been a member of a church. I have a degree in Religious Ministries fro Fruitland Bible College.  I have always known that you were suppose  to turn you troubles over to the Lord lay them down at his feet……  I would pray and ask God for help and when I was finished I would get up and try to figure out what to do, instead of letting God figure it out. We attended a church on James Island that I would love to mention by mane but that would  not be very Christ like.  We fit in very well and even taught the college level Sunday school class for a while. This church was very showy and made you feel good on Sunday morning. The people were friendly and the children’s department was safe and  nurturing to our  now 2 daughters.  They had contemporary services and  traditional services and tried to find a place for everyone to fit in.   What they did not have was the Holy Spirit.   We were very social during church activities. We thought that we had some friends at the church. When we move to Summerville, about 30 miles away. We even commuted on Sundays instead of finding a church closer to home.  The reason we were not drawn to find a church closer to home it that we were comfortable, we were not being challenge spiritually.  One day we were running late for church. Remember, 30 miles away. And by this time daughter #3 was slowing us down. So we decided to go to a church closer to home that a client of mine had invited us to.  
    When we stepped threw the doors of Crossroads Community Church a feeling of  warmth fell over me and my family.  The client of mine Dr. Matt Edwards and his wife saw us walk threw the door and welcomed us in.  We are to this day unable to count the number of people that spoke to us that day asking all kind of honest caring question about our family.   As the rest of the week went on and the next Sunday approached we felt draw to return to Crossroads.    After several week of attending  it dawned on us that we had never called or spoken to any one from the other church.  To this day, over 4 years later we have not received a phone call from any one from that church.  We are still on there mailing list  and get the mass mailings they send out.
    To try to tell you about the education  we as a family have received over the past  several years  at Crossroads would take in itself several years.  These are a few of the main things I have learned.
1.  God is in control of you life only if you let him be. He will not force His free gift upon you.
2.  We say that God is our father. Well then we should look to the way he acts as a father , how he raises us and raise our children the same way.  You can read book after book after book on raising children and still fail.  God gave us free will. He knows we will misuse this freedom.  Our children will misuse this freedom. How does God react to us when we fail. That is how we should react when our children fail.
3.  Everything belongs to God. He entrusts it to us to watch over.
4.  Everything  includes  money.  If you think that money is a key to anything then you are mistaken. I know we have to have money to live and survive, but I have a question for you, when was the last time you said the Lords Prayer.  Maybe never. Well there is one line that says “Give us this day our daily bread”   There are not many people in America that have ever had to pray that with sincerity.
5.  Family in more important that work. If your Job is putting  your family 2nd FIND A DIFFERENT JOB!! Your job belongs to God also.   Since I started working as a teenager I have received a paycheck from over 40 different companies.  To include  two churches.  I never once turned any of these jobs over to the Lord and asked for his True guidance.  This lead to many many tuff experiences  financially.  
6.  Prayer is a two way conversation. You have to listen for it to work!

Charleston Underground  was a hobby, a stress relief. I have been looking for artifact since I was a little boy. Dad was raised in the Back woods of the Southern Appalachian Mountains. (About 6 hills past were the Beverly Hillbilly’s were from) As a boy he farmed a site that was an old Cherokee Indian Village.  He would collect artifact and sell the to his school teacher. This collection ids now owned by Western Carolina University.  As a young boy I remember dad taking me a few times to this same field and finding pottery and arrowheads.  The passion for finding and collection the past has never left it has only grown stronger.
I always wondered how people became antiques dealers of relic dealers. What a cool job that must be. Well I never got ride of any thing I ever collected (Except Bennie baby’s)  and  after our second  baby the house was getting packed .  It did not help maters that  my good friend Rob had,  at my begging, taken me metal detecting and gotten me hooked.  Well The Charleston Civil War Show was coming to town and I was flat busted. I pulled change out of the ash tray just to have enough to get threw the door.  I brought with be a few things I had found to try to sell or trade. Well it did not take me long to figure out  that some dealers were crooks that would flat out lie to you about the value of an item and say there were not interested then sent there friend over to try to buy it from you cheep.  For the most part, the dealers were helpful. I remember meeting one older dealer that made a good impression on me.  
    Well the year went buy and as the  Charleston Show approached again   I remember finding myself is a little bit better financial condition.  I took $50 with me to the show. And a bag full of items I had dug. Including 2 Charleston Slave tags.  Well I ran into the same old scams. I was told by a guy I’ll call “Geoff”  who digs in the Pitts around Charleston that he was the world authority on slave tags and that my two tags were worth about   $600 as a pair but that he did not have a interest in “common crap tags like those” .  I instantly felt a scam brewing.  Sure enough a few minuets late another man walked up and offered $550 for the pair.  Now I know the old saying that  there is a fool born every day, but my momma didn’t  raise no fool!   I sold the pair for $2300 to a respectable dealer that I have maintained a great working relationship with over the past few years.  I also ran back into the older dealer and did some trading. This time I met his son and got his name.  Larry and Tom Hays are two of the men in this field that I respect the most. Please go to visit Toms website at Stones Rivet Trading .com.  
    After another year  rolled buy by knowledge of Low County relics was starting to get pretty well grounded.  At the nest show I came with a back pack and a duffel bag stuffed with things to sell and trade. My buddy  Rob jokingly  asked were my table was and it dawned on me that it would have been easer for me if I would just get a table.  So that started a process of getting my ducks in a row for the  next years show.  
    Our grand opening of sorts was the January 2007 Charleston Civil War Show.  We got one table.  It took all of about a second to realize that one table was not enough..  I was amazed at this experience.  I met another wonderfully knowledgably dealer that gave me a very good piece of advice. “ Why cut your price and sell things to other dealers and let them go back to their tables and raise the price back up and  make the profit.”  Tim Prince,  thank you  for that advise.   Yes it is common knowledge that  dealers will generally come down on there price a little to make the deal, but if a dealer want some thing, many times they already know a potential buyer.
    Well now I have two jobs  working in lumber sales and doing Civil War shows on the weekends.  I was running like crazy until the housing crunch hit last year.  You see, I sold VERY high end wood flooring. Stuff that ranged from $8 to $22 a square foot.  As builders started streamlining the cost of building the first thing to be cut was my flooring!  I slowly became more dependant on the relic money.  During this time I took the advise from Tom Hays and started this web site. And had our forth daughter.
    As the Summer of 2007 ended and I was feeding my kids relics faster that I could find them. I left the lumber business .  I worked a few odd jobs in construction and  with a wild life removal company until one weekend when our church had a men’s retreat. At the time in my life I hade been discipled in many areas of raising a Christian family, how to be a Godly father,  and how to truly live by faith.  But even though I knew these things, there were areas that I had not truly and fully turned over to Him. One being Money, the next being the way to make money.
    When my wife and I sat down with our children in prayer and truly turned control of our lives over to Him and asked Him to lead, guide, and direct every aspect of our lives, a weight was removed from our shoulders.   Through Gods guidance and leadership  Charleston Underground has been full time since February of 2008.  Some people tell me that this is a tough time to get into this field with the economy and gas prices the way they are. All I can say to that is that this is the place the Lord has led us and as long as I follow his guidance, remember that He in the owner of it all, we will be successful.   If you have taken the time to read this testimony I thanks you.  If you do not know what I’m talking about but are interested in knowing more about the joy and peace that I share with my family through the blessing of Jesus’ free gift, how the Lord has restored my relationship with my mom and how money is not a stress in our  lives even though we still are classified as a lower income family,  Pleas call me or send me an email.  Thanks again for your reading,  Bryan Davis  Owner  Charleston Underground Civil War Relics   843-871-0687