Classic Car Restorer: Brings rusty old classic cars back to showroom condition. Typical pay $58k.
Watchmaker / Horologist: Repairs and services mechanical watches and clocks with tiny tools. Typical pay $60k.
Museum Registrar: Tracks, packs, insures, and ships priceless museum objects. Typical pay $62k.
Archivist: Preserves historical documents, photos, film, and digital records. Typical pay $62k.
Sports Memorabilia Authenticator: Examines signed balls, jerseys, and cards to prove they are real, not fakes. Typical pay $60k.
Estate Sale Company Owner: Runs sales of an entire household's belongings after a move or death, pricing everything from furniture to rare collectibles. Typical pay $55k.
Starter: fastest way in
Trading Card & Comic Grader: Inspects trading cards and comic books and assigns grades that set their value. Typical pay $45k.
Antique Dealer: Hunts for antiques at estate sales and auctions, then resells them. Typical pay $45k.
Rare Book Dealer: Finds, authenticates, and sells rare books, maps, and manuscripts. Typical pay $50k.
Fossil Preparator: Carefully frees dinosaur bones and other fossils from rock. Typical pay $50k.
Stained Glass Artist & Restorer: Repairs and creates stained-glass windows for churches and historic buildings. Typical pay $45k.
Taxidermist: Preserves and mounts animals for hunters, museums, and nature centers. Typical pay $40k.
Vintage Clothing Reseller: Finds vintage clothes, sneakers, and streetwear and resells them online and at pop-ups. Typical pay $40k.
Furniture Restorer: Repairs and refinishes antique furniture to its original beauty. Typical pay $45k.
Sneaker Authenticator: Inspects sneakers and streetwear sold on resale sites to make sure they are not counterfeit. Typical pay $42k.
Stamp Dealer: Buys, sells, and appraises rare postage stamps and postal history. Typical pay $35k.
Antique Picker: Hunts through barns, attics, and yard sales for antiques and collectibles to resell. Typical pay $35k.
Jukebox Restorer: Brings old jukeboxes from the 1940s to 1970s back to life, fixing record mechanisms, tube amps, lights and chrome. Typical pay $42k.
Antique Radio & Phonograph Restorer: Repairs tube radios, wind-up phonographs and old record players so they work again while keeping their original look. Typical pay $40k.
Commercial Fossil Quarry Worker: Splits layers of rock on private land to find fossil fish, leaves and insects, then sells them to collectors and shops. Typical pay $38k.
Career Universe is an early version. Pay, training and AI-risk figures are estimates to start your own research, not verified facts. The research was written with AI research assistants, checked by validation scripts and spot-checked by hand. Check anything important with schools, employers and official sources. How the numbers work.