He had an eye, as they say in the antique and fine art business. He loved the quest for the oddball piece, something he’d found in the Council Thrift Shop or at one Nike Air Foamposite One of a half dozen junk stores he’d been to on North Avenue. In the antique trade, he was known as a “picker,” one who finds great pieces and quickly resells them to established shopkeepers.

His eye went for the good item, usually a sleeper buried in the junk. He was a handicapper of fine art.

I can’t remember the first time I met Keith Huppert. He knew that I wrote about Baltimore. Before long, he’d be calling me up, or maybe he’d run into me at a bus stop.

“I’ve got something Air Jordan Fusion 4 for you,” he would say, giving me something he had found or selling it to me.

He found a small tea pot from the old Emerson Hotel, an English plate with a scene of Baltimore’s Battle Monument and a century old photograph of the statue of St. Michael the Archangel from the church of the same name at Lombard and Wolfe streets.

Another time, he unearthed some bon bon dishes originally sold by Hutzler’s department store. They were made in Italy and had scenes sketched by Sun artist Richard Q. Yardley. I was sometimes afraid the treasures Keith found would command a high price. Not from this man. He usually asked all of $7, maybe $12 if he were a little pinched for money that day.

few times, Keith went through the exercise of opening an antique shop and keeping regular hours for customers. But this really wasn’t his style. He was a free spirit. He certainly shied away from success.

Other people could make money from the finds he’d sell them, but not Keith. He was not greedy in a field where beautiful possessions and money work together. He couldn’t hold on to cash. Being rich wasn’t his style.

A few years ago at a North Avenue ATM, a would be robber came up to him and demanded, “Give me all the money you took out.” Keith handed him the slip that stated “no funds available.”

He also was an artist and a first rate Nike LeBron 12 picture framer known for impeccable taste. He worked for many art galleries in Baltimore, but his free spirit occasionally got the best of him. This is a polite way of saying his employment record was spotty.

But even those dealers who fired Keith held him in high regard. He just had to keep moving.

At times Keith could play the part of the lovable imp. With his dark hair and mischievous smile, he was a charmer. And as a certifiable Baltimore character, he fit into this town like the humidity.

He also was a man of Air Jordan 2 Retro spontaneous kindness.

One Christmas season he happened by my house. He was showing some friends from Washington that Baltimore had more to it than the Inner Harbor. We ran the train around the circle of track in the Christmas garden. Maybe we had a glass of egg nog, or two or three.

Then Keith looked at my Christmas tree and fixed his artistic eye on it.

“It needs something more,” he said of a tree so weighted down with ornaments some of the branches touched the floor.

. A Air Jordan 16s few days later he reappeared

with a pasteboard box of marvelous antique German reflectors. These are pieces of colorful foil shaped into circles. You insert them over an electric tree light.