Hopewell was, as most college towns are, full of students who were wealthy or spoiled enough that they routinely abandoned their possessions when leaving town for good. Most ended up curbside, fodder for the pickers and incoming students savvy enough to look.

But the more conscientious, if still spoiled, Southern Michigan University students would deposit their castoffs at one of Hopewell’s many thrift stores. In many places that would have meant a Salvation Army or a Goodwill, but the various policies of the organizations behind those chains had let them to wither in the face of a boycott by many students. So it fell to the large store at the corner of Lafayette and Kalamazoo, the one which had until 1975 been Harwich’s Department Store.

It had been known by many names throughout its history, but since 2004 it had been Tokyo Thrift.

An experienced shopper could find all manner of low-cost treasures there, from DVDs in their original shrinkwrap to cast-off mint-in-box action figures, signed first editions, vintage clothes, antique furniture, and original artwork. For some time, a group of students at SMU had kept a blog called “Tokyo Treasures” with all the various finds that canny shoppers had unearthed.

On June 17, 2010, an item went up on the Tokyo Treasures blog: “Authentic Egyptian Statue – Mafdet, Goddess of Cats.” It had been purchased for $0.99 and authenticated by an Egyptology graduate student. One week later, the blog post was taken down without notice or explanation.

The author, a prolific blog contributor, was never heard from again.

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