Apr 30, 2007

Treasures await: Enterprising couple take over Marco storeBy Quentin RouxNaples Daily News

Friends chortled and called them crazy when Dave and Rose Prasek quit their high-powered jobs in Chicago, sold their house and moved lock, stock and barrel to Marco Island.

But the enterprising couple had a one-up on their well-meaning friends. They had their plans all mapped out.

“We sure didn’t go into it blindly,” said Dave Prasek about the couple’s purchase in November last year of Island Treasures, a business that had for the previous 17 years built up a solid track record at its Shops of Marco location.

“We’d looked at the numbers. We were in the process of buying when we moved down,” Prasek said. “The ball was already rolling.”

Three months down the line, the couple is already content with the way the store has performed for them.

As the store’s name suggests, it contains a veritable treasure chest of items that Rose Prasek said range from “knick-knacky” things like curious and glassware, to quality women’s clothing such as Icantoo, and indeed some real treasure. That would be original and replicated coins salvaged from the 1622 Atocha wreck off the Florida coast by legendary adventurer Mel Fisher, who discovered the wreck in 1985 and eventually removed booty to the tune of $400 million from the murky depths.

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