Jacques Gautreaux can trace his love of treasure hunting to his grandparent’s San Lorenzo home, a cozy getaway that was done up with mid-century modern furniture and peppered with rare collectibles that fascinated the boy.

But looking back, the now 55-year-old Bay Area native realizes his fascination with the Naugahyde bar, the Jim Beam bottle collection, the rattan bird cage swing and his grandfather’s two coin-operated vintage pool tables was about much more than embracing  his blossoming sense of appreciation for a bygone era.

“My grandparent’s house was a sanctuary for me,” Gautreaux said. “The stuff never changed. It was the same from the time I was born until they died.”

“It evokes a period of time that I didn’t live through, but makes me feel really good and safe,” he said. “It was a time when things were simpler. What I do appreciate about the era is the esthetic and the optimism of it.”

His grandmother, Inez Gautreaux, lived to be 85. She passed away in 1993, and his grandfather, Dalton, died in 2001 at age 95.

Many of their treasures and many years’ worth of new finds, including dozens of recently-acquired  vintage television tapes, are now in their grandson’s hands.

“I started collecting mid-century stuff for about 25 years and going to estate sales looking for stuff almost 20 years ago,” he said. “One of the things I always found interesting was old 35 mm slides.”

Gautreaux would snap up a box for $10 or $20 and dig in when he returned home.

“I started finding some really neat stuff,” he said. “It’s not all pictures of people’s babies and their dog, but you have to look through a lot of it to find good stuff.”

His eyes would gravitate toward slides of airplanes and travel, iconic street scenes and architecture and slides involving music and television.

“All the things I’m interested in,” he said.

In early 2020, right before the pandemic began, Gautreaux hit up an estate sale in Pleasant Hill.

“I noticed a large box of U-matic video tapes,” he recalled.  “The video tapes were interesting to me because of what was written on them.”

A closer look at the 30 or so tapes showed they were outtakes from Oakland’s KTVU and Los Angeles’ KTLA, snippets from Creature Features, and the final episode of the show from 1979, as well as Captain Cosmic with Bob Wilkins, Star Trek bloopers, a KTVU holiday special, and even outtakes of the iconic Dennis Richmond as a cub reporter.

“I felt like if I didn’t buy those tapes, they were going in the trash,” he said. He plunked down $20 for the entire box and headed home.

“I grew up with Creature Features, and when I mentioned I had Creature Features (tapes), everyone came out of the woodwork.”

But there was a problem. Gautreaux had absolutely no way to play the tapes.

“I was champing at the bit. I wanted to know what was on these damn tapes. Once you go down the rabbit hole, it’s pretty hard to climb out,’’ he recalled.

Then, a little luck came his way.

A few months ago, a friend spotted a U-matic tape deck for sale on Craigslist for $100. Gautreaux headed to San Jose to check it out.

“I powered it up and had to fuss with it quite a bit, but I got it to load and play a tape,” he said. “It’s a monster piece of equipment, probably 85 pounds. It’s the size of a fairly substantial suitcase. It took both of us to get it in my truck.”

Was it too good to be true?

“I put it on a dolly and schlepped it into the back bedroom. I plugged it all in, got it to load and play and got images and sound into my computer, but the tapes were pretty garbled. It played for 30 seconds and then degenerated into garbage.”

But, Gautreaux wasn’t about to give up.

He turned to YouTube and gave himself a quick tutorial on vintage tape restoration. He quickly learned that baking the tapes at a certain temperature for a certain amount of time could help bring them back to life.

“The oxide on the tape gets gooey and breaks down, baking a tape at 120 degrees for four to six hours gets the moisture out and makes it reattach itself to the Mylar on the back,” he said.  “They are good for about 30 days once you bake them and then they turn into goo again.”

Luckily, Gautreaux was able to get some of the Creature Features outtakes, and the final episode of the show from 1979. He also found some outtakes from KTVU and KTLA outtakes and a few other priceless television moments uploaded to his YouTube channel for the world to see.

He hopes to complete the project that started with his love of treasure hunting.

“I’m still committed to finishing the project,” he said. “I’m still committed to getting the rest of these tapes transferred somehow. For me, the reward is the feedback you get when you put it out there and get 20 people who are so jazzed about it that they can’t contain themselves.”