Barn finding methodology--two tricks of the trade

I used to find cars abut 30 years ago when they were cheap and I had money.
Now the cars are expensive and I don't have any money.
But I am still curious how people find them today.
For instance, long ago I talked to a guy from the UK, Colin Crabbe, who went to islands, figuring if nobody bought the car on the island than nobody outside the island knows about it. He went to Madagascar and spread word to the hotel staff that he wanted old cars and in short order cleaned out the island of any valuable ones. He went to Cuba and found two XK/SS.

I have another theory about engine builders. Maybe they got a Ferrari engine to rebuild back in '59 but never finished it. Maybe there's an engine builders directory. But the directory I would really want is a directory from 30-40 years ago.

But then what do you do when the shops that advertise in that directory no longer exist? A Mormon lady told me there is some service on the net where you can trace people's ancestory but I don't know if it extends to their children.

If anybody has any theories, even if they haven't tried them yet, I'd like to hear them. I won't be able to use them, not being funded, but I can see how I lost my mojo.

 

She seemed to think it would be useful in tracking recent ancestors of a race driver
I wrote a biography about. She said that there are centers around the U.S. where you can go and, in as little as half an hour, find information. I have not tried it out yet but maybe someone knows about these centers and whether they welcome walk-ins, if there's a research fee, and so on. Of course on the net there are all sorts of commercial services for finding people, offering some info. like last known address for as little as $3.50 but I looked up my own name and they are always a couple of addresses behind. One thing that's kind of scary is that one of them even shows aerial pictures of the neighborhood the person you are trying to find lives in (which I guess is a good reason for having your Ferrari registered at a different neighborhood than where the car actually is...). Incidentally I think it was in Germany that they allowed these search engines shooting pictures of private homes as an invasion of privacy but it's not outlawed here and I see the Google camera trucks all the time.