As I continue learning the towns that dot California’s wine country, I notice that there are a bunch of roadside shops that tout themselves to be “Antique Shops”,  “Antique and Collectibles Shops”, or “Consignment Shops”. I have of course stopped into several of these shops and to me they seem to be more “junk” shop then antique or collectible shop.

Yesterday afternoon I was driving down CA 116 and stopped by this shop pictured in my post as I had seen it a few times and today decided to make a sharp right turn into their parking lot. Not many shoppers inside and it was hard to maneuver around as the setup was not shopper friendly. Lots of furniture for sure and not many collectibles. This shop was an Antique, Collectibles, and Consignment shop. There was one lady working the place and she didn’t really care about customer service. A lady came in was talking about the opportunity to place her love seats in the shop for consignment and was told the shop takes a 40% cut. I have not done consignment but 40% sounded super high to me. Anyway, I made the rounds and a couple things I was looking at the staff person offered to knock a few bucks off the price without my even having to ask and I thought that was interesting, as I would not have thought you could negotiate in these types of places.  Prices were also super high in this shop…guess there is wiggle room though so keep it in mind if you stop by.

I didn’t end up buying anything as there was mostly furniture and I wouldn’t have been able to fit it in my 4-door car but a trend I am seeing is that wine country has lots of junk shops so far and one really needs to hunt and pick over stuff to find that “treasure”.  I am still so used to the multi-dealer antique malls back in Texas and have only found two so far in wine country and I much prefer these. I read about one such place in San Francisco so will be planning a trip down there the next weekend or so. I am excited about it and am already dreaming about what I might find there. Hope you are all having a great weekend and enjoying your summer!!