Inside Hickory Antiques Mall, Where Yesterday Is Still for Sale

A nearly 40 year Hickory institution holds everything from vintage Coca Cola and Playboy magazines to Pokémon, Barbies and the uncomfortable realization that your childhood is now collectible.

HICKORY, N.C. — The first surprise at Hickory Antiques Mall is how little the building gives away from the outside.

You walk through the front door expecting an antique store.

Then you keep walking.

And walking.

There are Tiffany style lamps near the entrance, collectible Barbies, furniture, records, old advertising, clothing, glassware and enough miscellaneous pieces of American life to make any attempt at seeing everything fairly hopeless.

By the end of our visit, closing time was approaching and we still had entire sections left unexplored.

“This place is like never ending,” CoreniaBug said while walking through the mall.

She wasn’t exaggerating much.

That is part of what makes Hickory Antiques Mall interesting. This is not a carefully arranged museum where someone has already decided what deserves your attention. You might turn one corner and find an old roll top desk, another and find Playboy magazines, and then suddenly be standing in front of Pikachu.

Antique stores have a funny way of making history personal.

Sometimes a 100 year old object catches your attention.

Sometimes it’s something you owned in 1997.

And that second one hurts a little more.

Our visit began with what looked like the traditional side of antique shopping. There were elaborate lamps and a large Barbie collection, followed by an abacus priced at $150.

An abacus, of course, was once used to help people perform calculations.

At $150, we decided the calculator on the cell phone would probably continue doing just fine.

That set the tone for the afternoon.

There were beautiful objects. Strange objects. Things we wanted. Things we absolutely did not need. And a surprising number of objects capable of immediately unlocking a memory.

Old vinyl records led to memories of records already sitting at home. Porcelain dolls reminded CoreniaBug of dolls her father brought back for her while serving in the military. A wooden desk later in the store looked remarkably similar to one her grandfather had when she was a child.

That is where a place like this becomes more than a store.

People often talk about antiques in terms of value: what something is worth, whether it is rare, whether it is still in the original packaging.

But there is another value that cannot be found in a price guide.

Recognition.

“I had one of those.”

“My grandmother had that.”

“I forgot all about these.”

At Hickory Antiques Mall, those moments seem to be waiting around nearly every corner.

A limited edition Jazz M&M Blues Cafe dispenser was sitting inside one booth. We knew that one particularly well because the exact same dispenser is already sitting in our home.

Then there was Kool Aid.

Not some rare piece of hand crafted furniture. Not an early American painting.

A plastic Kool Aid pitcher.

Price: $25.

It was the kind of thing that once lived in kitchens across America without anybody considering that someday someone might put a price tag on it and call it collectible.

But nostalgia has a strange way of changing the value of ordinary things.

Walk farther and the decades begin crashing into one another.

There were Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Star Trek figures and Pokémon. A Dr. Dreadful Zombie Lab brought back the era when children's toys apparently decided an Easy Bake Oven wasn't gross enough.

There were Care Bears drinking glasses, Wonder Woman and Batman.

And that's when the antique store delivers its quiet insult.

You recognize everything.

The toys aren't from some distant generation.

They're yours.

Seeing objects from your own childhood mixed among furniture, china and rotary phones is a uniquely efficient way of finding out that time has moved on without consulting you first.

Still, the older pieces held their own.

There were rows of National Geographic magazines selling for a dollar apiece, stacks of books, old telephones and advertising from another America.

Vintage Playboy magazines turned up in one section.

In another was Marlboro memorabilia and an old Camel advertisement promoting the now startling claim that more doctors smoked Camels than any other cigarette.

Then, as seemingly required by antique store law, came Coca Cola.

Signs. Collectibles. Advertising.

One large Coca Cola metal sign carried a $165 price tag.

It is difficult to spend much time in an American antique store without eventually encountering the red and white logo. Few companies left behind quite so much physical evidence of their advertising history.

There were also reminders of how much everyday life has changed.

China sets that families once carefully collected.

Decorative glasses that were meant to look like something.

Salt and pepper shakers that people brought home as souvenirs.

Rotary telephones that younger generations now occasionally encounter as if someone has handed them a mechanical puzzle.

Even the clothing section told its own story.

Older clothes were mixed among pieces that hardly seemed old enough to qualify as vintage, which raises a dangerous question nobody over 35 particularly wants answered: How old does something actually have to be before people start calling it vintage?

We chose not to investigate further.

The clothing racks also proved dangerous for a completely different reason.

CoreniaBug likes vintage clothes.

A lot.

“I just want to buy everything and I know I don't need it,” she said while considering the logistical problem of wanting an antique mall's worth of merchandise while living in a small apartment.

That struggle may be familiar to anyone who enjoys places like this.

You don't necessarily arrive looking for anything.

That's the problem.

A normal store usually tells you what it sells.

An antique mall waits for you to discover what you suddenly need.

Perhaps the most interesting discovery, though, wasn't for sale.

Near the end of our visit, members of the staff shared some of the history of the building and showed us an old photograph of the property before it became an antique mall.

In the picture, the building was home to a food and drug store.

The staff told us Hickory Antiques Mall itself has been in business for about 40 years.

That means something unusual has happened here.

A business devoted to selling history has been around long enough to become part of Hickory's history itself.

People have been walking through these aisles for decades, though what counted as “old” when the mall first opened would be very different from what counts as old today.

Some of the Pokémon, video game memorabilia and toys now occupying antique booths had not even been created.

Other things that were once everywhere have nearly disappeared.

And objects nobody would have thought twice about saving are now sitting beneath price tags.

That may be the most compelling thing about wandering through Hickory Antiques Mall.

It doesn't just show how objects change.

It shows how we change.

A plastic pitcher becomes nostalgia.

A childhood toy becomes a collectible.

A desk becomes a reminder of your grandfather.

A building that once housed a food and drug store becomes an antique mall, and then the antique mall itself becomes a longtime Hickory landmark.

By closing time, we had barely scratched the surface.

There were still records to search, booths we had hurried past and things undoubtedly sitting on shelves that would have triggered another forgotten memory.

So there will probably have to be another visit.

That seems appropriate.

The real fun of an antique mall isn't finding everything.

It's never knowing what you're going to find next.

And somewhere inside Hickory Antiques Mall, surrounded by decades of things people once bought, used, loved and eventually let go, there is almost certainly something waiting to make another visitor stop in the middle of the aisle and say:

“Oh my gosh. I used to have that.”