Cambridge Antique Market — Attraction in Cambridge

Pretty unique place. My top-tier chum who literally went to the school of hospitality and I came by here last Saturday afternoon, basically on the recommendation of my Lord and Savior Reddit as an indoor activity we could do before the Celtics game later in the evening. My chum is a big shopper and I like wandering around in life trying to find random objects to emotionally imprint on, so it was a good match. I was also impressed by the idea of five entire floors dedicated to this, which we didn't even come close to completely exploring.

The negatives were minimal but significant - the market was insanely crowded, especially on the first floor, and it was teeming with Gen Zers holding out their phones, presumably ecstatic that they'd found juicy TikTok content for their cottagecore fans or whatever. It was a lot and difficult to navigate; we had to pause a lot to make our way through, though it wasn't quite as bad on the other floors. And I'm not sure there's a solution to it; what are you going to do, have a quota for the number of people in the building at a given time? That would just involve bottlenecking and customers standing outside in the cold. So just make sure you're caffeinated and mentally prepared for people.

I grew up with a mother who spiritually lived in Jane Austen novels so antique shops were a way of life. They're not known for their minimalist interiors but this was a ton of stuff by any measure. I don't think I've seen this amount of clutter in a space that didn't give off massive hoarder vibes. And it sort of had themes; there were alcoves or little areas divvied off that were, say, more nautical items, or more outdoorsy forest items. I can't even imagine how they managed to even quasi-successfully organize this kind of inventory but it definitely helps a little.

My chum knows my taste, or lack thereof, and located a masterpiece (attached) which will be displayed prominently in my kitchen. The quirky artwork was abundant, to say the least. She also spied a magnificent Saturday Evening Post with my BFF Nixon on the cover, which I will be framing shortly and adding to the fray as well. If you don't spend a solid 45 minutes in here and not find a few choice treasures to bring home, that's on you.

I was also impressed that they had easy-to-find restroom facilities on every floor (or close to it), right by the staircases. Not only were they convenient bathroom options, but they worked well as de facto changing rooms (which my chum took advantage of when she encountered a wild flapper dress on one of the higher floors). There were a few employees roaming around for both assistance and I imagine, sadly, to minimize potential shoplifting but it didn't seem overly egregious and everyone I encountered first hand or second hand was very friendly.

One of the highlights of the trip for sure - political bovine posters are...

I’ll start with the positive, they had a HUGE selection of antiques. From jewelry to toys and comics and paintings, there was everything you could think of! Although there were a ton of crazy and unique antiques, the customer service had to change this review to 2 stars. Me and my family were on a trip to here in Boston and I had been looking forward to this antique store the entire time. We finally had a chance after our long day to go look in there, but they closed at 6(so we thought) so we had to rush as we came in at around 4:45. The door in front said their hours are 11-5:30, which immediately was a rough start because we had even less time to browse the 5 floors of antiques, and the Google hours said it was open until 6. Everything was fine inside until they decided to start vacuuming and closing things up at around 4:55-5:00. There were wires from the vacuum everywhere and it was extremely loud, which was okay-ish until they started vacuuming up to our feet and close to us. This got super frustrating as I felt extremely rushed and unwanted. Then, I asked if I could see something from inside a glass case that was locked and needed to be opened by an employee. I asked the front desk and she looked so uninterested and gave me sighs every sentence. She told me to go look for “a tall guy” that’ll open the case for me. I went and looked and there was a man with a woman helping another woman get something out of a case, so obviously that’s where I thought to ask. They were friendly with the woman and having random convos after I asked excuse me multiple times and got ignored, until finally after standing there for 5 minutes I had the chance to ask, in which the guy acted confused and said “I’m just a vendor ask the front desk” I told him I had and so he went up to ask her, and she gladly came over with a whole case of keys until she saw me and started sighing and her face dropped again. She was rude to me still until I told her which item I wanted to see which was fairly expensive and she acted all sweet like nothing happened. Ended up walking out with nothing and was very disappointed with customer service. Other than that, antiques...

Terrible experience, we go to a lot of antique shops and antique malls, this was by far the worst. Lots of cases, and we were willing to spend a lot of money, but when we asked for someone to open a case, it seemed like it was a problem and we were bothering them, and then, when we checked out, we wanted to make sure the items that we got from a few different vendors got the proper discounts that were being offered that day. And the person behind the booth snapped at us about asking. Overall great selections little overpriced if you were a reseller, you really have to dig to find items to flip. As for customer service, there isn’t any there are all pretty rude and as for me, I tend to spend more money when people are nice and friendly and willing to help, we just felt that we were an annoyance, and actually got told we can only look in a few locked cases because it’s going to get busy and they only allow patrons to look in a few when it gets busy. a big turn off. We left shortly after. Will not be going back here again. Much rather prefer the Danversport...