Salamanca Mall Antiques — Local services in City of Salamanca

TL;DR: about as enjoyable an experience as to going to a Target where all the socks and deodorant are locked up.

It's well known among antique mall enthusiasts that you can often find the same stuff on ebay for half the price, but the way I see it, I'm paying a premium for the experience of walking around in an antique store, enjoying the atmosphere, and looking at all the cool stuff. Unfortunately, this place has little to offer in either of those departments.

What it does have are harsh overhead fluorescents, staff doing constant rounds to over-eagerly offer to hold your items at the checkout, rows upon rows of locked cases, and the absolute largest selection of Nazi paraphernalia I've ever seen in an antique mall. Seriously, I counted at least four booths/cases on that theme. One of them even offered a novelty TP roll with Obama's face on it amid all the SS knives and iron crosses, in case you were wondering about the booth owner's political leanings. Forgive me if I struggle to give someone who's intentionally amassed a huge collection of swastikas (and those are just the ones they're selling off!) the benefit of the doubt.

That aside, the sheer number of locked cases, and the ever-present patrols of staff making sure you're not carrying anything around before you buy it, make you feel like a presumed shoplifter just by walking in. I don't think shoplifters would be interested in a lot of the rusty, low-value junk in the cases, but as someone who's into rusty trinkets, I was definitely deterred from buying them. And to be clear, I don't blame the staff for how they're directed to treat customers. But I do think whoever set up that system is dealing with some real paranoia, at a cost to their sales and customer experience.

All this adds up to a poignantly unwelcoming environment.

And to top it off, there's not much to buy! The majority of the items are in poor condition (mouldy, rusty, parts missing, caked in mysterious stains... and often priced like new). My husband will attest that I normally spend $100+ per stop when I'm antiquing. I spent $22 here, and see no reason to go back. There's nothing here that you couldn't find elsewhere, possibly in better condition, and have a more comfortable browsing experience...

We came from Pittsburgh to check this place out. It wasn't worth it. Anything that could have been considered unique under normal circumstances was not unique because there were at least 5 of them in the mall. This also meant that there weren't really any deals. Every vendor had pretty much the same price as each other and eBay, so the "hunt" wasn't that fun. Almost everything was in a case which meant a) you couldn't immediately see the price of everything because the tag was flipped or something was blocking it, b) a lot of vendors crammed way too much stuff into the case so you couldn't even see what was in there, and c) it was too difficult to keep track of what you actually wanted to buy before you had to go ask someone to open the case (even with their recommendation of taking a pencil and paper around). Even if there was something unique here that wasn't anywhere else, good luck finding it. It took us all day to go through this place and I definitely would not pay for a hotel to go back...

It took hours of digging through down-market kitsch, but I found some unique pieces. Most items were at eBay prices or higher.

Worth a visit if you have 4-6 hours to view the admittedly massive inventory. Best collection was the art. There are some really unique pieces hiding in here.

Colognes were picked over until only Avon, coty, and lanvin remained.

A total of 3 vintage Gillette razors were found out of / 1,000,000 items. A few rare SE safety razors were in the pile. One vendor had some nice but highly priced straight razors.

Walked out with 1 bargain and 1 market competitive purchase. Probably won't be back for a few years though. The number of items I had to sift through to find anything worth buying was abnormally high. By comparison, the small mom and pop shops in the surrounding towns all had finds within 20 minutes of walking...