Artifacts — Local services in Iowa City

If I could give more than 5 stars to Artifacts, my family wouldn’t hesitate. We met Todd in early February, 2020, after our father suddenly passed away. He was a collector of albums, DVDs, CDs, art and musical instruments and had a 5 bedroom house full of these belongings. All his children live out of Iowa. Many people in the Iowa City community verbally referred us to Artifacts to assist in having an estate sale, and we couldn’t be more relieved to have had this reference.

Todd was personable and sympathetic, and professional We giggled about my father’s original art displays and he appreciated all aspects of our father’s belongings. He encouraged us to tell him stories of the various belongings. This obviously assisted him and his team in figuring out the pricing scheme, but he was genuinely interested in hearing the tales.

We were very fortunate to have scheduled the sale for the first weekend after the Coronavirus shut-down. Artifacts did all the organizing, pricing, selling, advertising - EVERYTHING! They ensured only 7 people were allowed on each floor at a time and no one was allowed entry without a mask. Even with torrential rains all morning and a tornado warning in the middle of the sale’s first day, the event went twice better than any of us expected. Artifacts assisted us after the sale and currently has many of our father’s belongings on consignment. After they left I seriously had only one load to the dump and 2 to charity.

We have no idea how we would have been able to do what Artifacts did for us. Their pricing is very fair, their staff is very friendly, and we cannot think of a thing they can...

I was a constant shopper at this place and I believed the staff to be quite nice people. I went to buy a product from there and the tag was swapped. I didn’t know this and assumed that it was the price of the product. The main manager looked up the product and said it wasn’t that price. I then agreed to pay the actual price and instead of continuing the transaction he berated me in front of 40+ people. He hurled insults and said terrible things towards me because he made an assumption. Now i’ll state again that I was a consistent shopper who had probably spent upwards of 400 at this said place. He said I was trying to be a thief because the tag was swapped. But I made no attempt to take the bow or act in a way that was malicious. To also counter this man’s logic, if I really really wanted to do anything like what he said I would of just walked out the back door. He dropped his anger on me, made assumptions and humiliated me for no reason. He is a terrible owner and a terrible judgment maker. Update (2 years later) still holds a petty grudge against me due to him still believing that I swapped the tags even though I had stated multiple times I didn’t and was belittled in the store, go anywhere else terrible management and super high prices...

Cute place... I've loved antiquing all my life, and found this store to have a pretty nice selection. Prices were moderate, but fair, and I walked away with several items I'm glad to have added to my collection. Only deducted points because from the moment my friend and I walked in the store, staff were very obviously eyeing us as though we intended to steal the items we'd picked out mere feet away from them, discussed whether or not to buy within earshot, and carried openly to ensure they'd be visible at all times. At one point we even overheard one cashier tell another girl to keep her eye on us to make sure we didn't shove anything in our bags, which soured our mood. So jury's out on whether I'd...