Antique Mall of West Seattle — Local services in Seattle

TL;DR Non-existent customer service, difficult to maneuver around, overpriced items, shady business operation. Do not waste your time here, they clearly do not want business.

They don't deserve any stars, truly. Went in for the first time recently and was told to leave my farmers market haul at the door. I asked where to put it so it was out of the way and they said in the isle way, where others walk. There was nowhere to put it given how crammed things are, but I did as told and hoped nobody would trip over it.

After a while in the store, I spotted this table I immediately knew I wanted to take home. It had a tag on it for $89 and I felt like that was steep for what it was, but I'd been looking for something similar like this for ages, so I decided to proceed.

When getting to the register, they asked me to pull the tag off the table and give it to them, I obliged and they made a comment about how none of the tags are ever taped on or written in permanent marker and that was bizarre (even tho you see tags taped like this all over the store). The person behind the register called to an older women who I presume is the owner and she told me she couldn't sell me the table for the price that was marked. She knows that the artist sells them for at least $149 and implied that I wrote the tag myself. I asked if she had anything else by this artist I could look at to confirm pricing and she went to search. The employee behind the register blamed the young kid employees that mark stuff incorrectly "thinking they're helping" and also said that people write their own tags all the time so it's hard to know what to believe. (If this is a repeat issue, maybe it's worth training your staff? Maybe every customer isn't to blame here.) The older lady came back and said there were no other pieces to compare to. She offered that they could call the artist to confirm the price and I said that would make me much more comfortable since I was getting shady vibes and she said yes, but not right now. Made no sense to me, why not now? So, I asked if they could have him call me. They took my name and phone number and told me they would have the artist call me. The staff walked away leaving the table in the walkway and I asked to confirm that they'd hold it for me so nobody else would buy it and they said "I mean, we can't sell it" which is confusing, but I walked out. A week passed with no update so I called the store, and an employee answered, I explained the situation and asked if she could help get me info, and said she'd call me back in a minute and didn't. I called back an hour later and she said the artist took the table home because he was so disgruntled. I asked why he was disgruntled and she refused to answer but implied it was my fault. I asked if they would share the artist's contact so I could buy direct from him and they said no, so then I asked if they could have him call me and share that I was very interested in buying the piece and the employee said "if he feels like it, he'll call you."

I REALLY wanted the table or I would have walked out/not followed up on it. I would have paid more, but didn't trust the owner was giving me correct information and they didn't care enough to follow up or pass along my info to the artist/make a sale. Unfortunate. Every staff member we talked to treated us as if we were out to get them and no concern was displayed for their team inaccurately pricing items. Any other store would have sold it at a loss due to their error or would have apologized and owned their mistake and followed up with the actual price to an...

I found quite a few pieces here that were so utterly charming I can’t help crossing my fingers that they’ll still be there next time I visit (with a little more spending money in my pockets hopefully). This is not an antique mall for the faint of heart or clutter-averse! There are some areas you may literally have to clamber through piles of crates or tip toe through glass-lined crevices. I don’t entirely mind this as it usually means there are treasures waiting to be unearthed, but it’s not what you’d want for a casual visit.

Pricing was a mixed bag - the downstairs seemed to be mostly a single vendor (likely the owners), and in these cases you’re only getting one pricing perspective so it’s easy to tell what items they personally prize, many tags will have been written years and years ago so the perceived value of items may have evolved and I hold a little grace for that. Towards the back of the ground floor and the second floor seemed to be run by different vendors, which was reflected in the variance of price points and niches on offer - a booth with vintage books and paper ephemera, a case with vintage cameras and exotic instruments, a large room with vintage clothing and accessories, etc. There were a few sections that left me agog, and while it’s always possible I’m just lacking knowledge about a certain era or item, I found it hard to swallow double digit value on plastic kitchenwares from the 2000s.

Nonetheless, I did find some pieces that really excited me and I found the pricing on much of the glassware and ceramics generally reasonable and will definitely be back sometime to play dress up in the many clothing racks upstairs that we didn’t have time to peruse this time. The staff seemed pleasant enough, if mostly preoccupied with sorting through small portions of the mountain of goods waiting to somehow be packed into the place. I’ll take mildly inattentive over suspicious or standoffish any day!

In summary: not an antique mall for beginners. There are some very cool goods to be found, but best to have some idea of the value of your items of interest to avoid a smattering of outlandish prices. I left with a little uranium glass plate and a beautiful silver enameled pendant with little sun/rainbow emerging from a rain cloud (from a jewelry case by the entrance which the employee had to excavate and climb towards like a jungle gym - and kudos to her for doing this with no sign of displeasure lol), both of which I somehow failed to photograph but obviously loved...

Okay, so I’ve been to nearly every antique store in western Washington; no hyperbole. This is the worst one from head to toe. From what I can surmise, the person who owns this place cannot and will not let anything go. If you do go and find something without a price, don’t even bother asking. Prices are made up at insane levels; it feels like they’re trying to see how much you actually want something, it’s a bad look. Lately, there have been new people there and the selection has gotten a bit better, less garage sale than before, but they all seem to be aware that the owner has… issues. However, they are the only reason it gets an extra star. They’re actively trying to make it a better place to...