Bargain shopping without the mobs — even now

Some of my wife's Facebook friends posted some pictures the bumper-to-bumper traffic into the local mall / retail area today.  It's definitely not the best time to run in and out of stores for a few things, being a week before Christmas and all that.

So we stopped at our local antique mall this afternoon.  It was more crowded than usual, but nowhere near the traffic level at the typical retail outlets.  That, and since many antique malls have a large variety of sellers, there is a similar large variety of types of merchandise.  It's more part antique mall, part flea market, part craft mall / boutique shop.  We found the standard assortment of antiques:  depression glass, occupied Japan figurines, washboards, pump organs, old advertising signs, etc.  But others had hundreds of books both old and new, CDs, DVDs, and more.  One seller had fossilized shark teeth (which we got for our daughter).  Another had dollhouse furniture.  And of course there were plenty of booths that had a mishmash of unusual items.  We found a painted gourd for one of my relatives that would go great with their decor.

Heading to an antique mall can mean making an end run around the holiday crowds.  As an added bonus, the gifts that you find for your friends and family can potentially mean more since the gifts from these places are a little harder to track down than ones that can be bought at Amazon.  If you get them at a steep discount, so much the better!