Antique Store on Main opens Friday

On a dark and rainy Wednesday afternoon, the faded blue building on the corner of Main and Blackwell Avenue was illuminated by the busywork of a man walking among a thousand faces.

That old building on the corner of Main and Blackwell is the Blackwell Antique Mall opening this Friday, July 14, from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m.

The man is owner Andrew Campbell.

And the thousand faces?

They belong to mothers and fathers. Sisters and brothers. Best friends. Strangers. Celebrities.

All frozen-on postcards, preserved in photo albums, collected in binders, framed, or transformed entirely. '

Campbell is a collector - a lover - of “antiques, ephemera, and collectibles” and is absolutely overjoyed to be sharing his business and passion with Blackwell.

Ephemera, he explained, is anything old that wasn’t meant to last.

Unlike Campbell’s business and his palpable, fast-talking, enthusiasm, that is.

“We moved here about a year ago from Tulsa, my family and I,” said Campbell, “we really wanted to find a rural community that we loved and invest in it, and I had actually been to Blackwell as a child, so It just made sense that God would guide us here.”

“Working with the community has been excellent. I’ve had nothing bad to say about Blackwell, everyone has been so helpful. I grew up watching a lot of Andy Griffith- I love that- and it was always a dream of mine to live in a small town, have a shop on Main Street…and now I get to live that.”

“Most of our business is online,” he continued, “so we could theoretically do our business … but we wanted to do the small-town life, we wanted to find a place we loved and physically be involved in that.”

Online, Campbell’s empire “VintagePhotoGuy” spans Facebook Market, eBay, and a live stream shopping site WhatNot. The latter, where most of his business is conducted, has seen him sell over 3 thousand items and rack up almost 1,000 followers.

“95% of our business is buying and selling old photos,” said Campbell.

“Say grandma passes away and leaves a shoebox full of old photos in the closet - no one knows who the people are in the photos, and they get thrown away…well we buy those, and we re-sell them to artists, vendors, collectors, and museums all around the world.”

Campbell’s niche of the vintage photograph market came to him at 14.

“My family grew up traveling the country- traveling a lot- and we’d often visit little towns with antique stores, and we’d get out of the car to stretch our legs and so, really, I grew up in these stores,” he recalled.

“Whenever I was old enough to get my driver’s permit my mom and I would drive around Tulsa and go to garage sales. There, I would buy anything and everything and I would sell them at a booth I would get at the Bixby Antique Mall. I’d go to garage sales, estate sales, and flip all of it.”

At 15-16, when most kids were starting their first job flipping burgers or bussing tables, Campbell had become one of the antique mall’s highest grossing sellers.

“I did that through college, selling antiques. Then one day I bought a box full of photo albums… and I fell in love. I found them so cool to look at. So, I looked on eBay, and then I ran across a Facebook group of people who bought and sold old photos and postcards.”

Campbell said the Facebook group had a livestream where photos and items were being sold, and that several members made selling these old photos a full-time job.

“As a college student that sounded amazing, of course,” he laughed. “And I had done that ever since. I quit my full-time job and that became it.”

In 2022, Andrew said he sold roughly 150,000 photos.

In the Antique Mall, he explained that aside from the boxes upon boxes of photos and postcards, there would be antiques that didn’t just “come from someone’s backyard in town”.

That’s an understatement.

Walking around the store, Andrew showed off a wide range of items including vintage decorations, jackets, hats, toys, household items, art, and more.

“These come from all over,” Andrew said, “this is stuff we’ve gotten from flea markets and garage sales all across the midwest.”

The Blackwell Antique Mall will follow a consignment model, according to Campbell.

“We’re having vendors from all across the country send stuff in to be sold here,” he explained, “because I have my niche and then we have people in Texas, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, California, shipping in items. So, we’ll have … a wide range. Stuff you might not necessarily see around here.”

Campbell’s Antique Mall will also be appraising and buying items from customers as well as partnering with another Main Street business to give shoppers the most bang for their buck.

“We’re going to be coordinating with the Good Buy Shoppe. When they do their big half-priced days and sales, we’re going to set up tables outside if it’s nice or bring all our flea-market stuff out onto the floor. Flea Market Saturdays, it’s what we’re aiming for.”

Blackwell’s prolific history as a town that was once filled with antique stores isn’t lost on Campbell, either. In fact, it’s how he knew about America’s Hometown to begin with.

“I came to Blackwell several years ago actually, to visit Ashby’s. That’s how I got familiar with this place,” he said.

The Blackwell Antique Mall will buy and sell old photos, vintage toys, postcards, small antiques, electronics, oddities, Blackwell-based items, advertising, trading cards, scrapbooks, and more.

Their hours will be Tuesday - Saturday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and they can be reached via phone at 918-408-0091 or e-mail at blackwellantiquemall@gmail.com