I’m from Mesquite Texas, and being an avid thrifter and oddities lover I am always trying to find new places to find old items. Today before class i stopped off at a place called The Antique Gallery right in Mesquite. This place had once been known as Dusty Attic, an antique store that i frequented with my mom when i was little.
I was first off fairly surprised that it had re-opened under new ownership, and secondly surprised about how they had such high quality products right next to what i would call worthless junk. Being a thrifter i do not throw the term “junk” around lightly realizing that everyone has their own taste, but this place bothered me. At first glance when I wandered through the store I noticed many beautiful Victorian furniture pieces along with tons of fine china, but then I started to pay closer attention to the items. I started realizing that the prices seemed quite high for what you were getting but kept wandering around the store. As I kept walking through i noticed it seem to become less antiques and more swap meet type of products which i found to be false advertising since the storefront had clearly said “Antique Gallery”. The thing that I found that bothered me the most though was when i was going through a section with older movies, and stumbled upon a dvd that caught my attention. When i opened the dvd case up the original movie was not inside, but a burned copy of the movie. This incident leads me to believe that the owners of this store do not check out their vendors or their products and while they have some interesting items this bothers me. If you are going to let someone sell pirated dvds through your store that does not say much about your other products and makes me not want to shop there.
Now on the other hand, if you are from Mesquite and do not want to drive to Dallas to find thrift stores to browse in for your oddity needs, the store makes for an interesting time, but if you decide to purchase something I would double check and make sure you aren’t getting ripped off. Personally I would suggest just driving out to Dallas thrift/oddities stores instead.
Creepy Little Things 
In San Antonio we have a place called Homestead Handcraft’s that bothers me for a lot of the same reasons. Vendors can basically sell what ever they want there, so a lot of the things that you would expect to be antiques are really crafted things that are made to look that way. I’ve also seen the odd newer movie or book or toy that just seems really out of place. It doesn’t claim to be strictly an antique store like the one you visited does, but it still totally get where you’re coming from.