Hometown Tourist: Elk Rapids Antique Market

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Every home has that one decoration that’s sure to make a statement or be a conversation piece.

Hometown Tourist takes us to , a place to find one of a kind items that are full of history and nostalgia.

“We try to find those oddities and those different types of strange things as well because people come in looking for those. They come in seeing those and they know we’re going to have something. It’s kind of a treasure hunt,” said owner Brett Gourdie.

At Elk Rapids Antique Market more than 30 dealers have done the hunting and picking for you to bring you a variety of little hidden treasures from northern Michigan and around the country.

“We have a wide variety of things. Everything from advertising to early Americana, and we’ve got some industrial, we’ve got comic books, we’ve got vinyl, we have a lot of different things. And we have the traditional antiques, the early Americana, the primitives we call them, painted furniture, and other things that are actually real hot right now, old barn pulleys and things like that,” explained Gourdie.

From dealers with only milk bottles, or pop culture items, to sections of advertising signs, there’s a unique piece around each corner. Including a 50’s coke machine to an 1860’s hand carved ship diorama.

“Very unusual things, some of the more unusual things we’ve sold out of here, we’ve actually sold some very interesting pieces, and we’ve sold a petrified bat believe it or not. It was probably about 100 years old and it was preserved and it was just a really weird unusual thing, but those kinds of things tend to sell,” noted Gourdie.

While may be hard to sift through everything here, it’s the searching and exploring through all of the different items that’s half the fun.

“They’re looking for something particular and if we can put that particular piece in their hand, and it makes them happy, it makes us happy and it’s just a win win for everybody,” said Gourdie.