Update January 1, 2012

Click to hear Dixie Ha Ha!

see more pictures

We just acquired 1000s of miniatures. sports, and Elvis items. We only open for private tours during the winter. I live right up the street so just call 707-695-7374 or email me at retrodeb@sbcglobal.net for a chance to come in the shop. You will not be disappointed one minute. This winter has been particularly hard as we lost our son during the holidays. We have been quietly dealing with it and will be back to normal soon. We are not taking any consignments, sorry don't have the room as we already have a huge inventory without extra room. We continue to have new stock in for every collectible whim.with a new sports and Elvis section that adds to our punk doll knock down figures plus our celebrity doll, hallmark decorations, and vintage advertising ashtrays displayed in the store for sale. We continue to meet great people who enjoy our collections and buy items for their own displays at home or in their offices. Our lunchboxes are going down to Paley Center in Beverly Hills for an anniversary celebration of Warner Brothers, so some may be missing when you visit. We were in the Washington Post here! We are putting Nice on the map. Love it!!! We have 200 new additions to the collection: blue rimmed Bonanza, Wagon Train, and Dr. Dolittle. We continue to be written about here and there. I was in Collectors News now known as Treasures in the Sept. 2011 issue. After the Record Bee, Lake County News and Sacramento Bee did articles when I opened, my shop went UPI mode. It was also picked up with press release articles in USA Today and New York Times. Email us below or call us if you want a private tour on other days 707-695-7374. Everyone has been so supportive and they always leave with a happy memory from something in the store. It seems they enjoy my stuff as much as I have over the years.

We now have the wall and ceiling shelves up, a marquee area in the front, holding another grouping plus a fabulous display of my Ponytail vinyl collection as well as knockoff accessories. The museum also features a replica of Laughing Sally, the infamous Playland giggling goddess. We put hydraulics on her back and connected a coin op machine, to make her laugh for you nonstop. A friend of ours gave us a tape of her famous laugh which plays on a tape player inside her base. Each time a quarter goes in the coin op machine, she moves up and down laughing hysterically. She was originally designed by recycle artist Poe Desmuke. We restored, redressed and mechanized her for your pleasure. We call her Dixie Ha Ha. She is a buxom beauty over 7 feet tall with a 68 inch waist. Miss Ha Ha is surrounded by mechanical animals and people, each doing something unusual. Some of them were in the windows of the San Francisco fun house. The motors are all restored and working great. You must see this to believe. My husband is the greatest mechanic/carpenter ever and thanks to my sister Gail for making Dixie's outfit!!

The store is designed to bring a smile to your face which everyone needs now a days. Customers say it is like going back in time. As you find something to spark a great memory as a child. It was kind of a goal to do that very thing to people. It features show cases filled with collectables, shelves of lunch boxes for sale, over 300 vintage doll items, old metal yard art, bobby soxer ponytail vinyl items, toy action figures, 8 track tapes, carnival collectibles, front strike match books, Marx pinball machine games or toys, vintage or odd books, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and anything whimsical that we come across. My best friend Dave bought the place next store. He has an outrageous Shabby Chic collection for designers out there. His outside yard is now open on the weekends. He has used metal fixtures, decorative chic items, ornate fencing, brass or iron beds, and wrought iron for your garden or home. Email us below or call us if you come up on other days 707-695-7374.

Ebay filmed my museum for a cool showing at ebay live 2008. I am so excited about it I can't stand it.

You can watch the video by clicking on this picture

It was featured at Ebay Live Chicago!!!

My husband and I have been busy making this old firehouse in Nice, California a lunchbox musuem. We pulled off the tacky plywood facade to discover that it could be beautiful again. It looks so great due to my husband's colorful imagination. It is an antique and collectables store with a lunch box museum, carnival motif displays, as well as a Laughing Sally replica and moving fun house displays. Every weekend, we add a few more things to our building. We have already painted the entire exterior, refurbished the sliding doors like it had before. The inside front of the store resembles an old theatre. The floor was driven on by fire engines for 50 years so we filled in the cracks and painted it yellow, of course no one will look at it as everything interesting, is above it. No we do not have a pole as it was a one story firehouse.
The colorful ceiling is decorated by circus and carnival banners. It is insulated with recycled material from the old building. The building is green, green, as we were that color before it was cool. We installed an old movie lobby hanging light. The display case wall is made of old hotel glass sliders. Our goal is to use 80% recycled materials and we are doing it.
The lunch boxes are mostly metal but several are vinyl or plastic with over 300 of them bought on the Ebay site. They come in a variety of shapes: domes, tobacco tin, character head or vehicle shapes, and traditional box styles. We will be selling our doubles as well as other new Star Wars boxes in the shop but the others will be on display.
If you want to come see it, please do as we love being curators of our collection and of course make money on the stuff we sell. Until then, I have some fun pictures to give you an idea of what it is like in the museum.