GLOCESTER – The little store is dressed in holiday style, and last minute shoppers in the Christmas crunch will find a friendly place for presents at Angela’s Hidden Treasures. Store owner Angela Terpening has created a spirit of neighborliness in her niche store for aficionados of antiques in the village of Harmony on the Greenville border, where she offers items ranging in price from under a dollar to a few hundred dollars.
A kind of cubbyhole away from the holiday shopping frenzy, Terpening’s store is just past Waterman Lake on Putnam Pike. The store is packed with merchandise, from yesteryear Christmas decorations and child-sized toy cars, to vintage coins and stamps, chests and bureaus from bygone eras, and shelves filled with dish sets and glassware.
Decorating the store is an array of vintage advertising and other signs such as those for soda, telephones, motor oil, and gasoline companies and brands. Like signs, cast iron coin banks are in demand, said Terpening. What’s more “I could sell a million record albums,” because turntables are a continuing trend.
Signs as a collectible are “popping up right now across the United States,” Terpening explained.
But the sign most certain to catch every shopper’s eye is not vintage: it reads “prices are negotiable.”
A collector herself, Terpening appreciates the art of the friendly deal. Price haggling is unlikely to take place at big box stores up the street in Smithfield or at the giant online retailer housed in a mega warehouse in Johnston. But at the antiques and collectibles store in Harmony, negotiating is part of the philosophy.
Terpening also helps customers by searching for items requested. She said she was particularly pleased that a customer was delighted upon completing a Francies Hook figurine collection from the 1980s. Terpening will even send customers to other dealers who have what they’re looking for.
“I’m in competition with no one. We all help each other out.” Terpening said.
“Antiques Alley” begins at the store by that name in Greenville on Route 44 and extends along 44 into downtown Chepachet.
She said shoppers, including photographers who want a picturesque photo shoot featuring an antique, will find unique items at her store including vintage films and a projector, an old baby cradle, hand carved furniture, and a fishing reel with case from the 19th century, that are for sale or a possibility for rental.
The store owner’s attitude of reciprocity or “one hand washes the other” that was perhaps commonplace in old time small town life is needed more than ever these days, said Terpening.
She said she appreciates her customers stopping by with tales about their own cache of collectibles or antiques. Especially, elders in the area drop by to share fascinating stories, Terpening said.
“I’m always learning,” she said.
For instance, she said she recently learned a customer comes in and buys old wool that is then reused.
A catalyst for Terpening going into business for herself happened last year while she and her husband, Sean Terpening, were hunting for motor oil and gasoline signs for their new garage. It seems to have naturally followed that the couple gathered inventory of signs and other items “in other states, at estate sales, and on the internet.”
“I got into the history,” she said of the vintage signs.
A girl in a family of boys, Terpening was raised around cars, and is a vintage vehicle enthusiast herself, and the couple’s children were grown – factors that moved her toward opening a shop in August.
She’s a first time store owner.
“It’s been an up and down situation,” Terpening said of running the store, finding merchandise, making plans for meeting more people, and working on publicizing her space.
The North Scituate resident and former stay-at-home mom has small business acumen, in part from helping out her husband’s company S & S Auto.
She said she’s always learning about her merchandise.
Shoppers can get a taste of her old time hospitality and trade tales of collecting before they rush home with their finds from Angela’s Hidden Treasures this holiday season.
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