You Need A Full Afternoon For This Enormous Tennessee Antique Store-And $30 Goes Far

Some of the best Tennessee stops don’t announce themselves. This one sits on a busy commercial road where you’d expect tire shops and taco spots, behind a plain storefront that gives away almost nothing.

Push the door open and you’re suddenly walking through hundreds of small booths stacked with records, brass, old toys and furniture somebody’s grandmother once polished every Sunday. Bring $30 and a few free hours, because you’ll want both.

Where Summer Avenue Meets Sycamore View

Look for the corner of Summer Avenue and Sycamore View in Memphis, and you’ve found A Moment In Time at 5855 Summer Ave, 38134. The address puts it in the busy eastern stretch of the city, surrounded by everyday storefronts rather than any tourist strip.

An antique store by classification, it works more like a multi-vendor mall inside. Shoppers describe row after row of individual booths, each one leased and stocked by a different dealer, which is why the merchandise swings from delicate china to tractor equipment within a few steps.

Drive time matters here. From downtown Memphis you’re looking at a short hop across town, easy for a Saturday afternoon with no highway marathon involved.

Families coming from Nashville should plan a longer haul, and folks in Knoxville or Chattanooga would want to fold this into a wider West Tennessee trip rather than treat it as a day run.

The phone line is 901-213-9343 if you want to confirm anything before loading the car, and the shop keeps a website at amomentintimeantiques.com. Hours can shift, so a quick call never hurts.

A Building Built From Hundreds Of Small Booths

Numbered booths are the whole organizing idea. Regulars talk about specific stall numbers the way people talk about favorite restaurant tables, with some shoppers proudly pointing out booth 425 or 420 as their own patch of the building.

What that structure does is remove any single style from the store. One dealer leans toward mid-century lamps and glassware, the next fills shelves with Marvel and DC comics, and a third stacks vinyl records high enough that you’ll be crouching to read spines.

Visitors consistently mention the sheer variety, with more than a dozen separate comments about the range of items on hand. Collectibles come up often too, along with toys, vintage furniture and brass.

Size sits in a comfortable middle. Several shoppers note the building is generously proportioned without being overwhelming, meaning a determined browser can genuinely cover the whole floor in one visit if they arrive with time to spare.

That balance is part of the appeal. You get the treasure-hunt feeling of a giant antique mall without the exhausted, half-finished feeling of leaving three aisles unexplored.

Crate Digging For Vinyl, CDs And Old Movies

Records show up in shopper conversation again and again, and they’re one of the store’s real anchors. Crates sit at knee height in multiple booths, packed with LPs waiting for somebody patient enough to flip through the whole run.

Music fans call it a good spot for a deep search rather than a quick grab. Alongside the vinyl you’ll find CDs, books, DVDs and general memorabilia, so a music-and-media browse can easily eat forty minutes on its own.

Prices in this category are where a modest budget stretches. One shopper described picking up a record for $6.50, which puts several titles comfortably inside a $30 afternoon with room left for something else.

Being Memphis, the crates carry a certain weight of expectation, and part of the fun is not knowing what era you’ll surface in next. Soundtracks, forgotten pop, gospel, easy listening, all shuffled together without much ceremony.

Bring reading glasses if you need them. Booth lighting varies, and fine print on record sleeves and jacket corners is worth checking before you commit.

Toys, Comics And Things That Trigger Instant Nostalgia

Old-school toys are mentioned more than almost anything else here, and they’re the reason this stop works with kids in tow. Board games, dolls, action figures and small tin oddities fill entire shelves.

One visitor left delighted with a set of little bird-shaped water whistles, the sort of penny toy that costs almost nothing and gets remembered for years. Another described the building as smelling pleasantly old, the kind of scent that pulls adults straight back to a grandparent’s spare room.

Comics have their own following in the building, with Marvel and DC titles turning up in several booths. Kids who’ve only known superhero movies get a kick out of holding a printed issue from decades before they were born.

A word of practical caution from shoppers: with hundreds of independent dealers, quality control varies booth to booth, and at least one visitor reported buying trading card packs that turned out not to be genuine. Inspect sealed collectibles carefully, and ask questions before paying.

For everything else, the toy aisles are a cheap win. Small finds under $10 are common.

Furniture, Lamps And Projects Waiting For Paint

Anyone who loves refinishing something will find plenty of raw material. Shoppers describe lovely furniture in the mix, plus chairs, tables, dressers and some genuinely unusual lamps.

One customer stopped in looking for a television stand, spotted a piece that needed some care and repair, and left planning a weekend of sanding and staining. That story sums up half the furniture inventory: solid bones, honest wear, room for improvement.

Mirrors turn up regularly too. A shopper who’d hunted for years for the right mantel mirror found one on a drive-by stop and called the price fair, which is the kind of luck that keeps people circling back.

Beyond the living-room stuff, the building holds antique tools, tack room gear and old tractor equipment. Several visitors note the inventory skews slightly toward what one shopper called guy stuff, so garage and workshop browsers rarely leave empty-handed.

Measure your space before you go. Big pieces sell as-is, and hauling depends on you, so a truck or a folded-down back seat expands your options considerably.

Brass, China And The Small Delicate Corners

Brass has a real presence in this building. Candlesticks, trays, animals, bells and unidentifiable decorative objects gleam from shelves in several booths, and brass items come up often in shopper chatter.

Delicate goods share the same neighborhood. Figurines, china, costume jewelry, vintage clothing bags and purses appear in glass cases, the kind of merchandise that rewards slow looking rather than fast scanning.

Pricing on smalls is where the $30 budget really performs. A modest brass piece, a handful of postcards or a single figurine can each land in single digits or low teens.

Fair warning from a few shoppers: prices are handwritten on tags by individual dealers, and some visitors have reported confusion between the tag they saw and the total at the register. A quick phone photo of the price tag before you carry an item to the counter is a simple habit worth adopting anywhere in a booth-based mall.

Also worth knowing, staff keep a serious supply of bubble wrap and paper on hand. Breakables get wrapped properly for the ride home, which matters when your find is a hundred years old.

Quiet Aisles And The Kind Of Shopper Who Thrives Here

Calm is the defining mood, and several shoppers specifically mention the quiet atmosphere. There’s no piped-in soundtrack fighting for your attention, just the shuffle of other browsers and the occasional conversation at the counter.

Friendly staff draws the most comments of any single topic in the building, with more than twenty visitors noting helpfulness at the front. Some regulars describe the owner as courteous and say they’ve shopped there for years without trouble.

Balance matters, though. A handful of visitors have found the front desk less welcoming, and a couple reported being told the shop was closing early on the day they arrived.

Experiences clearly vary, and arriving earlier in the day seems to reduce the odds of a rushed browse.

Who suits this place? Retirees with an eye for glassware, parents willing to let a kid hunt for toys, collectors chasing records or comics, and anybody who considers browsing itself the entertainment.

It suits less well anyone in a hurry. The whole point is unhurried looking, and rushing it wastes the trip.

Hours, Parking And Getting Your Timing Right

Seven days a week is the schedule, which shoppers appreciate. Monday through Saturday runs 10 AM to 6 PM, and Sunday opens later at 1 PM and closes at 6 PM.

One useful heads-up from repeat visitors: the counter sometimes announces a 5:45 PM cutoff so staff can wrap purchases carefully and lock up on time. Plan to be inside by mid-afternoon at the latest, and treat the last fifteen minutes as checkout rather than browsing.

There’s no admission charge, and parking sits right at the building, which keeps the whole outing tied to gas money plus whatever you actually buy. Restrooms are available on site, something shoppers with kids or older relatives have specifically pointed out as a relief.

Hours and dealer inventory can shift, so a call to 901-213-9343 before a long drive is sensible. Arriving on a weekday morning tends to mean thinner crowds and easier access to tight booth corners.

Set aside three hours if you want to see it properly. Half that and you’ll be skipping aisles.

What $30 Buys And Whether The Drive Pays Off

Thirty dollars is a realistic working budget here, not a stretch. Shoppers report records around $6.50, small brass pieces in the low teens, and plenty of knick-knacks, postcards and toys well under $10.

Stack a few of those and you leave with three or four finds for less than the cost of dinner out for two. The store also gets fairly consistent praise for its price range compared with a flea market, though a minority of visitors feel some booths run higher than other malls in the area.

Strategy helps. Note tag prices as you go, keep a running total in your head, and photograph anything you plan to buy so the register total holds no surprises.

Add nearby stops if you want a fuller day. Some regulars pair this shop with another antique store close by, turning one afternoon into two buildings’ worth of hunting without much extra driving.

Verdict? For a Memphis-area Saturday, a free-admission afternoon of genuine treasure hunting on a $30 budget is hard to beat.

Go early, go slow, and let the booths surprise you.