A three-story brick building on Main Street in Millsboro has anchored the town’s antique trade since 1925, and today it houses Black Cat Antiques, a sprawling multi-level marketplace that took on its current name and ownership in 2024 when Susan Pegram and Kyle Quillen purchased the business, formerly known as Antique Alley, and set about continuing its tradition under a new banner. Located at 225 Main Street in this Sussex County town, the historic building now hosts roughly 60 individual dealer booths spread across its three floors, each one leased and stocked independently, which gives the shop the kind of eclectic, ever-changing inventory that keeps regular visitors coming back to see what has turned over since their last trip.
Browsing here means moving through cases of glassware and chinaware, shelves of small collectibles, and no shortage of general bric-a-brac spread across the upper floors, but it is the basement level that gives Black Cat Antiques its distinct identity within the local antique scene. Rather than mirroring the decorative and glassware focus found upstairs, the lower level leans into a more masculine selection, stocked with paper ephemera, pop culture memorabilia, vintage toys, and casual clothing, a deliberate curation choice that sets this building apart from the more traditionally feminine-skewing antique malls found elsewhere on the Delmarva Peninsula. That basement-level variety has become something of a signature for the shop, giving collectors of advertising paper, old magazines, action figures, and retro apparel a dedicated corner they can count on finding here.
The shop has built a substantial following, with its Facebook page drawing more than 2,400 fans who track new booth arrivals, sales, and seasonal changes in inventory. Staff are frequently described as friendly and helpful, and pricing across the roughly 60 booths is generally considered reasonable for the region, a reputation that matters in a market where multi-dealer malls can vary widely in both selection and value from one vendor to the next. Because each booth is independently stocked, no single visit to Black Cat Antiques looks the same as the last, and the sheer scale of the three-story layout means a thorough walkthrough can easily take an hour or more for serious pickers.
Black Cat Antiques keeps consistent daily hours, open every day from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., making it an easy stop for both planned antiquing trips and spontaneous visits while passing through downtown Millsboro. The town itself sits along the Indian River in Sussex County, within easy reach of the Delaware beach communities, which brings a mix of year-round locals and seasonal visitors through the shop’s doors, particularly during the warmer months when beach traffic swells the area’s population. The building’s century of continuous commercial use on Main Street, combined with its recent transition to new ownership without losing the antique-mall format that made it a destination in the first place, reflects a kind of continuity that is increasingly rare in small-town retail.
Black Cat Antiques occupies a historic three-story 1925 building on Main Street in Millsboro, Delaware, housing about 60 dealer booths of glassware, collectibles, and antiques, with a basement level known for paper ephemera, pop culture items, and vintage toys under ownership that took over the longtime Antique Alley space in 2024.
