A shared love of treasure hunting turned into a full-time business for Anita Shefchyk and her daughter Anna Massey, the mother-daughter team behind The Gypsy Traders in Selkirk. Anita brings four decades of hands-on experience refinishing antiques and working as an oil painter, while Anna spent more than 20 years in marketing and sales before joining her mother in the venture, and together the pair built a shop that reflects both a restorer’s technical eye and a marketer’s sense of presentation. The name itself carries family meaning: it references their Hungarian heritage and ancestors who traveled the countryside peddling wares from bright, colorful caravans, a history the pair chose to honor rather than obscure when naming their store.
Located at 238 Manitoba Avenue in Selkirk, the shop specializes in curated vintage and antique goods, with a particular strength in refurbished furniture and farmhouse-style antiques, categories that lean into the current popularity of rustic, lived-in decor over polished reproduction pieces. Alongside the furniture, The Gypsy Traders carries the Country Chic line of chalk and clay-based paints and finishes, a brand favored by furniture painters and DIY refinishers for its low-prep, easy-application formula, making the shop a useful stop for customers working on their own restoration projects rather than only buying finished pieces. The store also stocks locally made crafted items, giving space to area makers alongside the vintage inventory.
What distinguishes The Gypsy Traders from a typical vintage storefront is the range of services built around the retail floor. The business actively buys, sells, and trades pieces rather than simply reselling stock acquired once and marked up, and it takes on estate sale and barn-clearing work, going into homes and outbuildings to help families sort, sell, and clear out generations of accumulated belongings. Customers can also request specific pieces they are hunting for, effectively putting Anita and Anna’s sourcing network to work on a personal basis rather than leaving buyers to hope the right item turns up on a future visit. That combination of retail, service work, and custom sourcing reflects the pair’s background running the business through weekend auction circuits before settling into a permanent storefront, a transition that let them build a steady customer base before committing to a fixed location.
The shop keeps modest, focused hours, open Wednesday through Friday from 10 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon, and Saturdays from 10 until 3, closing the rest of the week, likely to allow time for the estate and barn-clearing jobs, refinishing work, and sourcing trips that keep the sales floor stocked. Customers can reach the shop by phone or email to ask about current inventory, arrange an estate sale consultation, or inquire about a specific piece before making the trip to Selkirk.
For anyone in the Selkirk area furnishing a home with farmhouse-style antiques, refinishing furniture with quality chalk paint, or clearing out an estate or barn full of accumulated belongings, The Gypsy Traders offers a rare combination of retail shop, restoration expertise, and hands-on clearing service, all run by a mother-daughter team whose own family history of traveling traders gave the business both its name and its philosophy.
