Oldies but Goodies occupies 10 Carpenter Road in the Big Flats area near Elmira, New York, and it runs on a model that has become the backbone of small-town antiquing across Chemung County: a single large retail space subdivided among more than 100 independent vendors and dealers, each stocking and pricing their own booth. That scale sets the shop apart from a typical single-owner antique store. Instead of one curator’s taste dictating what fills the floor, more than a hundred separate sellers bring their own specialties, meaning a visitor can move from a booth of mid-century furniture to a case of estate jewelry to a shelf of vinyl records and vintage toys within the same trip, with the overall inventory shifting constantly as individual vendors restock.
The shop describes its own offerings as spanning collectibles from bygone eras, ranging from timeless furniture pieces to classic memorabilia, and that breadth is very much the point of a multi-vendor format at this scale. Chemung County and the greater Elmira-Corning region of New York’s Southern Tier have a long-standing antiquing culture rooted in the area’s manufacturing and railroad history, and a shop the size of Oldies but Goodies functions as a regional clearinghouse for that material, drawing both local collectors making regular rounds and travelers passing through the Southern Tier looking for a dedicated stop. With more than 100 vendors under one roof, the shop is large enough that a single visit rarely covers everything, which is part of why regulars tend to treat it as an ongoing destination rather than a one-time errand.
Oldies but Goodies keeps a defined weekly schedule, open Monday and Thursday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with Tuesdays and Wednesdays reserved as closed days, a rhythm that gives the vendors time to restock and reset their booths between the busier open days. That structure, open five days a week rather than seven, is common among larger vendor malls that need dedicated downtime for inventory turnover across so many independent sellers. Visitors with specific items in mind are encouraged to call ahead, since inventory at any individual booth can change quickly given the sheer number of vendors contributing to the floor.
What makes a shop like this valuable to its region is less any single find and more the sheer density of options it offers in one location. For anyone in the Elmira and Big Flats area hunting for a specific piece of furniture, a category of collectible memorabilia, or simply an afternoon of unhurried browsing, more than 100 vendors working under one roof means the odds of finding something worthwhile are considerably higher than at a smaller shop. Oldies but Goodies stands as one of the Southern Tier’s larger antique and collectibles destinations, a Big Flats mall where over a century’s worth of vendors’ worth of American history moves through its doors and finds new owners.
