Just off Interstate 65 about twenty minutes north of downtown Nashville, Rare Bird Antiques anchors the Goodlettsville Antique District with more than 10,000 square feet of retail space split among roughly fifty individual dealers. Jon and Joan Wright opened the mall in 1996, building it around their own passions as collectors: Jon gravitated toward automobilia and vintage advertising signs, while Joan focused on collectible store merchandise, and together they grew the business for over two decades before retiring in 2017. Lori and Jody Hanks took over as the current proprietors, carrying the mall’s original mix of dealers and merchandise forward while continuing to welcome new vendors into the space.
Because the inventory is spread across so many independent booths, what fills the shelves changes constantly, but the categories on offer run from ironstone, cloisonne, and tole trays to glassware, pottery, linens, silver, and jewelry drawn from multiple centuries and sourced from around the world. That range is part of the draw for regulars: a single visit might turn up a piece of early American stoneware next to a mid century advertising sign next to an estate jewelry case, all under one roof, with fresh finds arriving as often as individual dealers restock their booths. The mall also rents booth space to dealers looking to sell through an established, well trafficked antique district storefront rather than building their own retail presence from scratch, which helps keep the dealer roster and the merchandise mix in constant motion.
Rare Bird Antiques keeps generous hours for an antique mall of its size and location, open seven days a week: Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. That schedule makes it an easy stop for visitors combining a trip with other errands along the Main Street antique corridor, or for Nashville area shoppers making the short drive north specifically to browse. The business also maintains an active blog and social media presence covering topics like collectible glassware and other niche interests, giving regular visitors a reason to check in online between trips to the mall itself.
One especially notable detail sets this location apart from a typical regional antique mall: items that have passed through its dealers have gone on to appear in film and television productions, including the movies Walk the Line and Water for Elephants, as well as ABC’s Nashville, a reflection of how deeply the mall’s inventory of American antiques and vintage advertising has been woven into productions set in or filmed near Tennessee. For prop buyers and set dressers working in the Nashville area’s film industry, a mall stocked with fifty dealers’ worth of genuinely old material offers a depth of selection that a single specialty shop rarely can.
In short, Rare Bird Antiques is a fifty dealer antique mall in Goodlettsville, Tennessee, founded in 1996 and now run by Lori and Jody Hanks, whose ten thousand square feet of antiques, vintage advertising, and collectibles have supplied props for major film and television productions while serving daily shoppers browsing the Nashville area’s antique district.
