Antique Prints, Inc. has quietly built one of Delaware’s deepest collections of original antique maps and historic prints from a gallery at 42 Central Avenue in Ocean View, a small Sussex County town a few miles inland from Bethany Beach and Fenwick Island. The business traces back to 1970, giving it more than five decades in the same coastal corner of Delaware, and over that span it has assembled an inventory the gallery describes as drawing from a collection built up over 55 years and numbering in the hundreds of thousands of individual pieces. Everything on the walls is described as a genuine original rather than a reproduction, a distinction the owners treat as central to how they do business and how they price their stock.
The core of the gallery is cartography: period atlases broken apart and sold sheet by sheet, regional survey maps, and pieces spanning the Age of Exploration through the early twentieth century. Delaware and Mid-Atlantic subjects get particular attention, including maps drawn from historic county atlases such as the Beers and Pomeroy survey work from 1868, along with coastal and nautical charts that appeal to boaters and history buffs along the Delaware shore. Alongside the maps, the gallery carries historic prints covering botanical subjects, regional scenes, and other period illustration work, plus a selection of signed original oil paintings by regional artists rather than mass-produced canvases.
What sets the shop apart from a typical print dealer is the framing operation built around it. The gallery offers custom picture framing using acid-free, American-made materials, overseen by a framer with more than 25 years of experience in museum-quality mounting and conservation-grade techniques. For collectors along the coast, the business also offers in-home delivery and hanging throughout Sussex County, meaning a map or print bought in the gallery can be framed, delivered, and hung on a wall without the buyer having to transport anything themselves. Authentication and conservation services round out the offering, useful for anyone who has inherited an old map or painting and wants to know its age, condition, and rough value before deciding whether to reframe, restore, or sell it.
Ocean View itself sits inland of the barrier beaches, a quieter alternative to the boardwalk towns nearby, and the gallery’s hours reflect a business built around serious collectors rather than casual beach foot traffic: it is open Thursday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with appointments available Monday through Wednesday for buyers who want a private viewing or need framing consultations outside the regular walk-in window. That appointment flexibility, paired with regular open hours only three days a week, suggests a gallery that prizes one-on-one attention over volume retail, which tracks with the kind of browsing-by-era-and-region approach the business says distinguishes it from other Delaware print dealers.
For anyone furnishing a home along the Delaware coast with historically grounded artwork, or hunting a specific antique map of a particular county or coastline, Antique Prints, Inc. offers a rare combination in this part of the state: a half-century-old inventory of verified originals, in-house museum-quality framing, and local delivery, all from a single Ocean View storefront that has outlasted most of its regional competitors. Antique Prints, Inc. in Ocean View, Delaware is a longstanding gallery specializing in genuine antique maps, historic prints, and regional oil paintings, backed by custom conservation framing and more than fifty years of operation in the same Sussex County location.
