I do have some stuff on my.

There's a favorite item French bulldog.

Everything has its own character and genuine things just speak to me.

I'm not an artist at all, and I think that also drives my, urge to when I see something that really works, whatever it is, I say, wow, it works.

It's good.

Then I try an acquiring.

I'm Barry Courtney, and I'm living in Wakulla County, Florida, and I love it.

I'm originally from Findlay, Ohio and, went to school there, high school, graduated, went into the Navy and ended up in Atlantic Beach, where my mother had some family and my brother Bruce came over here to school, FSU.

We came over to visit him and we fell in love with Tallahassee.

This is Vintage 21.

This was Video 21 and I just kept the name and added the vintage to it.

The original shop was the old Rose boutique and believe it or not, it came off the match box.

It said old Rose and we were there for several years.

Then my brother moved out to Las Vegas.

We closed that shop down and I moved out to the flea market for a while.

That was great.

In the old days, Pre-Computer everybody had the shop.

Yeah, I had a triple set of buildings out in the front.

It was great.

It was just Saturday and Sunday, but the flea market was a great place.

Those people who remember it on a good weekend, it was shoulder to shoulder in the aisles and just.

That's how you shopped.

And then I was at Good Finds for a while.

And, then I ended up here, which was been a nice place to be.

I've been here about eight years, and it's taken eight years to collect all this stuff.

It was always a fond hope that someone who wanted to have an antique shop and had a great location would take my inventory at a great price, because this represents.

It's hard to imagine, but it represents thousands of hours of individually picking.

Not everything is all that great, but everything is genuine.

I've always been interested in authenticity and antiquity and Just the energy that these things have... you wish they could talk.

As a small kid, I was collecting antiques in Ohio when I when I could first drive.

I used to go to auctions in in Ohio.

Farm auctions was great fun.

But I do remember the first antique I bought when I was, I went into an antique shop when I was 11 years old and bought a little, match container, and it was in a genuine antique shop, and it was a genuine antique.

And it just set my life's pattern.

I think maybe one of the most significant things in the shop right now is, is a, an American walnut sideboard.

It was probably ex-slave made.

It came from, North Carolina plantation.

And it's just a wonderful piece of furniture.

Has a lot of the earmarks of old furniture, big dovetails, square headed nails, rough boards.

And, it's just fascinating to me that, it was a craftsman that had probably seen an Empire Federal sideboard and did their own version.

And it works.

Like I said, if something works, it catches my attention.

So a lot of the things in here to me, whether it's a painting or a vase, if it works, if it's got the right elements, I want to have it in the shop.

And sometimes I pay too much for things, but I always say I want that in the shop.

Someone else is going to love it, and that event eventually happens.

May take a while, but someone always comes along and really appreciates that item.

If you notice that they have these dividers saying it's like black sided silver, they're really cool.

A lot of the folks that I've done business with have passed away or moved on.

And I am seeing an increase in younger people coming into the shop.

I think a lot of younger people are starting to realize that these things have a presence that has been in time and will be in time.

People have a strange idea of value today in that you see these things online, where someone finds something for $5 that's worth $35,000.

So people get that in their mind.

But if you go looking for that, you're going to pass up a lot of wonderful things.

If you're just open minded, things will present themselves, especially in art.

I think art is a great buy today.

Not particularly famous artists.

Just if you like the picture, why not have it?

I'll probably always be hunting for things.

The real thrill is to find something that's genuine.

It has some kind of a recognizable history.

That's not always the case.

I buy things, I don't know what they are, but the quality says I matter or I'm worth something.

And, I've gotten a lot of education out of researching in books.

I'm just a lover of history and artifacts, and I surround myself with them.

People ask me how to get so much stuff.

Well, when I see it, I buy it.

You know, you may not see it again as sort of my principle.

It's like finding something from the 18th century.

That's a red letter day to me.

They're out there.

And if you go out with an open mind, you too can find them.