Centerville Antique Mall, Centerville, Indiana

Today we travelled to the Centerville Antique Mall, in Centerville, Indiana. Centerville is quite a misnomer, since the town is located on the Eastern part of Indiana close to the border with Ohio. It is 2.5 miles off of I-70 but easy to find.

View from the Parking Lot of Centerville Antique Mall

The building looks much smaller on the outside than it does when you get inside. Right when you walk in on the right are maps you can take with you to navigate the mall, but experienced mall shoppers will have little trouble finding their way around without one. Right in the middle is a nice little restaurant, so if you get hungry or need a drink you are covered.

Wide Aisles for Display Cases... Hurrah!

Up front are several aisles of display cases filled with mostly collectibles. The majority have a theme and that makes it very easy to locate the things you are interested in. The aisles are nice and wide, which makes browsing a real breeze. There were 2 major displays of Roseville Pottery, with scattered pieces of Rookwood Pottery, Weller Pottery, and the other pottery  manufacturers popular with collectors. We found no Lalique, no Galle, Daum, Legras, nothing really of the nice french stuff from the early 20th century. We did find a few pieces of Rainbow Glass and even a piece of Kanawha Glass which we bought. For the most part things were priced at or below market, and many of the sellers were running sales for 20% to 50% off which made it easy to find deals.

Avon Cape Cod

One display had a ton of Avon Cape Cod, which is still used by people today. Whatever you are missing could probably be found in this case, and even without the 10% off the prices were pretty cheap with most pieces under $10.00.

Ohio Pottery run Amok

Things took a turn for the worse when you look at the Ohio pottery. We almost had a stroke at the Roseville prices, but they were advertising 40% off. But even with the 40% off the prices were way out of whack. The large Roseville Freesia floor vase on the bottom right was tagged... get this... $1200! Even with 40% off you are still getting socked for $720 which is somewhere around $300 too much. The 8" Roseville Apple Blossom was marked $250 which ends up being $150, around $25 more than you can get one from any of a dozen online sources. None of the pieces could be considered rare, or very early. We all know this stuff used to sell well, and the vendor likely paid quite a bit for this back in the day, but the sooner he cuts his losses and moves on the better it will be for everyone. This looks like the leftovers of a successful booth when all the good stuff had been taken.

Fake Roseville

We only found one fake piece of Roseville Pottery, a clematis candlestick. Priced at $18.95, you can get them for $2.50 each if you buy them by the case on Alibaba.



More Roseville Pottery

The second case of Roseville Pottery also contained mostly common pieces, with some common Weller pieces and others. But the owner of "Case 9" had apparently done some research and the prices were actually reasonable. If you could find a piece you wanted for your collection in this case you could get away with a little under retail, which is a rare thing anymore. The $150 for the Mostique bowl was a little high, but it had a great design and was exceptionally crisp. We thought about picking it up because it was just that nice, but in the end we passed on it.

Anyone Need Some Glass?



Most of the decent glass had been apparently sucked up by one of three large booths, each with great organization and display. Across the vendors the prices seemed pretty consistent, with a great selection of Fenton, Indiana Glass, Fostoria, and all of the depression through mid-century glass antique malls are known for. In these "minimalls" within the mall we found all of it clean, undamaged, and reasonably priced.

Many of the booths and cases of course had no real pottery or glass, while many had a small selection or a few items. Many focused on furniture or other subjects of little interest to us such as vinyl records, toys, or books, but there were enough pieces scattered across them to make the treasure hunt fun. We did the whole mall in right about 2 hours. The staff was very friendly and helpful, and we would recommend this mall for the depression and mid-century glass selection, organization, and prices.