Several years ago, a well-known writer made enough on a short-lived television program to buy he and his wife their dream house on a golf course in a gated community in La Quinta. It was a stretch, but they made it happen. The problem was, the purchase left them with almost nothing in the bank with which to furnish the place.
Armed with just a couple grand, they hit the consignment stores on Highway 111 such Misty’s, the Estate Sale Company, and Angel View.
“I bought a $10,000 living room set that looked like it had never been sat on for less than $1000,” he later told me. “We literally furnished our entire house for pennies on the dollar. And it was all beautiful, top-quality furniture.”
Even though the number of consignment and second-hand stores have proliferated in the last few years, the number of shoppers has increased significantly. Because of supply chain issues, people purchasing homes or condos in the valley have found that a new couch or credenza could take months to be delivered. One real estate professional told me just after the pandemic ended that a couple who had just remodeled their kitchen were told that their new Viking and Kitchenaid appliances could take up to a year to arrive.
Though such delays have eased, savvy shoppers know that diligent browsing can yield fantastic results. Not to be indelicate, but a significant number of Valley residents are about to walk that great fairway in the sky…and they can’t take a household of furniture with them. So, the turnover in many of the stores is constant. I once spotted the perfect midcentury Danish desk at the Estate Sale Company. I went home to measure the space for it. I came back less than 30 hours later and it was gone. Competition for bargains and great pieces can be fierce. Weekends at stores like Misty’s during the height of the season can be a madhouse.
However, as the Valley empties out in the late Spring, it’s possible to find a little elbow room and fairly peaceful conditions in most stores. The turnover may not be as constant in June, but at least you don’t have to arm wrestle anyone for that hand-blown glass table lamp. Or at least, rarely.
I would need a book to list all the consignment, thrift, and antique stores from one end of the valley to the other, but the following are a few favorites that I visit with regularity.
Revivals
Olga Trehub
On a recent weekday, I stopped at Peninsula Bakery for a croissant and a baguette (the best outside Paris). Nearby is the Palm Springs branch of Revivals, the venerable thrift store benefitting DAP Health since 1994. It was only 9:30 and the store wouldn’t open for another half hour, but there were already a dozen shoppers lined up along the sidewalk. I had no doubt the number would double or triple before the doors opened.
There are several reasons for Revivals’ success. One is Dane Koch, the director of retail since 2014. In addition to opening stores in Cathedral City, Palm Desert, and Indio, he has organized the presentation of products, whether they’re books, clothes, or jewelry in an appealing and organized way. The introduction of Revivals’ new furniture line has lifted these stores way above the ‘thrift’ category. Another reason for Revivals’ success is the dedication of its volunteers. Of course, all the volunteers are heroes for making the stores work so well, but the unsung geniuses are the volunteers in the warehouse behind the store who are in charge of sorting, organizing, repairing, cleaning, and pricing everything from vintage designer clothing to electronics to furniture to art. Considering the volume they receive, their work is impressive.
Like many Revivals shoppers, I started out at the Palm Springs stores, though lately I am drawn more and more to the Palm Desert store because of its smaller scale. That said, the best vintage treasures I’ve found in the last year were at the Indio store.
The Estate Sale Company
Olga Trehub
Kandy TK says that her mother, Sharon, was the first consignment shop in Palm Springs, opening their first store 36 years ago. “My mom was doing interior design…her business was called Affordable Splendor. She was finding really good quality secondhand furniture…and her clients kept asking her, ‘What am I suppose to do with my old furniture?’ One day she was driving and saw the ‘For Rent’ sign on this building. She said, ‘God spoke to me. It just came to me that I’m suppose to open the Estate Sale Company.’
The business grew quickly and expanded to several adjacent buildings…all of which Sharon bought. The inventory is eclectic, but true to Sharon’s original vision, is all very high quality. Kandy says that she looks for a variety of pieces, not just midcentury modern. “I still think there’s high demand for antiques and traditional furniture.” I bought my leather top, walnut regency desk there. It’s solid wood and weighs a ton and if it was in a West LA antique shop, it would probably sell for over $2000. I got it at Estate Sale for less than $300. Chris, who manages one of the showrooms specializing in Chinese antiques says, “When you come in here and see something you like, then buy it. Because it won’t sit around here long while you think about it. Good pieces turn over here every couple days.”
Palm Springs Consignment & Gallery
Olga Trehub
There used to be a store called Celebrity Consignment near the Angel View store in Cathedral City. I was never a fan of either—the former felt too chaotic and jumbled up and the latter…well, frankly, I never saw a thing in there that’s interested me. However, as I was driving by the other day, I noticed that Celebrity Consignment was now Palm Springs Consignment & Gallery. I made an illegal U turn (I just pretended to be a snowbird) and headed back. Inside the store, I met Raffi Agopian who said that he and his partner, Mario Vega, “came in two years ago with a completely different concept. We created these vignettes throughout the store to make it more appealing to the customer. Our focus is modern, midcentury, contemporary Palm Springs. We added the word ‘gallery’…we have beautiful mainstream art. We’ve attracted a lot of artists who want to display their work here. It’s taken awhile but people are beginning to catch on to the concept. We’ve tried to make ourselves a little bit different, a little more unique.”
Olga Trehub
Indeed, Raffi’s store is immediate appealing when you walk in the door. Instead of a haphazard display of furniture, the pieces are grouped, almost put together as a complete living room or bedroom setting. Whereas a lot of stores seem intent on putting all their inventory out on the floor, there is lots of empty space to move around Raffi’s store and stand back and really consider some of the pieces. As ready as I was to pull out my checkbook and haggle for a midcentury credenza with unique accordian doors, I spent most of my time in the store admiring their great collection of black and white photography. This store just got on my permanent ‘must visit’ list.
Misty’s Consignments
Olga Trehub
“She definitely built a landmark in the desert. When you’re out here, it’s just some place you have to go.”
Tyler Davis is speaking about her mom, Misty, who opened the store here on Highway 111 in Rancho Mirage 12 years ago. In fact, Misty started in the business 35 years ago with her own mother in a 700 square foot storefront. She opened Misty’s in 2011 and retired a year and a half ago. Davis was a financial planner in San Diego, but when her mom announced her retirement, Davis agreed to come back and take over the business.
As noted, it can be bedlam, especially on weekends when a parking space can’t be had for love or money and trucks are backing in and out of the rear of the store with deliveries or purchased items. Of course, the store’s notoriety is the key to its success. Everyone knows Misty’s, so they want to consign their best pieces here because they know it will be sold quickly. I consigned a midcentury Danish credenza to Misty’s and it sold in a few days. Buyers know that Misty’s gets great pieces so they fill the aisles.
Olga Trehub
Davis says that one of the keys to their success is “we’ve had the same art director for 18 years. She knows what’s she’s doing. We really try to stay up to date with all the styles and shifts in the industry. I also get a lot of compliments on our staff. They’re really friendly and they work incredibly hard every day. Also, we’re not a stuffy, junky old thrift store. [Our pieces) look fresh and clean every day. It looks like furniture that you would want to put in your house the same day you bought it.”
Davis says their specialty is midcentury pieces, but they also have a wealth of contemporary furniture and furnishings. She also says they strive to present a wide variety. “We just got in a sofa that would be $18,000 retail…and yesterday, we got in a couch that might’ve been $700 retail.”
Consign Design
Olga Trehub
Patrick Harkins became a consignment store owner as a result of blowing his stack. “About twenty years ago I was working for another consignment store. They treated me horribly. I came home one day, bitching about it to my boyfriend. And he said, ‘Well, then, open your own store.’ So I did. I have my chair from their store in my office here. I keep it to remind me why I got in business for myself.”
Olga Trehub
Though the furniture filling his 18,000 square foot space is eclectic with a definite contemporary bent, Harkins says that his main interest (and the bulk of his sales) is art work. As a designer, he has worked on a lot of houses and one of the things he discourages his clients to do is to buy everything at a single store “so that everything matches. It should be eclectic and it should feel like something that’s curated.”
One of the things I’ve always enjoyed about going into Consign Design is the atmosphere. Harkins and his six employees always seem to be having a great time, among themselves and their customers. Once I was in the store with my daughter shopping for a bedroom dresser. She was eight. She came across a contemporary credenza covered in fake snakeskin. She wanted it. I said hard no. Harkins and his sales associate teased and cajoled me until I relented. It’s still her favorite piece of furniture.
The Fine Art of Design
Olga Trehub
Coachella Valley native Nicholas Delgado was not exactly planning a career in vintage consignments when he and a friend opened The Fine Art of Design in 2011. “Growing up here, there weren’t vintage consignment shops. I went to college in New York and a lot of my friends would shop at consignment and vintage shops. It was fun. I moved back here in 2009 and a friend started selling books out of her apartment. This space became available so we did it together. So this used to be part book store.”
It’s a far cry from that now. Delgado has carefully curated some of the most beautiful and interesting women’s clothes, hats, shoes, and jewelry imaginable. The space is small, but every inch seems to contain unique and eye catching. A shelf along one wall contains a towering collection of hat boxes, racks and racks of dresses are by Chanel, Hermes, Pucci, and Todd Oldham.
“The late nineties and Y2K is a really big trend,” he says. “It’s been selling well among young girls. A lot of women have aged out of wearing that by now because they’re in their fifties and sixties. They wore in their thirties. So it creates this trickle down cycle.”
As if on cue, a late twentysomething enters the stores and methodically begins exploring the racks at the rear of the store.
Olga Trehub
Delgado says that he constantly has clothes coming into the store and is careful about what he agrees to take on consignment. “Usually, it’s the woman herself comes in the store and says, ‘I’m going to die someday and my kids don’t want my stuff. So I just want someone cool to have it. Sometimes, it’s the kids who have inherited their parents’ clothes or jewelry and they’re finally ready to let go of it.”
One of Delgado’s unexpected benefactors is his mother. “She’s not sentimental. She doesn’t hold on to anything. She gave all her stuff to her housekeeper. And then her housekeeper consigned it to me when I opened the store.”
Thriftology
La Quinta native Gabrielle Song’s mother was fully immersed in the corporate world when she decided she had to choose between her profession and her six kids. “She was working all week and the weekends. She decided it just didn’t work for her. This way she can hang out with all of us.”
The Songs first opened their thrift store a could blocks away off San Pablo in Palm Desert in 2019, but recently moved into a cute, Southwestern-style building on Highway 111. It’s an eye-catching space and Song says the new location and signage have brought them a lot of new customers who are curious to see what’s going on inside.
Inside is not like any thrift store you’ve ever seen. The light-filled space is not jammed with clothing and accessories like most thrift stores. Instead, the racks are well spaced apart and the clothes displayed as artfully as any high-end retail store. Song says they also work with some select suppliers so there are new items mixed in with the old such as colorful Mexican-style blankets. Her mom makes the handmade candles they well while another makes artwork for sale. Another sister makes earrings for the store and Gabrielle is in charge of the signage and advertising. The overall effect is a fun, funky, eclectic mix of casual wear and accessories. I’ve also never been in a thrift store that smelled so good.
Song explains that every piece of clothing that comes through their doors gets a thorough washing in a washer and dryer they have in the back of the store. They repair and sew where required, so that every shirt, dress, or pair of pants that goes on the racks is ready to wear.
And the Songs don’t wait for locals to drop off their unwanted rags. Gabrielle Song says, “We travel all over. On our most recent trip, we went to Montana, Arizona, and Oregon. We go shopping at other thrift stores and sometimes we’ll just buy out someone’s closet.”
