Jewelry. A giant ball of string. A taxidermized four-legged chicken.

Those are just a few of the collectibles inside The Antique Man in Fells Point. But, after over 35 years in business, pieces of paper taped to the front of the store announced its closing.

“The Antique Man has closed after 35 years as of July 2025,” the signs read. “Thank you to all of our loyal customers. It’s been a great run.”

The store’s owner, Bob Gerber Jr., said he decided to close because of his age. The 82-year-old has managed the business since 1987.

“Every day was a great day,” he said.

The antiques in the store will be sold at Stoner’s Auction in Glen Rock, Pennsylvania, he said.

Chris Linsenbigler, who owns the auction house, confirmed that the bulk of the store’s items will be sold through him.

Linsenbigler has worked with The Antique Man since he bought Stoner’s six years ago. He feels honored that Gerber chose him to sell the antiques, he said.

The first batch of the store’s antiques will be auctioned off on July 26, Linsenbigler said. You can look at what will be auctioned that day, and in the future, on the AuctionZip website, he said.

Gerber, who owns the store’s building, which spans multiple rowhomes on the 1800 block of Fleet Street, said he plans to sell it in a year, after he settles everything with the business.

“I think it is very much like a Baltimore icon. It’s just such a unique place, which I think speaks to Baltimore, because we have such unique places in the city,” said Amberlyn Kauffmann, who lives near the store.

Going to The Antique Man was a part of Kauffmann’s weekend routine. After getting breakfast, she and her boyfriend would stop in the store before going home.

When it was open, customers would enter the shop through a lifted garage door. Often there would be bright, circus-like signs advertising some of the store’s more bizarre items, like a two-headed duck.

Near the entrance were the one-dollar tables, Kauffmann recalled. Behind those were display cases of jewelry and pocketknives. Beyond that, there were different rooms with more random things. One was Christmas-themed, while others had glassware and dishes.

“It was kind of magical, in the things that they had and the way that they presented them. It was like a little museum,” said Edith Pula, who lives around the corner from the shop. “You could go in there, not intending to buy anything, just to really look and wander around.”

One time, Kauffmann and her boyfriend went in looking for a gift for their nephew.

“We went in there and found this really old train key chain that was just the most random thing that you could find,” she said.

When they got home and did some research on the trinket, they found out it was a collector’s item.

“It never occurred to me that they wouldn’t be there, I guess, because they’d been there so long and were such a fixture in the neighborhood,” said Pula, a third-generation Fells Point resident. “It really is just another little piece of the old Fells Point that I remember growing up with and being a young adult with that is going by the wayside.”