VENTURA : Patrons Dip Into the Past at Antiques Row

Eric Alen and Beatrice Beck peered into the open back of a grandfather clock on Sunday, examining the dusty metal guts inside.

Other shoppers squeezed past them in the busy store, intent on the chairs, dolls, dishes and pictures crowding the floor and walls at Ventura’s Heirlooms Antiques Mall on Main Street.

Alen and Beck, from Santa Barbara, were interested primarily in clocks. “A lot of times it’s the history behind them,” Alen said. “They’ve been in so many people’s homes.”

They had come to Ventura’s antiques and collectibles shops out of curiosity, but had been impressed by the prices, lower than those in Santa Barbara. This clock cost about $1,800--in Santa Barbara, grandfather clocks can sell for $40,000, Alen said.

Summer weekends are busy weekends for the antiques and collectibles shops lining Ventura’s Main Street. Store owners say they see several hundred customers each day on a typical weekend, many from out of town.

“We’re a destination,” said Sharon Mullins, an employee of Nicholby Antiques Mall. “People come to Ventura for antiquing.”

Don Goolsby, owner of Attic Treasures, said he gets customers from as far away as Texas. “They rent rooms, they go the beach, and they come here.”

The shoppers, many from Los Angeles, are drawn by prices far lower than those in city shops, Mullins said.

They find stores brimming with the artifacts of other people’s lives. In Nicholby, shoppers perused a glass case filled with jeweled hairpins, an “Inspector Gadget” toy phone and a “Mork and Mindy” lunch box as the old jazz standard “Stella by Starlight” wafted overhead. Old, mint-condition pottery sat yards away from “Star Wars” action figures.

John and Ann Unger of Saugus had come to the stores looking for a cane for Ann. She needed one for walking and didn’t like the modern metallic versions she had seen. “I want something with a little more character, sort of turn-of-the-century,” she said.

She found some at one store, but none suited her. “They had a few with the vials in them for liquor,” she said. “I don’t need that.”

Mullins said the stores reward frequent shopping, since individual dealers who rent show space in the Nicholby mall and similar shops often bring in new merchandise.

“The key is to keep looking,” she said. “If it’s not here, it will be.”