Warehouse full of vintage collectibles on sale this weekend

A longtime collector of antiques is selling the bulk of his vintage hoard beginning this weekend.

The sale will run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 16, and Sunday, Sept. 17, and from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday, Sept. 18, through Wednesday, Sept. 20. The sale is taking place in a rented warehouse at 775 Progress St. in Cape Girardeau.

Wallace "Wally" Rexroad, 95, has collected and sold antiques in and around Cape Girardeau for more than 50 years. He once owned a shop called Furniture Garden, located at the intersection of South Sprigg and William streets.

Rexroad's son, Kris Rexroad, said there are tens of thousands of items available for sale from furniture to lamps to wall art, as well as curios from Paris, India and China.

Wally Rexroad was a professor at Southeast Missouri State University in the Psychology Department from 1962 to 1988. He moved to Cape Girardeau with his family from Oklahoma where he grew up.

But his children said his passion was collecting antiques.

"He's spent his life collecting," Kris Rexroad said.

Wally's daughter, Sheera Rexroad, said he enjoyed the hunt, but not the business of selling.

"He loved going out to find things for his shops, but he didn't much like sitting in the store selling," Sheera Rexroad said.

She said his store, Furniture Garden, was less of a business for him than it was a place for him to hang out with his friends and share his love of the things he'd collected.

"He set up a lounge in the store where he would invite friends to come, drink wine and enjoy the ambiance of opulence he had created," Sheera Rexroad said.

She said her dad grew up in the dust bowl of Oklahoma during the depression. She said she believes his passion for collecting beautiful things came from his time as a child and looking into department stores in bigger cities.

"Because he had nothing, and he would dream about having those things he saw in those stores," Sheera Rexroad said.

Her brother, Kris, agreed and said finding furniture and items that came from that era, and setting up his own stores was a way to recapture that feeling from his youth.

"After church on Sunday, Dad would take us to stores like Rust & Martin Interior just to sit on the couches and lay on the beds," Kris Rexroad said.

Brian Winans, a family friend who was helping set up for the big sale, said he has known Wally Rexroad since he was in high school. He said his family had just moved to Cape Girardeau from McClure, Illinois, when he wandered into the Furniture Garden and met Wally, who encouraged him to get into antiques.

"He said, 'Antiques are art and art is life,'" Winans said. "I got the bug that day for collecting. He has been just like a grandfather to me."

Rexroad's children talked about their dad's generosity and how he would often give an item to someone if he sensed they had the same love and passion for it that he did.

According to a flyer, the sale is being called a "Wally Extravaganza" to celebrate the collecting life of a man who has been "an advocate for healthy living, a generous friend and a stylish man about town."