By Jeremy D. Wells
Carter County Times
Shadow Skaggs has wanted to bring an oddity shop to Main Street for a little while, he just wasn’t sure how to do it as a sustainable business.
He knew it could be a good idea. There aren’t really any other oddity shops like Skaggs’s in the tri-state, with its mix of movie memorabilia, taxidermied animals, and real human medical specimens.
He knew it was the kind of thing that could help draw people to the neighborhood, and hopefully keep them there, sipping a coffee from next door and checking out the other shops up and down the street.
But it’s also the kind of place where folks are more likely to browse than to buy – unless they’ve come in seeking something specific. Most folks just don’t drop four grand on a caribou mount on a whim.
Still, he knew there was a market for oddities, and he had some items in his own personal collection that he was ready to let go of; or at least to store at the shop until someone who loved them as much as he did came along.
Along the way he decided to add movie memorabilia and other nostalgia items to the typical oddity shop biological specimens, as a way to offer affordable items that would still draw visitors. But it was only when a large, private record collection became available, and he added Broken Drum Records to the mix, that Skaggs was ready to open shop.
Now Luna Corvus Oddities and Broken Drum Records share space at the shop on 113 East Main Street in Grayson, with the oddities up front and the records and cassette tapes in the back.
The cassette tape market, Skaggs said, was what really surprised him. He knew there was a market for vintage vinyl, but the number of young kids with their parent’s old Walkman or other portable cassette players, looking for titles that may have only been released on cassette, was surprising.
“I’ve already had a few in here looking for them,” he said.
For those more drawn to the oddities, or those looking for unique gifts, he has items like disks pressed from dirt collected in Roswell, shavings from the wood porch featured in the Goonies, fragments of the cemetery wall where Marie Laveau – the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans – was buried, and human skull fragments, among other collectible items.
But the two most notable items in the collection have to be the human skull, and the complete human skeleton.
The skull, Skaggs said, comes from a museum in Belgium. Browned with age, the skull wasn’t as painstakingly preserved as the full skeleton, a complete medical model from a body donated to science. While he doesn’t have an exact date for the skeleton, he knows it is from an older model because of the sternum. The cartilage on the sternum of the medical model is made from a sewn leather material. That indicates it was created before modern synthetic materials because commonly used.
The model bears a tag, with portions missing, indicating it originated from Clay-Adams Company, of New York. The label reads, in part, “Clay-Adams Co. Inc. 44 E. 23 St. New York, SKELETONS – MODE(LS) – MANIKINS – CHA(RTS)” with a partial serial number that looks hand written. The letters inside the parentheses are missing from the label, and I filled them in from images of newer labels that did not include the word “manikin.”
According to the Harvard University Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, Clay-Adams Company was founded around 1916, and was run as an independent company until 1964, when it “became a division of Becton, Dickinson and Company.”
So, the piece has provenance, stamped right inside its hip.
And it’s a great collector’s piece, that’s up for sale. But until it goes, Skaggs said, he hopes it’s the kind of thing that can help draw people into his shop and others in the neighborhood.
He said he envisions KCU students stopping in to browse records after grabbing a coffee at Nook and Cranny next door, or families who visit the sports park for travel ball or Grayson Lake for kayaking coming in after having lunch at Johnny’s Pizza, and all of them spending more time on Main Street.
For now, Skaggs said, the shop will have limited hours. They plan to be open on Thursdays and Fridays from Noon – 6 p.m. and on Saturday from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m.
Skaggs said if traffic picks up he may consider expanding staff and adding hours, but for now it’s a weekend only showroom. He has plans to make shopping available online at any time, however, from a future eBay or Etsy storefront. His main goal, though, is to draw more people to Main Street.
Once they get here, he said, he thinks they’ll be pleased by everything the businesses have to offer.
Contact the writer at editor@cartercountytimes.com
