Tburg Flea returns to Ithaca Vintage

Earlier this month, Ithaca Vintage, an appraisals business in the village, held its first flea market since the pandemic hit. And with its second coming on Aug. 2, Ithaca Vintage is back in the community, but owner Steven Daly said there’s still a ways to go before he’s back to pre-COVID business levels.

Ithaca Vintage is a rather young business in the village, with fewer than 10 years under its belt, but Daly said it’s grown considerably since its start. Daly is an appraiser by trade, and Ithaca Vintage is where he conducts personal property appraisals on everything from art pieces to household items.

At first glance, calling a Trumansburg appraisal business “Ithaca Vintage” sounds like an odd choice, Daly said, but as he told it, he had the name picked out long before moving to the area.

“I was actually living in Cortland at the time,” he said. “Trumansburg Vintage is a bit of a mouthful, and I wanted something people out of the area would recognize too, so I went with something more general and a website that I could find available, and that’s how it ends up being Ithaca Vintage.”

With a history in the appraisals business, Daly was looking for an office, but he ended up with a bit of retail space too, leaving space for consignment and Tburg Flea, the annual flea market at the business.

When it started, and still today, Ithaca Vintage was one of only two appraisals businesses in the county, and Daly prides himself with the quality of service he provides. As he described, almost anybody can be a personal property appraiser, but he has never taken the lazy way out.

“There’s not a license for appraisers like there is for real estate. For personal property, anybody can call themselves an appraiser,” Daly said. “I’m somebody you go to if you need an insurance appraisal, you’re donating something to the IRS, and you need an actual price from somebody who’s unbiased.”

Daly said his community connections with people at auction houses and in collectibles helped him gather a variety of items for the flea market.

“I have $5 items up to $10,000 items in the store at any given time, and so, there’s a little bit of something for everybody,” he said.

Prior to COVID-19, Ithaca Vintage’s normal involved irregular business hours and a monthly flea market. Daly explained his reasoning behind the shifting schedule.

“I’m a dad first and foremost,” he said. “I have a young daughter. My wife works full time up at the college. So, I like being my own boss because it gives me the freedom to be home and take care of my daughter when I need to, but the business does suffer for that somewhat because it keeps my hours somewhat irregular.”

Though Daly has developed a core of regulars and has built up his reputation in the village, he said Ithaca Vintage has always had its share of challenges on an almost annual basis. But this year, that challenge was considerably worse than others he’d faced before. COVID-19, as it did for so many other businesses, immediately shut down Ithaca Vintage.

“I completely closed down,” Daly said. “I haven’t had the store [open] except for last month’s flea market. I haven’t been open at all or really working since the beginning of March. So, it has definitely been this year’s challenge. Every year, … it seems like I have a big plan, and something comes along to kind of wipe it out. And this year, it happened to be a worldwide pandemic.”

On the plus side, Daly said that even though this is a much larger challenge than he’s faced before, he doesn’t feel so alone in that challenge this time around.

“At least I feel I’m in the same boat as everybody else,” he said. “They know that we’re all struggling. Another great thing in Trumansburg here is that we’re all working really hard to support each other to keep the local businesses going. And we know what we’ve got here and we like to keep it, and everybody’s been very supportive.”

Daly’s approach to the pandemic has been focused on just doing what he can to get by, like continuing appraisal appointments and holding the flea market once it was safe to do so.

Opening the flea market was its own challenge. Trying to ensure the safety of everyone involved was complicated by some pushback by vendors.

“Everybody had to wear a mask, and I found a lot of people weren’t interested in that,” Daly said. “But my options were to have a flea market with masks or don’t have a flea market. So, I thought people like to have a flea market with masks.”

Still, Daly felt that it was a worthy effort, as Trumansburg expressed a strong desire to have the flea market return.

“I think the community really needed something to keep going here,” Daly said. “People are interested to get out and do something fun, spend a little money, have a good time and be out of the house, not sitting there looking at each other all day as we all did for several months there.”

More evidence of that sentiment was seen in the high turnout of July’s flea market, leading Daly to be optimistic about the next one. Daly’s shooting to make Aug. 2’s Tburg Flea larger than July’s, including more vendors to give them the spotlight, which has always been his goal.

“I like to support the local artists,” Daly said. “If they get out, even if they don’t sell a lot of things – because sometimes, their paintings are expensive for the work – they still get that exposure and they get to come out and meet a bunch of people and make the potential for clients. And then, people who sell things have done very well.”

Moving forward, Daly is taking things one step at a time. He said what keeps him going most of all is the continuous support from the community, something for which he expressed great gratitude.

“You drive through a lot of small towns in upstate New York, and you don’t see all the lights on Main Street like you do in Tburg, and I want to be a part of that,” Daly said. “I want to be a part of keeping expanding, and I’m just thankful to be here, thankful for my fellow business people and thankful for my community that’s been so supportive and so helpful from the time I’ve been here.”

For more information about Ithaca Vintage, visit it at 2289 W. Main St. in Trumansburg or at ithacavintage.com.