Evanston antique dealers don’t have to search far to find places to shop for their collections. Just a couple blocks from the Main Street CTA station lie local antique stores which sell anything from cicada necklaces to shaving cabinets.

Northwestern University curator Russell Maylone said he has looked for unusual items of personal and professional interest from these stores in southeast Evanston for more than 35 years, some of which can be seen in displays in Deering Library and the Northwestern University Library.

“Not long ago, I found George Gershwin music at (store, Eureka Antiques & Collectibles),” the library’s Special Collections curator said in an e-mail. “I also found two remarkable photographic albums from the 19th century.”

Eureka Antiques & Collectibles, 705 Washington St., sells memorabilia from the Chicago World’s Fairs, old menus, cookbooks, old issues of the Daily Northwestern and other items people wouldn’t normally label antiques, said owner Bindy Bitterman.

“The focus of my store is preserving the ephemera, the things that were made to be destroyed,” Bitterman said. “My job is to sell authentic, old things but not typical things. I like to say I sell funky stuff, what people throw away.”

Bitterman, who has owned the store for more than 25 years, said she sometimes sends customers to other antique stores in the area if they’re looking for something specific.

“You don’t find stores like this anymore, anywhere,” she said. “If people are interested in this kind of thing, there are very few places to get it where you can walk in and have a hands-on experience.”

The three antique stores around Main Street share a symbiotic relationship and encourage customers to visit other stores in the area.

“People who collect certain kinds of books will shop there and come here because I have paperback stuff associated with Chicago history,” Bitterman said.

But the main place for antique books is the Chicago Rare Book Center, 703 Washington St., which holds the best collection of children’s books of any store in the state and jazz and blues in terms of quality for hundreds of miles, said Tom Joyce, one of the store’s owners.

“We’re into recycling. Some people recycle steel and some people recycle bicycles,” he said. “We recycle books, autographs, manuscripts, magazines and basically rare paper items.”

Joyce said customers who are readers are more interesting than others because they pay more attention to their surroundings. “By the nature of being a reader, it’s someone who is typically more educated, even if it’s self-educated,” he said. “Maybe they didn’t finish high school, but if they continue reading, they continue their education, and that’s a great thing.”

Another owner of the store, Patricia Martinak, said she and the other owners like to educate people about the different books and what makes a book rare.

She added that she something for anyone and everyone’s pocket book.

“You don’t have to spend a lot to be a collector,” she said. “Just because we have expensive books doesn’t mean we’re elite.”The store sells items anywhere from a few dollars to thousands of dollars for rarer copies, Joyce said.

“You can have the same experience right back to 1885 if you read it in this edition with these original illustrations,” he said. “This is the way the original people who read the book fell in love with it. And some people are willing to pay for that.”

Meanwhile, a few blocks away is Toad Creek Antiques, 502 Main St., where antique collectors can find rare items such as the store owner’s Japanese collection.

Store owner Ramona Meher said she’s more selective than other antique store owners- what she calls “purist”- because she only sells antiques in her store, not collectibles.

“Collectibles don’t speak, they’re dead silent,” Meher said. “An antique beautiful bird cage is very evocative, but a Beanie Baby doesn’t speak to me.”

Evanston antique store owners said they don’t usually buy items for their stores online because the public may access to these items as well.

“They know they would have had to go to Japan, to find the antique shop, to go to Istanbul, to go to the bazaar (and) bargain to bring the thing home,” Meher said.

Meher said people should treasure the local small stores in southeast Evanston for their friendly atmospheres.

“When you walk into my store, I’m going to greet you. When you walk into Wal-Mart, you’re anonymous,” she said. “If you really have a feeling for antiques, they can speak to you.”

Reach Kristin Ellertson at [email protected].