VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. - While big box stores are running out of popular toys and gifts for the holidays, one local store has more than you can imagine.
It's located on the second floor of the Virginia Beach Antique Mall on Bonney Road. After walking up the stairs, you will find a nest of nostalgia where the towers of toys are hard to miss.
"It just continues to grow," said the owner of Toymeister Toys, Rick Womack.
It's also been growing for the last eight and a half years.
"It's the kind of place that you don't necessarily have to know what you're looking for when you get here," Womack said.
But you'll know it when you see it. It's the knee-jerk reactions that have people ditching the big box stores and shopping small.
Toymeister also isn't seeing supply chain issues because 100% of its items come from local customers.
"We buy, usually, from 10 to 15 people a day," Womack said. "Wholesalers are going to give you what’s available, and you don’t go back and get all the backstock, so once it’s no longer available they will have no more of it. Whereas because we're getting from a variety of different sources, pretty much any of that stuff that you want, we’re going to have some of it."
Womack said they have everything from $1 items to full antique collections that cost a few thousand dollars.
While their selection is overflowing, the Toy Meister himself said it's about more than the Elsa dolls, Barbies and Hot Wheels.
"It's all about the emotion and the nostalgia of it," he said.
Toymeister is open Monday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 a.m. and Sunday from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m.
