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Homes

Front Porch: At home with their antiques

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published August 26, 2005

Bill and Evelyn Mancino dreamed of living in an old house and running a quaint antiques store.

You know the kind: petunias in the flower box and an old bike with a wicker basket out front.

But it didn't quite work out that way.

The neighborhood around their historic 1924 house built by a citrus farmer in north Tampa didn't allow for a commercial business with a lot of traffic. So a decade ago, they took their antiques business where few dealers had ventured before.

The Internet.

"It's the only way to go now," says Bill Mancino, 66, a former computer executive who took early retirement when his company downsized. "A traditional brick and mortar business is practically doomed, in part because of the rising cost of gasoline. People are just not as interested in getting in their cars and driving around and shopping.

"Plus, the demographics are limited just to the people who walk in your store."

The Mancinos, who for years loved tooling around in their motor home to antique auctions in the East and garage sales in the South, tried peddling their wares the traditional way. They sold merchandise at four antique malls in the Tampa Bay area, including one in Pasco County.

"The driving around for us just got to be too much," Mancino recalls.

But even more worrisome, he says, was the way the malls were run.

"A lot of them had simply fallen down on the job. We had problems with breakage and other issues. I said to my wife, "There has got to be a better way."'

The better way was online, although Internet retailing 10 years ago was "nothing like it is now," Mancino explains.

"We didn't have a Web site. Things were a lot slower, and it was very frustrating if you were shopping and waiting for a page to load. Sometimes you just gave up."

Times have changed, and so has their business, Hourglass Antiques, www.hourglass-antiques.com

For one thing, Mancino says, they have gotten out of the furniture end of the business, concentrating instead on smaller items more easily shipped.

In particular, the couple is known for their glassware - pressed, Depression and Elegant - as well as their selection of porcelain pottery, both English and American made. Their customers live all over the world, many of them in Australia and Japan.

The Mancinos, who have no children, work out of their home office in Carrollwood with their two dogs, Otter and Maggie, and cat, Libby. Evelyn, 57, typically works late into the night, helping international customers.

Bill wrote the software for the inventory management of their business. He uses the Internet to research obscure sterling silver hallmarks or century-old watermarks on German and English pottery, a task that used to take hours at the library.

Among other things, Mancino now claims to own perhaps the country's best antique straight razor collection. He started collecting them in the mid 1990s after he suffered a heart attack and took up decoy carving as a hobby. The avocation resulted in three "so-so" carved ducks and a newfound interest in cutting tools.

Yes, they are antique addicts, admits Mancino. He began collecting when business took him to rural Connecticut, where he discovered the state's ubiquitous barn auctions.

Now the Internet has helped them pass on that addiction globally.

The Mancinos recently made this promise to themselves: Absolutely no more buying trips. "We just have too much," Bill says, sighing.

"We said, maybe, maybe, we can take another trip and buy if we give each other a budget and stick to it. We'll see."

[Last modified August 25, 2005, 09:22:05]