Makes Cents Variety Store is located on the very outskirts of Milwaukee on Howard Avenue—cross the street and you’re in Greenfield. Walking through the aisles is a trip backward in time—the shelves will catch your eye with familiar faces if you were a toy consumer in the ’80s, ’90s or 2000s. You’ll find He-Man toys, old video games, Garbage Pail Kids, autographed pictures of wrestlers, Smurfs, Gremlins, Barbies, and old issues of Fangoria and Nintendo Power. It’s a trip down memory lane that’s brought good business for the store’s proprietor, Charles Deau, who buys and sells toys and memorabilia by the item or entire collection.
Just walking in here, I’m seeing things I haven’t seen since my childhood.
Absolutely, we get that all the time, people come in and relive their childhood right before your eyes. It’s a beautiful thing to watch everyone come in and geek out on the ’80s merch and the nostalgia of it. We get a lot of parents that come in and want to turn their kids on to simpler times gone by and the things they had.
Tell me more about the history and inspiration for the store.
I’ve worked in coin-operated amusements since I was 18, I earned my stripes in the professional industry and in my side times I’d go out and pick. I would go to flea markets and yard sales, get up early and hit maybe five sales before I got to work. I drove the truck for the company, so if I saw something—video games on a table—I’d pull over. Eventually going to work got to be a burden for me because I was doing better financially from my side jobs.
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Tell me what item coming in through the door immediately has your attention?
Personally, I’m a huge wrestling fan, classic wrestling, if I see things from that original early ’80s era, whether it be toys, autographs, store promotionals, anything, that’s what gets me excited, I always thought I’d be a professional wrestler. Now I’m a retail store owner, but life has a way—I meet a lot of the guys, show them pictures of the store, they love that we have wrestling on the TV at the store every day.
What about financially? What sells well here?
’80s toys and video games. Boxed is probably five times what a loose one is, financially. So when we see collections of hundreds of games boxed, you could be talking about a down payment on a home or a car in full. You’re talking serious money—until the bubble bursts. This market is like anything else, good bubble right now, but that bubble is swelling, and prices fluctuate. It’s almost like the video game stock market.
Why do people respond so strongly to these items?
The item is just a representation of that memory or time in their life, so when they see something, be it a cup from McDonald’s or a Dragon Ball figure, they remember. There’s always a story—you can see it in their face—we don’t know what it is until they tell us, but you see them stop, look, and they’re deep in thought, and they smile or get a little teary eyed. We kind of address each person differently, some we’re fun with; some we’re serious with.
Makes Cents Variety Store is located at 5027 W. Howard Ave. Learn more online by visiting makescentsvariety.com.
