Vintage clothing spot expands to arcade games

What began as a local vintage clothing store opened by a self-proclaimed “pack rat” has expanded into a new venture: retro gaming.

“I felt like we needed a place you know, that’s vintage clothing but more of a hangout spot,” co-owner Jordan Taylor said. “And, we’re about to start selling snacks, so people can kind of come and really chill. You can order pizza and stay all day.”

The pivot happened when an acquaintance became a business partner. Taylor had come across Mike Jaeger while hunting for video games, and after enough “poking” from Jaeger about the store’s happenings, Taylor invited Jaeger to fold his video game collection into the rest of the store’s merchandise.

The store, started last July by Taylor, was originally a vintage clothing store.

“So I do a lot of thrifting over the years. I’m a pack rat. All of these trinkets and things that I’ve collected over the years, or I do a lot of garage sales and buy out, you know, from old collectors and things like that. We’ve kind of teamed up with people that travel the entire county and buy clothing from different parts of the country,” Taylor said.

The store has racks of vintage clothing, hats, and the store has a lot of kids jerseys.

“We’re really into the sports and race scene and a little bit of everything,” he said. “I visited different vintage clothing stores around the country, and what I wanted to do was take bits of what I liked from each of those stores and do that here.”

Taylor says that most of his Purdue gear is in storage, and that they’ll do pop-ups on campus from time to time.

“We kind of have a lot of stuff in storage, I would guess almost 100 pieces of Purdue clothing, some vintage, some newer,” Taylor said. “I would like to say that, you know, we’re one of the storefronts with probably some of the best in the entire country with vintage Purdue clothing.”

The store also functions as a hangout space, where customers can play vintage arcades, watch old VHS movies, and play on old consoles.

With Gamestop leaving their Wabash Landing location, Taylor and Jaeger wanted their store to display rare consoles and memorabilia at the forefront of the store.

"It kind of came out of nowhere, you know, I would go there quite often, and what I like is that around here, we only have a couple of vintage and retro gaming stores," Taylor said. "The chain store doesn't really seem to have the vintage consoles in boxes like this. You're not going to see this at any store in town"

Jaeger says that as we go further into the digital world, the market for niche collectibles will become harder to find.

“It boils down to our childhood and going from there, it’s all just stuff we grew up with and the nostalgia of it. For me, it’s not so much about the money. It’s so much the reaction that we get from the people that walk in here. That initial reaction, like ‘Oh my God, I remember this and look at this,’ it’s just different,” he said. “I don’t want to leave the store, you know, both of us work day jobs, and I come here in the evenings, but I don’t want to leave because it’s, you know, so fun.”

Taylor says that the shop is open to buying, selling, or trading for any of the store’s items.

Its Depop store is @vintagevault765 and Instagram: @vintagevault765. The store's location is 525 Wabash Avenue, and it's open 12pm-12am everyday.