DENVER — Five-thousand-two-hundred-eighty feet — it's a number Denverites know well. A mile above sea level.
But what if you add an apostrophe and an "S" onto 5280? This is what you get: Fifty-Two 80’s — a totally awesome shop.
On South Broadway in Denver, Tony Vecchio and Dede Thompson sell memories.
"The beauty of this shop (is) when people come in, they all have their own stories, and memories, and this store sparks that," Dede said.
Storm Troopers, Gumby, Troll dolls. You can look through 7,000 different memories from the 80’s and 90’s.
They are a local small business that makes it a point to fill their store with gems from neighborhood basements and garages around Colorado.
“People often look back at the 80’s and think how innocent, how wonderful, there were so many great things that happened in the 80’s,” Tony said. “I always say the 80’s was a perfect storm of pop culture, fashion, TV, music, and I was a teenager in the 80’s. That all probably willed me to open an 80’s store.”
Dede and Tony would usually be scouring the city for new and old additions to their store today, but they opened it to talk about the meaning of it all.
“What we do here is we sell things, but we try to sell memories and that’s one of the beauties that makes us unique," Dede said.
If you didn’t get a Cabbage Patch Kid when you were young, you can get it now.
It’s not just people of a certain age that find the 80’s and 90’s fascinating.
Gen Z finds this shop too.
What is the most valuable piece here? It depends. You might have your own story about an Atari or a Pound Puppy, and to find it again after half a lifetime — that will be the most valuable thing here.
