$25 Challenge: Affordable treasures at Crescent Moon Mercantile

One thing about Tucson, is we love a good vintage store, and this week for the $25 Challenge, I stopped by the newest addition to the Midtown Tucson antiquing scene, Crescent Moon Mercantile, to search for unique, affordable finds. 

Crescent Moon Mercantile officially opened its doors earlier this month, taking over the old Safe Shift building at 2801 E. Grant Road. Opening their own store had been a long-term dream between owners Miriam Silver-Altman and Fiza Rahmen who met when Rahmen was working as a cashier at another antique mall, and Silver-Altman was a vendor. 

While Rahmen had always been into thrifting, she said it was while working in that antique shop that she really fell in love with vintage items.

“The community that was there and all the vendors, they got me into it,” she said. “All the vendors coming in and explaining about all the antiques, I got really into how cool the stuff was.

When the old Safe Shift building came up for sale, they decided to take the opportunity to make their dream a reality.

“We had talked about wanting to either own an antique store or an antique mall at some point in the future,” Silver-Altman said, “And then we saw the building come up.”

At Crescent Moon Mercantile, Silver-Altman and Rahmen said they want to focus on offering quality items, and including younger sellers and curators into the space. 

“We want to give more younger people the opportunity to get into this, because a lot of younger people they're just seen as too inexperienced,”  Rahmen said.

Crescent Moon Mercantile isn’t just another antique mall though. Silver-Altman and Rahmen have made it their mission to create a community space where people can spend the day hunting through antiques or grab a drink at the in-house coffee bar — Pretty Coffee — and hang out in one of the comfortable lounge areas. 

“There's definitely a lack of shared community space for people to exist in right now,” Silver-Altman said. “But this is an all day thing that people do. They come to these places and they spend hours and hours just hanging out.”

In the future, they said they hope to work on landscaping the outdoor area to create a space to host community events, but for now, they are grateful for the community support and are excitedly watching all their business grow. 

“It's been very thrilling,” Rahmen said. “It's just nice seeing the vendors and all the effort they put into not only their products but their booths.”

With over 90 vendors in residence, the space is filled with thousands of unique vintage finds, handmade pieces, and adorable trinkets. 

From clothes and accessories to ceramics, room decor, artwork, and records, Crescent Moon Mercantile has hidden gems everywhere you look, which made it extremely hard to narrow my picks down to just a few items, but after much deliberation, here are some of my favorite treasures I found for under $25:

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Aside from antiques, Silver-Altman and Rahmen said they first bonded over their love of cats, which shows in the numerous cat-themed pictures, ceramics, and decor items found in the store. Personally, I love cats probably just as much as they do, so of course, the first thing that caught my eye was a Homegirl Society T-shirt with the most adorable kitten and bow on it. The shirt was priced at exactly $25. I later found a second vintage cat tee with kittens playing in yarn, for $24

Among all the vintage items, there were also a few plants and plant cuttings that I was tempted to buy and add to my own plant collection. The Golden Pathos plants were priced at $8, and the small cuttings which came in small glass jars cost $4.50.

The most surprising booth to me though, was the space owned by Monsoon Mystics. The light purple wicker shelves were filled with antique bowls and vases, as well as some of their metaphysical products like creosote bundles and incense.They also had a selection of their soaps including “Mal de Ojo, Evil Eye,” which smells like sage, blood orange and chamomile; “Naughty Bits,” which is scented with sweet orange, patchouli, and spearmint; “Creo-Soap,” with creosote and rosemary; “This Bar Smells Gay,” which smells like lavender, lemon and vanilla; and their unscented “Clean Girl,” bar. Each bar costs $9.

For $12, they had “Blind Date Blockbuster,” packages with nostalgic ‘80’s-’90’s mystery DVDs, popcorn, and a sticker pack. Or, if you’re into everything mystical and witchy, they had packs of mini three-card tarot readings for $10.

Some of the other random items that I loved were a set of small, 60’s Mikasa Natural Beauty California poppy coffee cups priced at $18 for the pair; a beaded vintage pillow from Christiana Lapetina Johnson for $25; a glass Blenko strawberry listed for $25, a wooden moon and sun mirror for $14.99; $10 tattoo flash sheets, and beautiful patterned vintage scarves for $20 each.

One vendor had a collection of framed desert photos featuring saguaro cactuses and wildflowers, which were priced between $10-25, another sold records for $5 each or 4 for $15, and yet another booth had popular movie and musician posters from Prince’s Purple Rain, to The Outsiders, for $16 each.

And of course, my day wouldn’t be complete without grabbing a delicious Blueberry Lemonade Matcha from Pretty Coffee, which cost only $5, and definitely has to be my new favorite summer drink.