There is something for everyone – and plenty of parking – at this favorite Savannah antiques mall.
Written by Kathryn Drury Wagner
Photography by Daniel White
Jim Plumlee’s email has been blowing up lately. The founder/CEO of Picker Joe’s Antique Mall and Vintage Market receives an ever-growing flow of inquiries from customers anxious to know if the new location is ready.
For Plumlee, it’s confirmation that he’s doing the right thing. It took guts to close down the previous — and nationally recognized — Picker Joe’s location on 41st Street in April 2025 and renovate a whole building as its new home. It’s at 66 W. Montgomery Cross Road, formerly home to Summit Gymnastics. At the time of this writing, the build-out, which began in August 2025, was nearing completion, but an official opening date had yet to be set. Scuba Shack is staying on as a commercial tenant in the center of the building, and the front of the building will eventually be leased out, with the whole structure being renamed as Picker Joe’s Plaza.
Plumlee says that 99% of his pickers — the vendors who source items and curate them for their booth areas — have come with him to the new location, though he’s also adding 15 to 18 new pickers to the mix.
“Picker Joe’s is, like our tagline says, an experience like no other,” Plumlee says. “The magic of it is the diversity of items we have. We have 65 professional pickers from all over the country. When I opened the first store, I didn’t want to duplicate what anyone else was doing. You can take stuff and stick it in a box in the store, and it’s not going to be the same. It’s about the environment.” Plumlee is careful to partner with pickers who specialize in a certain type of item, “so it’s not a hodgepodge of things,” he says.
Customers range from professional designers in search of movie props and homeowners seeking architectural salvage to buses full of tourists.
“It’s the story behind the items,” says Plumlee of his success. “The feeling people get, the smile that it puts on people’s faces. In this day and age, you’re spending money on stuff like a set of tires you don’t want. You come in here, you can just let go and go back in time. It’s a happy place for people where they can come in and unwind.”
Christopher Shomo, the store manager, designed everything. Shomo, a Savannah College of Art and Design alumnus with degrees in architecture and computer art, has been with Picker Joe’s since it opened in 2015.
The new space, originally 9,000 square feet, now has an added mezzanine, bringing Picker Joe’s to 12,000 square feet— and much to customers’ relief, there’s plenty of parking. Even with all that room, Plumlee says it was challenging “trying to do all that we want to do, to fit it into the footprint of the space.” He and his team have done most of the work themselves, with the exception of electrical and HVAC. When I visited, the wooden roof of a house-like structure was being constructed in the middle of the store, destined to become the main midcentury area for shoppers.
Guests will be able to browse for more items and categories of items, says Plumlee, who also plans to expand the Picker Joe’s branded line, which currently includes soaps and candles. The cozy red soda fountain cafe, with coffee and ice cream treats, has been rebuilt on the mezzanine level.
Throughout, the design is made to flow, so there are no dead ends for shoppers. “If you are thinking, ‘Now where was I?’ you might miss something,” Plumlee says.
“It’s going to look incredible once everything is in place,” Plumlee adds with a smile. “This really is a dream come true.”
SNAKES ON A PLANE
The new Picker Joe’s location features playful touches shuch as a vintage seaplane and a replica of the old Savannah control tower. These are nods to Sky Pickers, an offshoot of Jim Plumlee’s main business. “Sky Pickers happened organically,” he says. “Aviation has been a big part of my life, and I have been flying since I was 15. So I combined my two passions: picking and flying.”
Sky Pickers helps movie and TV productions quickly source hard-to-find items for props or set design. “I’ll take our twin-engine plane, source [an item], and drop it off by either driving it to where it needs to go or flying it to them if it’s small enough,” Plumlee says.
The vintage seaplane in the shop was featured in the film “Speed 2” with Sandra Bullock, and getting it to Savannah became like an action movie of its own. The plane had been on a lake and hadn’t flown in many years. Plumlee bought it, took it all apart, loaded it on the trailer, and put the struts into the back of his van.
“We’d just turned onto the [Talmadge] bridge when my friend says, ‘Jim, don’t move. There’s a snake. By your head.’ I couldn’t even look.” He was worried the snake, dangling just to his left, might be a water moccasin about to bite him in the face. “I couldn’t pull over because we were on the bridge,” Plumlee says. “It was terrifying.”
Thankfully for all of us vintage shoppers in Savannah, Plumlee was able to soon safely extricate the snake from the van and has lived to tell the tale.
