Bob Monaco

It’s difficult for me to remember when I first met Bob Monaco. I know that it has been within the last five years but now I feel as if I’ve known him forever. He owned and ran an indoor Flea Market at the time and I had tons of stuff to dispose of. At that time he was purchasing yard sale items and buying up estates for his flea market. He still buys estates, but now he uses them in his new business. He’s one of those people that you like right off the bat; funny, frenetic, honest. Therefore, since I have decided all of Aiken County is now my neighborhood, this week’s story is about Bob.

The Monaco name has been a landmark of sorts in North Augusta for 90 years. Bob opened Monaco‘s Tropical Fish and Accessories over 30 years ago, naming his business after his grandfather Phillip Monaco. Five years ago Bob started the Flea Market business behind his tropical fish place at 727 E. Buena Vista Ave. It was the one and only indoor Flea Market around until the other one opened in the old K-Mart building. They have since gone, Bob is still here, but in 2004 he changed the nature of his business from tropical fish and flea market to auction house. He told me that back in the 70’s and 80’s there was an auction house in North Augusta but that has since closed, leaving Monaco’s Auction the one and only auction house in North Augusta.
Bob’s place auctions off “Almost all old stuff” from antique toys to pottery, glassware, railroad lanterns and other railroad memorabilia, old books, 78 LP’s, sometimes great pieces of antique furniture such as a Mahogany Barrister‘s bookcase that is now back on the market, boy scout memorabilia, war medals, dishes, you name it Bob probably has it and if he doesn’t he can probably find it. He likes to say what he does is all about fun and the fear of buying something you didn’t mean to by scratching your nose or swatting a bug just doesn’t happen in his place and if you buy something then realize you bought the wrong thing that’s ok too; he’ll fix it.
Bob Monaco’s Auction House has been an integral part of making my yard beautiful, thus improving my neighborhood. I’m an avid gardener but I just don’t go for the run-of-the-mill, buy at any nursery or garden center, yard art. Bob has supplied me with huge porch columns, picket fence panels, a small church pew, various wooden chairs, antique wagons, old metal containers and the latest thing for my secret place, an old glider with cushions. He knows my taste, he finds me things that may be just a little weird to other people, but when he sees them he thinks of me and I like that personal touch when dealing with businesses. I asked him the other day what is the strangest thing you have auctioned off and he told me he thought it had to be the two-hole seat for an outhouse and when he saw it he couldn’t pass it up. I thought it would have made a nice picture frame for not too popular members of the family but I don’t know what the people that bought did with it; neither did he.
So if you think you may like to visit the place that makes my immediate neighborhood attractive and the place I have adopted as part of my neighborhood, Bob holds his auctions every Friday night starting at 7:00 P.M. and for an even better find, try going on Tuesdays when he auctions what’s left over from Fridays or what didn’t make the cut. Bob will make you feel right at home and who knows, you might find something to improve your neighborhood too.
A while after writing this column Bob retired. He can't get the flea market out of his blood it seems because he still turns up at yard sales and trash heaps. He still has that eye for what people will purchase.