Vintage, records & makers in Des Moines
5 vintage shops, record stores and maker spaces in Des Moines, Ratt's Underground Records, Skylabs and Divine Times Vintage among them. Deep-crate digging, oddball inventory, and places where someone still makes the thing they're selling you. They spread across Merle Hay, Valley Junction (West Des Moines), Highland Park, East Village and 1 more area, so two or three can make a whole afternoon. Every entry is hand-vetted against real sources — not scraped off a top-ten list or averaged out of crowd ratings.
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Ratt's Underground Records
Buried in the east end of Merle Hay Mall, Des Moines's oldest and emptiest mall, this is described as one of the weirdest record-store experiences in the Midwest: 50,000+ vinyl records plus vintage VHS, magazines, original concert posters, hundreds of vintage band shirts, old stereo gear and stray Hot Wheels. The owner is known for being friendly, not pushy, and happy to cut a deal.
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Skylabs
A vintage hi-fi temple tucked into Historic Valley Junction that reimagines stereo shopping from the golden era of analog: they buy, sell, trade and repair vintage audio gear alongside vinyl and new turntables. Owner Kevin Moll has turned it into a cult YouTube destination, but in person it's a hushed, gear-nerd wonderland most passersby walk right past.
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Divine Times Vintage
Two floors of rotating vintage vendors in up-and-coming Highland Park, built around owner Jerrica Yasumura's lifelong affinity for hippie culture and family thrifting. Expect groovy 60s and 70s furniture, racks of second-hand clothing and a constantly changing cast of local curators, so no two visits are the same.
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Goldeneye Curations
An East Village vintage and streetwear shop that grew from a single retail rack inside outdoor store Stoked into its own storefront in 2024. Beyond buy-sell-trade racks of sought-after vintage and streetwear, it hosts exclusive merch drops, local-band meet-and-greets and neighborhood pop-ups, giving it a small-scene clubhouse feel.
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Joy the Movie Theater Pig (Capitol II Theatre)
The Capitol II Theatre is a family-owned, two-screen movie house where Joy, a Guinness World Record-holding mini pig, greets visitors from her glass-doored lobby dressing room, wearing tiny outfits and performing piano tricks with her nose — the result of a real city council fight over Newton's no-pigs ordinance. The theater itself dates to 1927 and was saved from bankruptcy by the Bleeker family, who turned Joy into its unlikely star attraction.
Vintage, records & makers in Des Moines — FAQ
Which vintage, record & maker shops in Des Moines are the strangest?
Ranked by how strange they actually are: Ratt's Underground Records, Skylabs and Divine Times Vintage. Ratt's Underground Records — Buried in the east end of Merle Hay Mall, Des Moines's oldest and emptiest mall, this is described as one of the weirdest record-store experiences in the Midwest: 50,000+ vinyl records plus vintage VHS, magazines, original concert posters, hundreds of vintage band shirts, old stereo gear and stray Hot Wheels.
Where in Des Moines are they?
Across Merle Hay, Valley Junction (West Des Moines), Highland Park, East Village and Newton. Each listing gives the neighborhood and address so you can cluster a couple into one outing.
Is this a good weird date in Des Moines?
That's what the list is built for. Every entry has a specific move rather than a vague recommendation — at Ratt's Underground Records, for instance: Make a scavenger-hunt of it: each of you picks a $5 budget and has to find the other a record (or a band shirt, or a weird VHS) that says something about them, then go listen to your hauls.
How were these vintage, record & maker shops chosen?
An agentic research system digs for the genuinely obscure — the spots even locals miss — and every one is verified against real sources before it makes the list. We deliberately skip the landmarks already on every Des Moines guide.