WILTON – Nothing new can be found in Bob and Toni Bowering’s Collectors Delight shop on Routes 2 and 4.

The shop, located at the former Curves building, offers antiques and collectibles.

“They say it’s not an antique till it’s a 100 years old,” Bob said Tuesday, “so there’s nothing here that can be bought in a store or by catalog.”

Allotted spaces have been set up to potentially rent to other dealers but now house items from furniture to glassware to a lot of paper ephemera, or printed matter preserved by collectors. The couple also offer hunting, fishing and military antiques and collectibles, they said. They don’t have coins or stamps as they said it’s not their expertise, but hope to find a collector willing to rent a space.

The shop opened July 1 but they have timed their grand opening for this weekend during the Blueberry Festival. They are open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. seven days a week this summer with plans to reduce the hours during the winter.

Longtime collectors themselves, they have been running a booth at the Fairfield Mall as well as working antique shows from Florida to Maine, he said.

His own personal collection centers on Civil War items based on his love of history and military items, he said. While willing to purchase Civil War items, he said his own collection is not for sale.

There’s no one particular item that Toni says she likes to collect but she looks for jewelry, nice glassware, sewing and related items such as buttons and paper dolls, assuring that the shop will offer variety.

“It’s like a treasure hunt. You never know what you’re going to find,” Toni said in regard to attending sales and auctions, “but you have to keep an open mind.”

They try to find the unusual, they said, as they spoke about a table they recently sold. It was a 44-inch diameter wagon wheel, inlaid between the spokes and the center support was the axle of the wheel. The wheel was probably made in the 1800s, she said.

“Some craftsman years ago made the table,” she said, “and now we love to be able to resell it.”

The Wilton couple traded a weekly drive to Fairfield for the new shop five minutes from their home when their youngest son, George, stationed in Iraq, wanted to invest in some property here. They looked at the Curves building, Bob said, and George decided he’d buy it if they would open an antique store.

They plan to offer a little bit of something for everyone including dealers and the public, she said. When people ask for items they don’t have, she said, then they’ll know what people are collecting and start watching more closely for those specialty items.

After he retired from working for the Sheriff’s Department and she from being administrator of Edgewood Manor, the couple have spent the last few winters in Florida but they missed the snow and are looking forward to staying here this winter.