Oddities & curiosities in Des Moines
Oddity shops, curiosity cabinets and taxidermy counters: 5 of the strangest small storefronts in Des Moines, Curioso Antiques & Uniquities, Communal Kitchen Museum and Big Aluminum Bugs among them. The kind of quirky, offbeat retail you leave with a story and a jar of something. They spread across Beaverdale, Amana Colonies, Newton, Drake (Des Moines) and 1 more area, so two or three can make a whole afternoon. 2 of them cost nothing. 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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Curioso Antiques & Uniquities
A Beaverdale house quietly converted into an antiques-and-oddities shop where owners Matt and Shawna lean into gothic, art deco, and European Renaissance curios. Per Axios, it's a residential home reimagined as a curated cabinet of odd and artistic finds rather than a typical mall booth.
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Communal Kitchen Museum
The Ruedy Küche (1863) is the only fully intact communal kitchen surviving from the Amanas' collective era, preserved exactly as it appeared on the last day it fed 40 villagers in 1932 — complete with original cookware, dining room, attached family home, wash house, and chicken house. Operated by the Amana Heritage Society and listed by the National Park Service, it reopened with expanded access in June 2022.
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Big Aluminum Bugs
A local farmer welded giant cast-aluminum insects — including a towering praying mantis — from recycled hog feeders and farm scrap, then planted them on his front lawn with a deadpan placard claiming the three were "trapped and preserved" from a 1913 alien insect invasion of Jasper County. They're visible roadside on private property northwest of Newton, a deeply absurd and delightful piece of rural outsider art.
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Wonderland Apothecary at Groovy Goods
A full herbal apothecary tucked inside Groovy Goods, a vintage hippie shop two blocks from Drake University, stocked with 70+ medicinal and ritual herbs alongside stones, tarot, and 1960s clothing.
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Paradox Antiques, Art, & Oddities
An eccentric Victorian-era curiosity shop where collector Matthew Parsons deliberately juxtaposes light and dark, so a prosthetic leg might sit next to delicate antique jewelry. Beautiful chaos, and the stock turns over constantly.
Oddities & curiosities in Des Moines — FAQ
Which oddity shops & curiosities in Des Moines are the strangest?
Ranked by how strange they actually are: Paradox Antiques, Art, & Oddities, Wonderland Apothecary at Groovy Goods and Communal Kitchen Museum. Paradox Antiques, Art, & Oddities — An eccentric Victorian-era curiosity shop where collector Matthew Parsons deliberately juxtaposes light and dark, so a prosthetic leg might sit next to delicate antique jewelry.
Where in Des Moines are they?
Across Beaverdale, Amana Colonies, Newton, Drake (Des Moines) and Boone. Each listing gives the neighborhood and address so you can cluster a couple into one outing.
Are any of the oddity shops & curiosities in Des Moines free?
Yes — 2 are free to visit, including Curioso Antiques & Uniquities and Big Aluminum Bugs. The rest are mostly low-cost.
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 Paradox Antiques, Art, & Oddities, for instance: Give yourselves a budget and a dare to each find the single strangest object in the shop, then make the other guess what it actually is.
How were these oddity shops & curiosities 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.