Oddities & curiosities in Des Moines

Looking for oddity shops & curiosities in Des Moines? These 5 are the genuinely strange ones — Curioso Antiques & Uniquities, Communal Kitchen Museum, Big Aluminum Bugs and more — each hand-vetted and sourced, not pulled from a top-ten list. Great for an unusual date, a weird afternoon, or showing a visitor the side of Des Moines they'd never find on their own.

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Curioso Antiques & Uniquities A Beaverdale house quietly converted into an antiques-and-oddities shop where owners Matt and Shawna lean int… Beaverdale
Communal Kitchen Museum The Ruedy Küche (1863) is the only fully intact communal kitchen surviving from the Amanas' collective era, p… Amana Colonies
Big Aluminum Bugs A local farmer welded giant cast-aluminum insects — including a towering praying mantis — from recycled hog f… Newton
The Haunted Bookshop Iowa's largest used bookshop, 40,000+ rare and out-of-print titles crammed floor-to-ceiling into an atmospher… Iowa City
Paradox Antiques, Art, & Oddities An eccentric Victorian-era curiosity shop where collector Matthew Parsons deliberately juxtaposes light and d… Boone