Saturday mornings are when I usually end up there — sometime around ten, before the heat gets serious and before the snowbird crowd thins out for the season. Collector’s Coins & Antiques sits on Kings Highway in the kind of strip that most people drive past without registering, wedged between a nail salon and a tax prep office. Nothing about the outside tells you what’s waiting in there.
Inside, the place runs deep. I mean that literally — it’s longer than it looks from the parking lot, and the further back you go, the older the inventory gets. The front cases hold mostly coins: Morgan silver dollars, Mercury dimes, Indian Head pennies, some raw and some slabbed in PCGS or NGC holders. The prices are marked and they’re fair, which is rarer than it should be in a beach town where dealers sometimes lean on tourist ignorance. I’ve watched the owner talk a retired schoolteacher through the difference between a cleaned coin and an uncirculated one without making her feel dumb for asking.
The antiques section sprawls across the back half of the shop and spills into a side room. Vintage South Carolina license plates. Depression glass in dusty amber and green. A wall of old photos and postcards, mostly from the Grand Strand — some dating back to when Ocean Drive was still a dirt road and the Pavilion was barely standing. If you care about local history at all, that postcard rack alone can eat forty-five minutes.
I’ve picked up a 1942 Walking Liberty half dollar there for around eighteen dollars, and a set of six green Anchor Hocking sherbet glasses for ten bucks total. Neither was a steal exactly, but both were priced like the owner actually knows what things are worth, which cuts both ways — you won’t find a five-dollar silver dollar, but you also won’t accidentally overpay for pressed glass because you didn’t know better.
The staff, which is usually just the owner or one other person, doesn’t hover. They’re available if you have questions and mostly leave you alone if you don’t. That’s the right call for a shop like this. Half the pleasure is the slow look — pulling a tray out from under a case, holding a coin up to the window light, reading the back of a postcard someone mailed from Myrtle Beach in 1954.
Hours can shift seasonally, so it’s worth calling ahead if you’re making a special trip. Cash is preferred for smaller purchases, though they’ll usually work with you on cards for bigger buys. Parking is easy — there’s a small lot right out front and street spots on the side.
This isn’t a place for people who want a quick souvenir run. It rewards the kind of browsing where you don’t have somewhere to be in an hour. But if you’ve got a coin collection that needs a new piece, or you’re trying to track down a piece of old Myrtle Beach history to hang on a wall, Kings Highway is the right stop. Go on a Saturday morning. Give it time.
