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I am headed out to the Salt Lake City and Provo, Utah area for a short trip. Does anyone know of any decent surplus shops or militaria shops in that general vicinity that are worth going to visit? Any help is greatly appreciated!

 

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I spent three weeks in Salt Lake City and pretty much covered everything they had to offer, which isn't much and what you do find is overpriced. WIth that said, there is an OpsGear outlet store in North Salt Lake City, but it isn't much and not worth the waste of gas as everything in the store front is the same as online and costs just as much.

Capital City Antique Mall has a fair amount of stuff, but everything is over priced and you have to haggle or you pay way over. There are a couple of stores on 89 highway that I pulled some nice stuff out, one place has a bunch of old ammo crates if you have a vehicle big enough to carry them off. Vine Street antiques has quite a bit of militaria, some good, some overpriced. I always seem to buy something from here when I go in.

Never saw anything enticing in Provo and some of the guys that I know that live down there say there isn't much.

As for surplus, there is a store in Taylorsville, the guys said it was more a hiking and camping store than Army Surplus, I never went in. I do know that there used to be an outdoor Surplus store up in Ogden close to Hill AFB, but I don't know if it's still there. When I was there in October, I couldn't find reference to it and the locals looked at me funny, so it may be gone now.

If you are making this trip for this purpose, don't waste your money, if you are going and this is a side attraction, go, but don't be surprised if you don't find much. I happened to stumble into an Antique show in a convention center and pulled a fair amount of goodies out of it, but most of the dealers traveled in and were not from Salt Lake. Wave at Camp Robinson when you drive by and up on the hill, wave at the NSA facility that tracks your cell phone calls. Actually, take a selfie with your phone and text it to someone, they will know you are there ;)

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I spent three weeks in Salt Lake City and pretty much covered everything they had to offer, which isn't much and what you do find is overpriced. WIth that said, there is an OpsGear outlet store in North Salt Lake City, but it isn't much and not worth the waste of gas as everything in the store front is the same as online and costs just as much.

Capital City Antique Mall has a fair amount of stuff, but everything is over priced and you have to haggle or you pay way over. There are a couple of stores on 89 highway that I pulled some nice stuff out, one place has a bunch of old ammo crates if you have a vehicle big enough to carry them off. Vine Street antiques has quite a bit of militaria, some good, some overpriced. I always seem to buy something from here when I go in.

Never saw anything enticing in Provo and some of the guys that I know that live down there say there isn't much.

As for surplus, there is a store in Taylorsville, the guys said it was more a hiking and camping store than Army Surplus, I never went in. I do know that there used to be an outdoor Surplus store up in Ogden close to Hill AFB, but I don't know if it's still there. When I was there in October, I couldn't find reference to it and the locals looked at me funny, so it may be gone now.

If you are making this trip for this purpose, don't waste your money, if you are going and this is a side attraction, go, but don't be surprised if you don't find much. I happened to stumble into an Antique show in a convention center and pulled a fair amount of goodies out of it, but most of the dealers traveled in and were not from Salt Lake. Wave at Camp Robinson when you drive by and up on the hill, wave at the NSA facility that tracks your cell phone calls. Actually, take a selfie with your phone and text it to someone, they will know you are there ;)

The surplus shopping would most definitely be a side attraction. I lived in southern Utah for a year and never found much of anything down that way either. I was just hoping their might be some surplus shops in and around the SLC/Provo area that might have something decent.

 

I guess living where I do and being in relative close proximity to three bases has spoiled me. :) Thanks, Hawk!

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  • 4 weeks later...

The outdoor/surplus store by Ogden could be Smith and Edwards (3936 N Highway 126, Farr West, UT 84404; 801-731-1120; www.smithandedwards.com). When I was a kid in the early 80s they had TONS of military surplus, including a huge outdoor lot filled with vehicles, trailers, and all kinds of big, fascinating stuff, not to mention the uniforms and gear in the store. We used to go there to get stuff to play army, including M1 helmet liners (we didn't get the helmets, of which they had stacks, because they were too heavy for us to run around in, can you imagine? If only I could go back!), garrison caps with any color piping you could wish for (these fascinated us and we always bought a couple of colors each time we went there, which also shows they were cheap enough for 9-yr-olds' allowances), and canteens and web gear dating back to WWI.

 

During the 90s they cleared out the vehicles and stuff in the lots outside the store, and their emphasis now is more as an outdoors/hunting/camping store than a surplus store. They still have some surplus but it's modern stuff. No more stacks of M1s and bins full of WWI web equipment.

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