A new oddity shop is attracting collectors, strange seekers, weird wanderers and the plain curious of Ballard.

Ballyhoo Curiosity Shop opened its doors at 5445 Ballard Ave. N.W. last month. A preserved antelope can be seen from the doorway. Down the stairs lies a subterranean oasis of wonder. Intrigued shoppers will find everything from minerals and rare jewelry to masks absurd taxidermy and human skulls in jars.

Owner Ryan Robbins, 27, said that the store fits somewhere between a natural history museum and an antique store.

Robbins explained that oddity shops originated as places where people could see and procure rare things from all over the world that many people had never seen.

“People who were able to travel all over the world would collect all these things that before the Internet no one would had been able to see before. … This is really a throw-back of a curiosity shop because its really things from all over the world.”

Where else could you find a Sigmund Freud business card holder but at Ballyhoo Curiosity Shop.

Robbins said he has been waiting to open a shop like this all his life, and his new shop is an opportunity to share his passion for interesting things with other people.

“It’s a curiosity shop with kind of the intention of showing the world a little bit of the cool stuff that both comes from nature and from humanity. … There is a focus on oddities, but there really is an eclectic mix of just about anything, almost like a mercantile but with really weird stuff too.”

The croc and the clock from Pan.

Robbins was drawn to collecting at an early age and started scouring thrift stores, garage sales, consignment shops and estates whenever he had the chance. Originally from Shoreline, he first started collecting Pez dispensers when he was a kid, and he said that his penchant to collect snowballed into collecting all kinds of things. While in college studying Spanish at Western University, Robbins said his roommates hated him because he filled the garage with Rubbermaid bins containing the oddities he collected. Eventually Robbins amassed a huge collection and started a business selling his oddities on ebay.

1930s dental phantom.

After graduating he moved to Greenwood in Seattle and eventually he felt comfortable with the idea of finding a space to start Ballyhoo Curiosity Shop. He said he had opportunities to set up shop in other locations but he held out for Ballard.

“I think Ballard Avenue in terms of North Seattle is one of the highest traffic streets for both restaurants and retail. … But I wanted to also be part of a community and so I waited awhile to find a place and it’s worked out.”

The space Robbins found is the basement space of the building on Ballard Avenue, and the element of going “underground” adds to the mystique of the oddity shop. Indeed, down in Robbins’ labyrinth of the unorthodox one is amid a strange, inconceivable mélange of things that border on the edge of horror and utter elation. Touring the shop, Robbins pointed out a WWII surgical operating table, rare dried insects, Soviet Union gas masks, a 1930s dental phantom and countless pieces of jewelry plucked from iconic eras.

“You go down and you kind of enter a different dimension.”

To learn more about Ballyhoo Curiosity Shop visit http://www.ballyhooseattle.com.