Liberty Antiques Festival for sale after April's annual event

LIBERTY — After nearly 35 years, the Liberty Antiques Festival is up for sale.

Vito Sico said he and his wife, Mary Ellen, held the first festival in September 1991. “We had 81 dealers at the first one, now it’s up to 350.”

While three festivals were canceled during the COVID-19 shutdown, the event has generally gone on twice a year.

“April 2026 will be our last,” Sico said. “We’ll probably be busy doing something (after that) but it’s getting harder to do (the festival) as we get older. There’s a lot of disappointed people.”

But the Sicos are hoping the Liberty Antique Festival will continue on with other owners. 

“We’ve got some interested in buying it,” he said. “The requirement is that it’s not turned into a flea market.”

The Liberty Antique Festival offers 18th- to 20th-century furniture, accessories, pottery, glass, clocks, dolls, toys, military items, advertising memorabilia, decoys, jewelry, quilts, folk art and “in the rough” country Americana. It draws vendors from more than 25 states and customers from all over.

Sico said the list of interested parties includes antique malls, dealers and customers. He’s spent some time talking to some of them but has been so busy preparing for next April to be too involved.

“We have some serious people and we want someone to carry it on and we want to make sure it goes to the right people,” he said.

A big factor is the location, since the Pike Farm Road site will no longer be available, Sico said. “It will have to be moved and we have no control of the land. But we hope to keep it somewhere in Randolph County, close by.

“Our customers come from several states and they travel all around, so it won’t matter to them where it is. Some desperately want to keep it and I would advise them in the beginning.

“Some of them have spent a lot of time here, some 30 years,” he said of the regular customers and dealers. “They enjoy the whole area and it’s like a second home.”

The Sicos will be selling their list of antiques dealers going back to 1991, probably more than 1,000. Then there are desks, filing cabinets with their files of contacts, signs and billboards, along with paperwork about how to run things.

The name of the show, Liberty Antique Festival, is valuable in itself. Over the years the event has become highly regarded. In the beginning, Sico said, people didn’t know where Liberty was. Now it’s a known place name.

After next April, the Sicos will have time to enjoy retirement. “My wife and I will go to shows and we may have more vacations,” he said. “When it gets up time for the show we’ll not know what to do. 

“We haven’t been able to shop because we were too busy” working the event. “Now we’ll be able to have our own booth.”

Foremost in the minds of the Sicos as they prepare to sell the festival is simple: “We really want to keep it in the area. It’s been good for the county.”

The Sicos’ final Liberty Antique Festival will be April 24-25, 2026, at 2855 Pike Farm Road, Staley.

After that? Wait and see.