By Tim Trudell

    They say one person’s junk is another person’s treasure. For the Cox brothers in Newman Grove, they’re kings, sitting atop a mountain of gold. From door handles to old newspapers – and everything in between – the treasures at B&M Antiques and Architectural Salvage can fill a house, or a few hundred.
    And, to think it all started with their dad farming. Bob Cox and his wife operated a small farm north of Newman Grove. It wasn’t uncommon for him to find items dumped in farm fields. Junk to most people - treasures to him – the items found their way to the farmhouse or outbuildings. The elder Cox would help tear down old buildings as a side job, salvaging woodwork, windows, doors, and ceiling tin. Anything that could be saved or repurposed. He’d sell what he saved. Then, salvaging became his passion.
    “He’d go to estate sales and buy boxes of books,” said Brad Cox, one of the two brothers now running the company. “Each sale would have boxes of books and he’d buy them all. He had them in the basement of the farmhouse. Rows and rows and rows of books.”
    One day, their mom announced she wanted to move into town, Brad Cox said.
    “They moved to town in a hurry. He moved to town under protest,” Cox said. “Mom was moving to town with or without him, so he followed suit. He packed up the books and brought them to town.”
    In the end, their dad had collected about 30,000 books, from antique school textbooks to classic novels, said Jim Cox, the other half of the Cox brother team running the business today.
    Needing to do something with all the antiques and vintage wares he had collected and sold for more than three decades, their father opened B&M Antiques and Architectural Salvage in 1996 in a former drug store on Newman Grove’s main street. He ran the business until passing away in 2012 at the age of 90.
    “He may not have done the daily tasks of running everything at that point, but he stayed involved,” said Jim Cox.
    “He’d gone at a subdued pace,” Brad Cox said. “His memory wasn’t that good anymore, but the store is what kept him going. Then, one day, he said, ‘Here it is boys. Handle it.’”
    Brad and Jim Cox each had their own careers before joining forces to take over B&M Antiques and Architectural Salvage. Brad worked at the Bank of Newman Grove, while Jim ran his own antique store in West Point. He owned Elkhorn Valley Antiques for about 35 years before closing it.
    “I got interested in the business by osmosis,” said Jim Cox. “We grew up around old stuff. And salvaging old stuff. Dad had us pulling nails as little kids.”
    The brothers have combined to grow B&M into an internationally known business. They’ve sold items that find their way to places, such as Japan, said Brad Cox. People come from all over the Midwest to the small town of about 700 so they can scavenge through five large buildings – up to 50,000 square feet, each – for treasures.
    Customers search for the classics, just as their dad did – ceiling tins, woodwork, trim, flooring, and windows. Even doorknobs.
    “Most things don’t need refurbishing before we sell them,” Brad Cox said. “Some things may need a little polishing. If something needs more work than others, we may sell it as is.”
    Covering a 100-mile radius, the brothers seek out houses that are more than 100 years old.
    “We like to find stuff in buildings from the 1800s to the late 1920s,” Brad Cox said. “During the ‘30s, not many houses were built because of the Depression. After that, they’re too new.”
    Unlike their father, they don’t tear down houses anymore.
    “We just take the cool stuff out of them,” Jim Cox said.
    Jim and his wife Esther often spend Sundays driving the backroads, checking out old farmsteads, estate sales, and antique markets, searching for opportunities. The store is closed Thursday and Sunday.
    The Coxes have a large vintage book and periodical collection.
    “It’s kind of sad,” Brad Cox said. “There are a few people who will do some collecting, but books aren’t a real good seller.”
    But to Frank Marsh, B&M Antiques and Architectural Salvage is heaven for a book lover. The co-owner of the Historic Argo Hotel Bed and Breakfast in Crofton, Neb., has been known to spend a week in the shed housing books, meticulously going through stacks and stacks of vintage books.
    “I’ve found some first editions among the collections,” Marsh said. “They have a great collection.”
    B&M’s storefront has been home to several businesses in the past. Originally a pharmacy, it was later a Gambles hardware store.
    Today, you’ll find an array of antiques, including early 20th-century drug bottles and other containers which add to the feel of a one-time pharmacy.
    The store is a maze of impressive collectibles, with dishware, stain-glass windows, signs, furniture, and more. But, the main attractions include a giant stage curtain from the 1940s, rescued from an old schoolhouse. The curtain is about 40 feet long and wide, listing businesses from the era, some of which are still operating but in different locations, Brad Cox said.
    “That and a Newman Grove town sign are for display only,” he said. “Everything else is for sale.”
    The Coxes encounter all types of shoppers, they said. Newcomers meander through collections of barn doors, cabinets, and other household items, measuring items and pricing them, with plans to return. Veteran shoppers often bring trucks or trailers along with them, ready to load up with a bevy of goods for their home projects.
    “People can spend half a day here or a full day,” Brad Cox said. “People do like to haggle. It’s expected. We’re fine with that. There are some things we can negotiate and some things we can’t. It depends on what we had to pay for it.
    “People really just like to discover something.”