THORNDIKE — Tucked away in a rural, inland part of Maine, an unassuming sprawling building doesn’t look like much from the outside. But Bryant Stove & Music in Thorndike is totally worth the drive. Inside, there are so many wild and wacky vintage treasures, it will take more than one story to cover them all.

Let’s start with the miniature stoves that sit atop a long shelf that spans the length of their antique stove showroom. Owned by Joe and Bea Bryant, who have collected these tiny toy stoves and working salesmen samples from all over the country for the last 50 years, these cast iron miniature replicas of full-size vintage stoves all differ in size and shape. The Bryants’ daughter, Julie, who takes care of the store while her parents are away for the winter, is not sure which ones are actually toys and which are salesmen’s samples.

According to the website Antiqbuyer,com, run by two experts who are full-time active antique dealers in antique and vintage small child size, miniature or salesman sample size stoves, “Small antique stoves are one of the most widely misunderstood of all collectibles in the antique toy stove antique marketplace today. Even the ‘experts’ often times cannot agree on what constitutes a salesman sample, display model, a simple toy, or even an outright fake.”

Apparently, salesmen trying to sell gas or electric stoves, would pack up one of these small-but-heavy display stoves in a carrying case and go around to shopkeepers and households and demonstrate how the stove worked in order to lure the customer away from their trusty old wood-fired stove.

Then, there are renditions of toy stoves made of cast iron with finishes of nickle, enamel or graniteware. But how to know if it is a display piece or an actual toy? Antiqbuyer.com provides a clue. “Some of the largest and most prolific makers of toy cast iron stoves were Stevens, Kenton, Hubley and a few others.  Stoves with names like the Baby, Royal and Queen were made by these toy makers, while in general stoves with names like Buck's, Charter Oak, Detroit Stove Works or others with actual company or stove works in their names were made by or for that company.”

We’ve created a gallery for to look at based on some of the miniature stoves in this place, with a request from our readers to provide us with more clues.

To learn more about what other fascinating relics reside at Bryant Stove & Music, visit: bryantstove.com

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com