Ye Olde Curiosity Shop is a store founded in 1899, on the Central Waterfront of Seattle, Washington, United States.

An exhibit at the 1909 Alaska–Yukon–Pacific Exposition in Seattle drew tourists, scholars, anthropologists and collectors and was enormous publicity for his already somewhat famous shop.

[4] In addition to the shop, Standley built a home he called "Totem Place" on a 1-acre (4,000 m2) estate in West Seattle.

The estate's collection of totem poles, whale bones, and other curiosities replete with a Japanese-style teahouse and a miniature log cabin drew sightseeing tourists.

[7] The shop's current owners, the aforementioned Andy James and his wife Tammy, also owned Market Street Traders (founded 2007 closed 2010) in Seattle's Ballard neighborhood.

[9] Ye Olde Curiosity Shop was founded in late 1899 as Standley's Free Museum and Curio on Second Avenue at Pike Street.

[1][3][5] In 1963, as the Washington State Ferries system was taking over and completely reworking Colman Dock, the shop moved to a store designed by Paul Thiry.

Visitors have included Teddy Roosevelt, J. Edgar Hoover, Jack Dempsey, Charlie Chaplin, Red Skelton, John Wayne, Katharine Hepburn, James Van Der Beek, and Sylvester Stallone.

The store's logs show that Queen Marie of Romania visited and "sat in the Chinese chair" and that Louis Tiffany bought "curios, idols and a mammoth tusk,"[1][6] As late as the period from 1976 though 1980, the shop auctioned off 2,000 pieces of Native American art.

[4] During the early years of the shop, Princess Angeline, daughter of Chief Seattle (after whom the city is named) made baskets which were later sold there.

Native Alaskan Yup'iks and Iñupiats, who had long been traders, were happy to find a market for items they considered "good for nothing" worn-out cast-off tools and implements.

[1] Display items include an early 19th-century Russian samovar, dozens of totem poles, East Asian weapons, woven cedar mats and fir needle baskets, netsuke, jade carvings, narwhal tusks, and a walrus oosik.

[11][12] Newly published information and a photograph from 1892 indicate that "Sylvester," originally named "McGinty," belonged to confidence man "Soapy" Smith until he sold it in 1895 in Hillyard, Washington.

[13] Standley and his shop were instrumental in the world's perceiving Seattle as within the region associated strongly with totem poles, even though traditionally those had been associated with areas farther north.

[23] His Alaskan ethnological exhibit won the exposition's gold medal in its category,[24] and its contents were eventually purchased by George Gustav Heye for the Museum of the American Indian in New York.