Walking Antwerp's Secondhand Trail from Kammenstraat to Berchem

The rails on Kammenstraat hang so tight you have to work them with two hands, and the nearest price tag says three euros. Six hundred metres south, behind a quiet door in Het Zuid, a pre-loved Delvaux sits on a padded shelf with a price that would cover a week of hotel nights. Antwerp's secondhand trail runs the entire distance between those two facts in about twenty-five minutes of walking, and the only real skill is doing it in the right order on the right day.

Kammenstraat first, and early

Kammenstraat was a cheap, slightly rough shopping street in the 1990s, which is exactly why the city's fashion graduates and the resellers who followed them could afford it. The rents went up, the shops mostly stayed, and the street still sets the tone for everything downhill from it.

Think Twice (Sint-Andries) is the loudest survivor of that logic. It runs five Antwerp branches (Kammenstraat 85, Nationalestraat 81, Lange Klarenstraat 21, Jezusstraat 18 and Twaalfmaandenstraat 13) under one operator, so treat them as a single stop and walk into whichever door your route passes. Most stock sits between €3 and €25, but the mechanism that matters is the staged monthly price-drop cycle: unsold items step down a tier at a time until they bottom out at €1. Learn where you are in that calendar and the whole shop changes character. Sale days are shoulder-to-shoulder, the aisles are genuinely cramped, and four people moving as a unit will block them for everyone. Split up and agree a time to regroup on the pavement. There is no door policy and no appointment, so just walk in.

Four numbers along, Episode (Kammenstraat 14, Sint-Andries) is the opposite temperament: a vintage superstore, merchandised by colour and decade, with a floor large enough that a group of six barely registers. Expect €10 to €50 for most pieces. One warning that costs people their morning: it relocated here from Steenhouwersvest, and enough older listings still carry the old address that visitors stand outside a shuttered shop wondering what happened. Ignore the Steenhouwersvest entry entirely. One more thing, Episode is card-only. Keep your cash; the market and the auction later in this piece will want it.

Downhill on Nationalestraat with an empty bag

Nationalestraat carries the trail south, and the first stop rewards stamina over taste. Melting Pot Kilo (Nationalestraat 14, Sint-Andries) sells vintage by weight at roughly €15 per kilo, open seven days, with the till at the scale. This format is made for groups: pool one basket, weigh once, split the bill. It is also the stop where a browse is worthless, so budget a full hour of digging. Think about density while you dig. A wool overcoat will swallow your budget on its own; cotton tees, silk shirts and thin knitwear are where buying by weight actually pays.

Further along, Labels Inc. (Nationalestraat 95, Sint-Andries) is where the trail stops being about luck. This is the serious address for resale of the designers who came out of the city's fashion academy at the start of the 1980s and rearranged what a European wardrobe looked like (Ann Demeulemeester, Dries Van Noten, Margiela, Raf Simons), alongside one-off runway samples. Prices run €80 to €600 and upwards, with samples higher again. It moved here from Aalmoezenierstraat, it is closed Sunday and Monday, and it is a quiet boutique: two or three of you at a time, not a group outing. It is the one shop on this route that explains why Antwerp has a fashion reputation at all, and it deserves an unhurried half hour. The wider city context sits in our Antwerp guide.

In the same quarter, Jutka & Riska (Sint-Andries) is the shop that fixes your weekend. Two Dutch sisters run it, mixing Y2K pieces and designer vintage with their own upcycled label, at €15 to €80. Small groups are fine, no reservation needed, and crucially it opens seven days including Sunday, rare enough here that it is worth building a Sunday around.

Friday morning belongs to the auction

On Friday mornings the Vrijdagmarkt Auction (historic centre) sells bailiff-seized household contents in the open square, roughly 7:30am to 2pm. It is free to attend and there is no registration to watch. The square reopened in September 2025 after a nine-month renovation that had displaced the auction entirely, so it is running again in its proper home, which locals will tell you about unprompted.

Go as a spectator first. Bidding is fast and conducted in Dutch, lots can open at €1, and the danger is less that you get outbid than that you end up owning a pallet of someone else's crockery. Stand at the edge, watch two or three lots go through, and work out the rhythm before you so much as lift your chin.

When the hammering winds down, My Ohm (Vrijdagmarkt 14, historic centre) is on the same square, which makes the pairing obvious. It deals in leather only, boots, bags, gloves and belts, at €20 to €120, and it opens Thursday to Sunday afternoons only. The space is very small: this is a stop for pairs, not for groups, and the owner's attention is part of what you are paying for. Try the boots on properly; vintage leather has already taken someone else's shape and you want to know whose.

The department store that outlasted the trends

Pardaf (Gemeentestraat 8, station quarter) has been trading since 1973 and sits five minutes' walk from Antwerpen-Centraal, which makes it the natural first or last stop if you are arriving or leaving by train. Three floors hold the deepest general secondhand stock in the city, and general is the operative word. This is quality mid-range brands, coats, shoes and household goods rather than costume vintage, priced €10 to €60, and it closes on Sunday.

The floors spread a group out naturally, which is half of why it works here. Patience is the other half, because nothing is curated for you, and that is the point. Half an hour in Pardaf tells you more about what Antwerp actually wears than an afternoon of hunting for a labelled jacket.

Sunday runs along the river

Sunday morning is the Sint-Jansvliet Antiques Market (Sint-Andries, riverside), open-air from 9am to 5pm, weather permitting, and free to enter. It is one of the city's oldest markets, selling brocante, books, collectibles and vintage clothing at roughly €5 to €200 a stall item. Two rules: bring cash, because most dealers do not take cards, and go early. Stall numbers thin through the afternoon and thin badly in winter, so a ten o'clock arrival sees a different market than a two o'clock one.

From there, Kloosterstraat runs inland, lined with dealers where reproduction furniture sits a doorway away from the real thing and nothing on the street helps you tell them apart. Akanthos Eclectic Interiors (Kloosterstraat 46, Sint-Andries) is the credible anchor. Carmen Tonen has been dealing here since 1988, prices run €150 to €3,000, and everything is sold in original state rather than stripped and refinished, which is why the pieces look their age in the good way. It opens Thursday to Sunday afternoons only, from 13:30, so pair it with the market rather than trying to get in beforehand. Browsing groups are welcome. If something large gets its hooks into you, settle crating and freight before you settle the price.

The expensive end, in Het Zuid

Two stops close out the trail, and both reward a change of pace. Scruples (Mechelsesteenweg 101-103, Het Zuid) is owner-run luxury secondhand, curated hard by Kris, at €30 to €400. The floor is small and the stock has been filtered before you see it, so the hit rate is unusually high for the time you spend. Walk-ins and small groups are fine, and the service is one-to-one, which means you will get an honest opinion on whether a jacket fits you, if you ask for one.

Labellov (Verlatstraat 15, Het Zuid) is where authentication sets the price: IT-bags and vintage pieces from the Belgian leather house that has been making them since the first half of the nineteenth century, priced €300 to €10,000 and beyond. An appointment is strongly advised and part of the stock is appointment-only, so this is not a drop-in and not a group stop. It closes most weekends, opening on the first Sunday of the month, and runs shortened hours on Wednesday and Friday. Book ahead, arrive as one or two people, and come with a specific bag in mind rather than a browse.

The cheapest stop has the best building

Circuit, the De Kringwinkel Antwerpen centre (Jef Cassiersstraat 29, Nieuw Zuid), is the cheapest thing on this route at €2 to €20, and the only one where the architecture competes with the stock. Clothing, tableware and homeware share a big open hall with eighteen sustainable traders, and the hall takes any size of group without complaint. It closes Sunday and Monday. Come here after the designer shops rather than before. The contrast teaches you more than either end does on its own, and you will buy better in both directions for having seen it.

One tram stop worth leaving the centre for

HOST (Statiestraat 56, Berchem) is a short tram or train hop out, and it is a sustainable concept store rather than a vintage shop. The secondhand is one curated, strictly inspected department on a single rail at €15 to €90, not the whole floor, so go expecting a rail and not a hunt. What earns the journey is the in-store bar that handles groups, and a browse that takes twenty minutes rather than an hour in a part of the city most visitors never see. It closes Sunday and Monday except for the first Sunday of the month.

How to plan the week

Sunday is the strongest single day: Sint-Jansvliet in the morning, Jutka & Riska and Melting Pot Kilo in the middle, Akanthos from 13:30. Labels Inc., Pardaf, Circuit and HOST are all shut on Sunday, and the first Sunday of the month is the exception that also opens Labellov and HOST. Friday morning is the auction, with My Ohm alongside it. Monday is the weak day, with Labels Inc., Circuit and HOST closed, though Pardaf, Think Twice, Episode, Melting Pot Kilo and Jutka & Riska carry it.

Everything from Kammenstraat to Het Zuid is walkable, end to end in under half an hour at an unhurried pace. Pardaf is five minutes from Antwerpen-Centraal; Circuit in Nieuw Zuid and HOST in Berchem are the two that want a tram or a short train hop. Wear shoes you can stand in for six hours.

Episode is card-only. The Sint-Jansvliet dealers and the Friday auction are cash, and most stalls will not have change for a large note. Draw cash the day before rather than hunting a machine mid-market.

A genuine day on the low end (Think Twice, Circuit, a kilo basket) lands around €50 to €80 with something to show for it. Mid-range through Pardaf, Jutka & Riska, Scruples and My Ohm runs €150 to €300. Labels Inc., Akanthos and Labellov are open-ended, and worth treating as a separate decision made in advance rather than in the room.

Basing yourself between the station and Sint-Andries puts eleven of these fourteen stops inside a twenty-minute walk; compare rates and locations through Antwerp hotel search before you commit to a district, because the walk back with two full bags is the part nobody plans for.