Gilmore, 49, grew up in a secluded house on her parent's lemon orchards in Claremont, Calif. As a child, she says, she could hardly wait till the weekend to visit her great-grandmother's house and be around the "whole atmosphere" of moviemaking.

Her great-grandmother Matilda "Mimi" Babcock was a seamstress for MGM studios up until her death in the mid-1960s and often had movie stars come to her home for costume fittings.

According to Gilmore, it was Babcock who sewed the blue gingham dress for Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz and Shirley Temple's dress in The Blue Bird. Gilmore was allowed to watch her great-grandmother as the stars were fitted in the sewing room as long as she was quiet, she says.

She remembers one actress—Margaret Hamilton—she did not like meeting because she sensed the woman did not like children.

"I don't think it even clicked that she was the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz, but I just didn't take to her personality," she says, adding that she told her great-grandmother that she did not want to be there if Hamilton came back.

Babcock also made candy in her Pomona home that she sold to a candy company. It was Gilmore's childhood memories of candy making and hearty soups and walls of stars' autographs that dazzled her senses and warmed her heart.

"All that stuff brings back fond memories," she says.

After her great-grandmother died when Marji was 12, Marji began to collect items from the past. Her first collection was troll dolls. She says she would have gone to more secondhand stores as a child, but that was not a shopping habit her parents encouraged. Eventually her parents divorced, and Gilmore moved to the Bay Area after high school to live with her mother. It was during those years that she began combing antique stores.

"I've always loved anything bizarre and unusual," she says.

Gilmore started collecting antiques and nostalgic toys like Raggedy Ann and Andy that captured her imagination and her longings for a bygone era. An entire room in her home is devoted to radios from the first tube radios to radios disguised as Gumby and Barbie.

"I just find it exhilarating," she says. "It's not like I've ever outgrown it. A lot of people don't understand and ask, 'How come you like toys?' But they're just magical and darling."

Her Willow Glen home is stocked with funky collections and eclectic commemoratives, as well as her own art. Her two dogs, Blaze, a red Chinese chow, and Venus, a black English chow, loll around the house, never touching any antiques, she says.

Gilmore painted the living room yellow and decked out the furniture in a leopard print. Her coffee table has a glass top that displays a myriad of 1950s miniatures, including wind-up toys and tin robots. There is also a 3-foot-tall Frankenstein statue that stares across the room at a rubber Batman mask fitted over an authentic parking meter from 1953.

"My friends say it looks really trippy. But this is tame," she adds.

Then, pointing to a row of ventriloquist's dolls sitting on a shelf, she laughs and says,"Those are my boys that don't talk back."

And there is plenty more to see, with Annette Funicello signature mohair teddy bears sitting atop a bookcase and vintage mermaid collectibles residing in a glass case next to a genie and 1950s accent lamps.

A nautical motif runs through the teal-green dining room, including paintings of ships, a neon-light sign and a lamp with dangling seashells.

A lavender 1950s bar and bar stools and the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk's sign of a hamburger give her kitchen a Happy Days diner look.

She has painted her backyard fence green and her patio roof red and hangs bird feeders to simulate a tropical environment, she says.

She adds that surrounding herself with memorabilia and creative decorating reminds her of the fun and warm atmosphere of her great-grandmother's house.

"She was very immaculate and would think this is too cluttered," Gilmore says, comparing their homes. But she adds that she inherited her great-grandmother's creativity. She paints, sculpts and designs beaded adornments.

And like her great-grandmother, she has been able to turn her hobbies into her occupation.

When she was laid off from her maintenance job at Amdahl Corporation 20 years ago, she decided to start selling some of her collectibles because she didn't know what else to do.

She says at first it was hard to let go of her treasured items and she would try to talk people out of buying them.

"Finally I could see how happy it was making people," she says, adding that she began selling in the days before eBay, when it was impossible to retrieve what she sold.

She began her collectibles business with space at the Antique Trove in San Carlos, and then added stores in downtown Sunnyvale on Murphy Avenue and in Redwood City on Main Street. Eventually Gilmore consolidated her stores into one at The Courtyard in Campbell, calling it Radio Daze and Collectibles. The store has been there for 10 years.

Her husband, Kit, came up with the store's name, because she had given her radio collection to him and he had agreed to sell some tube radios, she says.

"It's not the money thing," she says. "I wanted to save things from being ruined or lost."

She adds that many people enter the business planning to get rich overnight, but it takes being "legitimately involved in loving the things you're collecting" to stay in business.

Gilmore recommends that collectors check prices on eBay before spending because "there are a lot of sharks" who double and triple the prices.

Because she has collected for 30 years, she has done it the old-fashioned, pre-Internet way—going to antique stores. She says she's traveled to Oregon, Washington and Canada to buy collectibles. She often spends her days off shopping around the Bay Area. If she buys something new that she wants for her house, she transfers a collectible from her home to her store to make room.

And her garage is full of antiques, all professionally labeled and stored in bins, she says.

"I have enough stuff to keep me in business for the next 20 years," she says.

Gilmore also brings two to four bins of collectibles to her store every day, as well as buying from five friends who regularly search consignment stores.

But she says the best part of her business is not acquiring new items for her collections but meeting other people through her store.

"People get funny, cute, silly and happy," she says, adding that children come to the window to kiss a life-size E.T. doll. "I always hear people giggling and laughing in the store."

And her regular customers make friends with each other and create a whole community of people who like the retro atmosphere.

She says, "They're just so cute to watch because they get all animated when they see me bring new things in."

Her friend Glen Wolfram ventured into the shop on a recent Saturday to say hello to Gilmore.

"She has the spirit of Shirley Temple," he says with a smile. He likes coming to her store because it reminds him of his youth with 1957 Chevys, surfing in Santa Cruz and hanging out at the A & W restaurant.

Gilmore says she feels like her store is a house and her customers are her children.

"Coming to my shop every day is like coming to a playhouse," she says.

Photographers from Sunset magazine were so impressed with the 1950s kitchen she had set up in her store that they spent three days shooting it for an article. She says she felt bad about getting all the publicity in The Courtyard and asked them to include other antique stores. The article ran in the June 2001 issue and only included a picture of the front of her store.

While she gets rave reviews about her store, when her daughter was growing up, her daughter's friends thought she was different, Gilmore says.

"It used to freak my friends out," says 27-year-old Desiree Bohna, when her friends spent the night and woke up in a room with clothed mannequins.

"She's just funny," Bohna says. "I didn't get embarrassed."

Bohna remembers one Easter when she was 9 years old that she woke up to a loud thumping. When she went downstairs, there were rabbit prints in chalk outside.

"She still played it off like the Easter Bunny was real," Bohna says.

She agrees that her upbringing was unusual, but said it was fun. Gilmore gave her troll collection to her daughter, and they increased it to more than 900 trolls, many from Denmark.

When Gilmore worked for Santa Clara County Animal Control, Bohna's mother let her keep a rat, a python and a Saint Bernard as pets. And Bohna acknowledges that her mother is quite "artsy."

Gilmore considers her home only "moderately unusual," saying she once visited a customer's residence that was decorated as an alien's living quarters.

"I've always tried to look at things in the best viewpoint; always laughing and having fun with everything," she says. "I just look at life like it's magical."

For more information about Radio Daze and Collectibles, call 408. 379.4613.