THE MIAMI HERALD BOOTY FROM THE PAST.... SLEIGH BELLS, EVEN SHIPS' WHEELS FIND HOME ON THE RIVER LYDIA MARTIN Herald Staff Writer In a rustic, weathered, shanty-like storefront on the Miami River, Milton Stone deals in the past. He is lord over 10,000 square feet of old ships' wheels and lanterns and portholes and anchors, not to mention sleigh bells and carriages. Stone's antique shop is an unorganized, rambling museum of nautical and landlubber relics. To see everything, you have to weave through a dimly lighted maze of polished brass, teak and bronze. To find what you want, you have to search in earnest, because things lay piled one on top of another or hang from crowded rafters. Stone Age Antiques, at 3260 NW South River Dr., is a feast for the eyes. The store's three rooms are like a huge treasure chest filled with the booty of the past. For 25 years, Stone, 76, has bought and sold antiques that he says appeal more to men than women. There are model ships and working scaled-down steam locomotives and bamboo fishing rods that date to the turn of the century. There are train bells and copper and brass diving helmets and swords and cannons. A pair of polar bears, their jaws wide open, the male stretching 12 feet, greets you at the door. They were shot in 1920, Stone said. The pair sells for $12,000. "I can tell you stories. You get a lot of stories in 25 years," said Stone from behind his beat-up desk, a throne from which he rarely moves. "You see this, looks like a bar of gold right? A guy comes in here one day and says 'Is that gold?' I say, 'Of course, that's gold.' He asks, 'How much?' and I pick a number out of my head. I say $87,000. He handles it a few times and says: 'Can you do a little better?' You get people like that all the time," said Stone, who lives in South Miami. Besides, it's not a bar of gold. It's a bar of lead painted gold. Another of his favorite stories goes like this: "I'm a bell collector. The best bells ever made in this country were made by the Menneelley family from Troy, N.Y. After World War II, I bought a peal of bells from a theater in Little River," Stone said. "One day a woman comes in with three kids, filthy kids with their noses running and what not. She says she heard I had just bought those bells and wanted to buy one. She was a granddaughter of the original Menneelleys. I didn't want to break up the set. In fact, I didn't want to sell them either." But the woman was persuasive, and Stone broke down and gave up one of the bells. There are 50 train bells for sale at Stone Age Antiques. "We have train bells from the Union Pacific Railroad, the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe." The bells date from 1870 to 1940. They sell from $900 to $1,500. The store does a lot of business with movie and television show production companies, said Gary Stone, Milton Stone's oldest son and business partner. "People from Miami Vice and movies come in here all the time to rent things. They rent fans and old cash registers and other things they might need to represent a particular time," said Gary, 35. Stone Age rents items for 15 percent of their selling price. The newest rental receipt is for Warner Brothers' Police Academy Five, which is being filmed in South Florida. Its staff took a snapper mounted on a plaque, a ship's compass, a stuffed duck, beer steins and other bric-a-brac. The total rental fee was $1,500. "Mr. Stone has a fabulous place. It's the greatest prop house around. There's nothing like it, not in New York or L.A. or anywhere," said Don Ivey, set decorator for Police Academy Five. "He carries anything you could need and if he doesn't have it he would have a handle on where you could get it." Ivey said he first started shopping at Stone Age Antiques in the 1960s when he was set decorator for the Flipper television show. "He has a lot of nautical-type things that worked out really well," said Ivey, who lives in North Miami. Two years ago, the elder Stone bought 450 anchors made during World War II by the United States. The anchors were shipped to Norway to fool the enemy about where the U.S. invasion was coming from, Stone said. There are only 150 of the 130-pound anchors left in the store, he said. They sell for $150. "We do pretty good business," Gary Stone said. "We're far away from the beaten track. People have to hunt us up to come here. We like that because that means they're coming to buy. We don't get many tire- kickers."