The Amazing Garage Sale: Judi Lesta's NoBo Consignment Shop

Oct 4, 2026 / Oct 4, 2026 · 7 min read · The Amazing Garage Sale Mid-Century Modern Consignment NoBo Art District Shopping and Services 80304 Boulder Colorado NoBo ·

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The Amazing Garage Sale: A Rock Photographer's Consignment Shop on North Broadway

Judi Lesta photographed the Bee Gees, Blondie, Tom Petty, Elton John and Led Zeppelin for Los Angeles record labels in the late 1970s, and those black-and-white prints now hang on the wall of the shop she runs on North Broadway. The Amazing Garage Sale is an antique and consignment store at 4919 N. Broadway #1, and City Lifestyle calls it "a Boulder staple for over 25 years," with a stock of mid-century modern furniture, statement jewelry, vintage finds and designer classics that Lesta chooses herself.

Where is it? 4919 N. Broadway #1, Boulder, CO 80304 — a warehouse space on the Broadway corridor, inside the NoBo Art District.

From Manchester to the Sunset Strip

Lesta grew up in Manchester, England, lived in Italy as a teenager, then in the Canary Islands, Hawaii, France and Spain before moving to the United States with her first husband, according to a profile in Boulder Magazine. After her divorce she took a job delivering health food in Los Angeles. Her route ran past the record labels on the Sunset Strip in the late 1970s.

The job came with free concert tickets, and she took a camera to every show. "I brought the photos I took of the shows back to the record labels, and they loved them," she told the magazine. "They hired me to go backstage, to the interviews, and to shoot the shows. I just had a knack for photography. I taught myself how to use a 35-millimeter camera, and one thing led to another."

Her pictures ran in Teen Beat, NME and People, and in other publications around the world. She was then offered the job of exclusive photographer for the Bee Gees. "I went everywhere with them, to award shows, concerts, when they filmed the movie, 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.' They were gentlemen. That was a lovely experience," she recalls. She still owns many of the negatives and the rights to the photos, and sells prints through the shop and through an agent she keeps in Hollywood. A wall of black-and-white photographs in the shop shows Blondie, the Bee Gees, Tom Petty, Elton John, Rod Stewart, Led Zeppelin and Bob Marley, all taken by Lesta. She says she never planned to be a photographer; as with much of her life, she went where the wind took her.

Boulder and the Noble House

As the music industry changed, Lesta left Los Angeles in 1988, looked at several cities, and chose Boulder. She put her money into real estate, buying several Boulder properties to rent out and one to live in.

The one she lives in is the Noble House. Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Noble commissioned it from designer Charles Haertling in 1958: two wings made of 16 identical triangles, each ending in a steepled skylight. The City of Boulder has designated it a Structure of Merit, an honorary designation for properties with architectural, aesthetic or historical significance. Lesta has kept the original design, painted each wall a different color, and filled the rooms with objects from different times in her life. Design enthusiasts kept coming to look, so she put up a no-trespassing sign out front.

How a House Sale Became a Store

In 1999 Lesta met up with a childhood sweetheart and decided to move to Ibiza. She kept the Noble House and rented it out, which mattered when the relationship ended and she came back to Boulder. Before the move she sold 99 percent of everything she owned, and the NoBo Art District says she found it exhilarating to watch the things that had furnished her home go to new owners.

"When I left, I had all these garage sales, and I loved the people I met," she told Boulder Magazine. "I wanted to keep doing that, so I did it from my house. I went to thrift stores, got stuff, and just started selling it. Then eventually it grew and grew. I had no plan. People were lining up to come in."

The business moved from her house to a rented storage trailer, then to a studio space in North Boulder, and finally to its current location on North Broadway. "As an artist, I love being part of the NoBo Arts District," she says. "I wouldn't be anywhere else. It's the only quirky part of town left."

What Is on the Floor, and How Paying Works

The shop's own site lists its stock under mid-century modern furniture, home decor, jewelry and art, and its current listings name makers and designers such as Herman Miller and Eames, Heywood Wakefield, Warren Platner, Harry Bertoia and Raymond Loewy for Mengel, alongside Danish teak tables and an antique Japanese tansu. City Lifestyle puts the price range this way: you can walk in with $20 and find a piece for your home, or come with a bigger budget and buy something like an Eames chair.

The NoBo Art District says the stock is made up entirely of items consigned by members of the community. Consignment in general works on an agreed price and a set period; a 2011 Denver Post guide to the format says the period is often 90 days, after which an unsold piece either goes back to its owner or becomes the store's.

Lesta's own rule is on the buying side. When a customer sees something they want, they do not have to pay anything before taking it home: she lets them start a tab and make monthly payments with no interest, according to the NoBo Art District. The same Denver Post guide quoted her on it in 2011: "We trust our customers," she said, "and allow them to take it home and make payments." The paper described the shop as "part museum, part art gallery and all fabulous," with designer names such as Eames, Knoll and Wakefield in every corner.

"It's a collection of the best things you'll find at a garage sale," Lesta told the NoBo Art District, which says her way of doing business has earned her many regular customers and many regular consignors. The 2011 Denver Post piece put her tastes as midcentury modern, Danish modern, the Beatles and British pop art. "Everything has history," she says. A note written in marker on the shop's white walls tells visitors that coming in "is a mini-vacation from the mundane — and different every time!"

In the NoBo Art District

The shop's listing on the NoBo Art District site files it under First Friday and Local Business, with jewelry, photography and sculpture as its types. NoBo First Friday is a free evening held from 6 to 9 p.m. on the first Friday of every month except January, with rotating exhibitions, open artist studios and a monthly map for a self-guided tour of the district's studios and creative businesses. The photographs on the shop's wall are part of the stock: the prints Lesta sells there are her own work from the late 1970s.

Practical Information

Address: 4919 N. Broadway #1, Boulder, CO 80304
Phone: (303) 447-0417
Hours: Open daily, 12–5 p.m., per the shop's website
What's inside: Mid-century and Danish modern furniture, home decor, jewelry, art, and Lesta's own rock photography prints
How it works: Consigned stock from local sellers; buyers can take an item home on a no-interest payment tab
Neighborhood: NoBo Art District, on the Broadway corridor
Website: theamazinggaragesale.com

For anyone in 80304 furnishing a house, the shop is worth a stop before buying new: the stock changes as consignments come in, $20 can still buy something, and the person at the counter took the photographs on the wall.