“Longtime jewelry shop closing”

Posted: 21 Nov 2010 12:27 AM PST

Roy Oliver Jewelry started downtown in 1945.

By KYLE ARNOLD World Staff Writer
Published: 11/21/2010 2:18 AM
Last Modified: 11/21/2010 2:18 AM

Pat Oliver knows the end is drawing near for his family-owned jewelry store and pawn shop in downtown Tulsa and he doesn't have any regrets.

"I've had a lot of fun but it's time to move on," said the 52-year-old shop owner. "I'm walking away on my own terms."

Oliver, whose store Roy Oliver Jewelry & Loan is located at 406 S. Boulder, will close his store in mid-January and is selling off every last ring, watch and necklace.

He said economic changes in the industry have made the store less profitable than it was in previous years, from the rising price of gold to the flight of shoppers to suburban retail centers.

The store has been a downtown staple since it opened in downtown Tulsa in 1945 less than a block from its current location.

"There used to be at least a dozen jewelry stores downtown," Oliver said. "The wives of big businessmen would come downtown and pick out gifts then their husbands would stop in after work and ask what their wife had picked out."

The family's involvement in the area goes back to the last decade of the 19th century when great-uncle Dick Bardon opened a barber shop downtown.

Roy Oliver Jewelry & Loan is named after Pat's grandfather, who retired in the 1970s and passed it to son Ralph Oliver. Ralph Oliver handed it to his son Pat in 1987.

In its 5 1/2 decades of existence

the store has dealt in a myriad of jewelry and fine accessories ranging from handcrafted turquoise jewelry to a 1950s leopard skin purse and hat combination, a rarity because leopards are an endangered species and hunting the animal is now illegal.

Oliver plans to sell everything when the store closes and shut the doors when the Christmas shopping season ends.

The end of the business doesn't come as a surprise to Oliver.

"The pawn industry is dead. We live in such a disposable world," he said.

Oliver doesn't have a new profession lined up yet, but said he doesn't plan to retire.

"I've been working here for 30 years and I don't want to be the boss," he said. I want to leave at 5 o'clock and go home. I want to be able to take a vacation."

Owners of the space, located in the Beacon Building, haven't yet found a replacement tenant for the ground-level retail space, Oliver said.