NATCHEZ — After more than two decades in the antiques business, Ricky Smith is putting down the furniture polish.

“When I first opened up in the antiques business, I was working one day, down on the floor with a rag and some polish, and Buzz Harper walked in with his suit on,” Smith said. “He looked at me and said, ‘You’ll make it, because that’s how you do it, and that’s how I did it — you don’t start out paying someone to come in and polish your furniture and floors.’”

Twenty-five years later, Smith is still going strong, but has decided to retire from antiques July 5, quitting now, he said, “while I feel like I am going out on top.”

Smith started in the antiques business March 1, 1991, opening a shop at 524 Franklin St.

Those were the days when Natchez had 35 motor coaches a day and you couldn’t book a room within 60 miles of the city during Pilgrimage, he said. Smith joined seven other fine antiques businesses around that corner of Franklin Street.

“We were a Mecca,” he said. “People came from all around, and there wasn’t a house, be it a mansion or small, in California or here, that couldn’t be furnished from our stores.”

Through the years Smith has moved his business twice, but always stayed on Franklin Street — once relocating to 701 Franklin St., and later to its current location, 415 Franklin St., where he’s operating under the name of Natchez Antiques.

“I have loved every moment of my life in the antiques world,” he said. “And I owe a lot of it to my wife, Micki, with letting me do it, because there were times when there wasn’t a lot of money in it.”

Smith’s move into fine antiques began, perhaps not intuitively, with Christmas.

At the time, he owned World of Christmas, a year-round store dedicated to fine Christmas items. After going to market one day, an industry expert told him antiques would be key to boosting Christmas item sales.

“He said, ‘You have got to display Christmas items that are expensive on antique furniture, and more often than not, the customers will buy the furniture as well as the Christmas item,’” Smith said.

In the end, however, it turned out, “I was more interested in antiques,” he said.

Through the years, Smith has  handled a lot of antiques, some of them very expensive.

But craftsmanship and the quality of the materials included in the construction of antiques are what have fascinated him the most — for example, the Rosewood Mallard Teester Bed that he said was his favorite item to have handled through the years.

“That’s what really makes my heart flutter, not because it is $20,000, but because it is so perfectly hand-carved,” he said. “You can feel the difference in the rosewood.”

Other antique items have stayed with him for other reasons, particularly a slave sale bill that he found noting someone had been sold for $4, and another person had been sold along with a mule.

While he’d been long aware of slavery, something about its reality clicked holding that piece of paper.

“I was holding it in my hand, and, I really had that ‘ah-ha!’ moment,” he said.

“This was a hand-written invoice, and for the first time in my life it really hit me that someone had sold a human.”

The antiques market in Natchez has changed through the years as the economy reacted to hits both locally and nationally, but Smith said Natchez has always been able to support him.

“Everybody in town knew my great-grandmother, my grandmother and my mother, and every time I came back to town my mother would have a list this long saying, ‘So-and-so wants you to look at this or that,’” he said. “I’ve never had to do estate sales — I’ve been fortunate like that.”

The other thing is that Natchez folks, “even though their houses are full,” have never hesitated to refer their friends, Smith said, “because they’re in the shop every week anyway.”

The key has been to never discount a customer, including those who come into town on the river cruise boats.

After selling a grand piano to one boat customer, Smith delivered it to Mobile, Ala., himself.

“A lot of people in this business won’t deliver, but if they want it, I will make sure they get it,” he said.

“There are a lot of people who play in this business, but for me, it’s my job.”

Even though he’s wrapping up his work as a major dealer, even in retirement Smith is going to handle antiques.

While he’ll have a much less active role in it, he said he plans to open a small shop on Commerce Street where he can display some of his favorite pieces.

“I need a office, some place to drink my coffee,” he said. “It’s been a great time, and that’s why I want to go now.”