Ardmore's Spy Shop: A Smart Stop for a Couth Sleuth

Once you’ve been inside Ardmore’s , it’s hard to look at ordinary objects the same way again.

Everything—from an inconspicuous smoke detector, to the clock on your office wall, to the keys on your nightstand—could be watching you. 

The guys at the Spy Shop have the stories to prove it.

Scott Black, the owner of Ardmore’s Spy Shop, opened his Lancaster Avenue store in 1999. As the owner of three Pennsylvania stores that specialize in surveillance and counter-surveillance equipment, you’d probably expect him to be a guy with a lifelong dream of becoming the next 007. Mainly, though, he just likes cameras.

“My background is in electronics—engineering, broadcasting—so I got into the camera business,” Black explained. “I rolled the dice, and now it’s 15 years later and I’m still here.”

The Customers

Cameras are a big part of the Spy Shop’s inventory, and the customers who come in looking for them run the whole gamut.

“It’s the parents watching the children, it’s the parent watching the other parent—tracking the other parent, videotaping the other parent—it’s the business owner that’s watching the employee,” Black explained.

Half the time, customers will explain why they’re stopping by, but the rest of them keep quiet.

“Sometimes we figure it out, and sometimes when they come back for tech support we actually get to see some of the video,” Black said.

And in 15 years, there’s not much they haven’t seen.

Once, Black said, “we had a guy come in here—a sophisticated business owner type—and he wanted to put a hidden camera in his office to videotape something going on there.”

So the guys at the shop outfitted the businessman with a hidden camera system. The man came back later because he’d “got what he needed,” but couldn’t figure out how to play back the footage he’d acquired.
 
“The guy tells my other employee to leave the room, and he does, and then we’re watching the video,” Black said. “And sure enough, this dude put the camera in a drop ceiling tile in his office, and he has the perfect video of his business partner [behaving inappropriately with] one of their employees, some young girl, right under the camera.”

While Black hasn’t had any hidden camera victims come angrily knocking at his door, he has seen some satisfied customers.

“We had a woman who bought a nanny cam—her longtime nanny had left, and she wanted to vet the new one,” Black said. “She came back saying, ‘I just wanted you to know—I watched the footage and fired her on the spot.’”

The Inventory

Aside from the keychain and pen cameras, which Black calls an “over-the-counter quick fix” for problems like a cheating boyfriend, the Spy Shop offers a host of other surveillance options for all your voyeuristic needs. 

A motion-detecting recording device hidden inside a radio can show you if the landlord is coming in and out of your apartment unannounced, for example. A hidden camera system for businesses can tell you who’s stealing food out of the walk-in freezer—or you can use a live video feed to keep track of your business from a cell phone, even if you’re halfway across the country.

A car-tracking device can tell you where your teenager is really headed—if, for example, your flunked-out kid says he’s heading to college down south, but the tracking device registers in New York. That mom, Black said, was another satisfied customer.

For the paranoid types and the ultra-safe, the Spy Shop also sells counter-surveillance devices and anti-theft items: bug detectors, battery-operated fake cameras, hollowed out books and fake stain-guard cans for hiding valuables in plain sight.

Plus, of course, there's the obligatory lock-picking kits, spy books and fake beards—the latter being in stock, Black said, at the request of a private investigator looking for fake disguises.

According to Black, undercover journalists from Channel 6 and Channel 10, including Harry Hairston, use merchandise from the shop. Black said the store has absolutely helped to break some stories.

So, does the Spy Shop’s owner use any of the merchandise in his personal life?

“Unfortunately not,” Black said. “My life is so boring, there’s nothing I need to videotape.”