On Lowell Boulevard near 72nd Avenue in Historic Westminster, a small shop keeps somewhere between 7,500 and 8,500 jigsaw puzzles on hand at any time, and most of them can be borrowed rather than bought. Missing Piece Puzzle Exchange, at 7188 Lowell Blvd., was the subject of a City of Westminster feature this week.

How the exchange works

Puzzles at Missing Piece can be bought outright or rented. Monthly memberships let a member keep swapping one puzzle for the next without storing boxes at home.

The shop also buys puzzles back. Customers bring in finished puzzles, the shop sorts through them, and what it can use is added to its stock, with the value going toward the customer's next purchase.

The worry with any secondhand puzzle is a missing piece, and the shop is named for it. A team of six volunteers assembles returned rental puzzles to confirm that every piece is still there, and on occasion a volunteer or the owner will make a replacement piece by hand to complete a set.

What is on the shelves

The stock fills the shop floor to ceiling and is sorted by size, difficulty, manufacturer, artist and subject. It runs from 12-piece puzzles for 2-year-olds to a 12,000-piece Ravensburger of a medieval fantasy scene. The shop also carries 3D puzzles, miniature model kits and harder-to-find brands, including Liberty, a puzzle maker based in Boulder.

From a garage to a national membership

Owner Erin Leidy started Missing Piece Puzzle Exchange in 2020. A lifelong puzzler, she had grown tired of seeing the same few titles on big-box shelves and of thrift-store boxes that turned out to be a few pieces short, and she wanted a way to rent puzzles the way people once rented movies by mail. The business started in her garage.

It now has rental members across the country as well as a local following. The shop hosts puzzle competitions and meetups around the Denver metro area, and Alice Rowe, the 2024 world champion speed puzzler, began as a Missing Piece renter in April 2022.

Visiting

Missing Piece Puzzle Exchange is at 7188 Lowell Blvd. in Historic Westminster. Rental memberships, holiday rentals and the current inventory are on the shop's website, puzzleexchange.com, which is also the place to check hours before a visit.

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