Ten Things We Didn’t Buy From The Antique Warehouse (And A Few Things We Did)

  • July 7, 2026

On the way back home from Rochester this past weekend we stopped at what claims to be the biggest antique warehouse in the state. With over 1000 vendors I’m inclined to believe them, and even though we only had a ‘quick focused look’ through the vast complex we still were there over two hours.

Here’s ten items we didn’t buy:

I’d never heard of this intriguing nearly 50-year-old boardgame and I’ll admit I was tempted. But I found a few reviews online that say it has poorly written rules and gameplay is boring so I left it in the case. Had it been less expensive I probably would have got it for the art alone.

$60 for a 37-year-old yo-yo? There’s surely a Freddy Kreuger fan out there for which this item is a grail, but for me it’s just something fun to see.

This is a resin frieze of John and Robert Kennedy created in 1968 by an artist named Joseph Zutz. These were originally sold unpainted – a dull grey colour – but this one has obviously been coloured. There were a lot of JFK items in the warehouse; I knew he was a popular president but I thought idolatry of politicians was a recent phenomenon.

This reminds me a lot of a similar Darth Maul bust I own, the exception of course being that this Ferengi (from Star Trek) is absolutely hideous. I probably should have bought this one and flipped it to Bernard for a tidy profit.

A 56-year-old Mountain Dew bottle?!? This is my favourite drink, and of all the things I’m showing here this is the only one I regret not buying. If you look closely at this photo you can also see a vast selection of View-Master slides on the next shelf down.

This would be a cool find for the deep-pocketed Battlestar Galactica fan that has everything. There wouldn’t be too many copies of this over 40-year-old game still existing, and of those I imagine a minuscule amount have unpunched game pieces. Like many of these formulaic licensed games from the 1980s, I bet the gameplay is dull.

I don’t have much to say about this one, except that I love it still exists in such good condition, and that the basic design of it reminds me of a lunchbox I owned around the same time (1977). What was mine? I no longer remember…

From the same year we have this doll. In remarkable condition considering it’s a half-century old and virtually encourages you to destroy the box to free the ‘photo on back’! This item reminded me of a John Travolta postcard book I purchased – also at an antique shop – about a decade ago and have yet to use.

Bernard’s a big fan of both Elvis and M&M’s but I didn’t buy him these because he probably already has them in his collection. Possibly that was a poor choice since if he didn’t I could have flipped them to him for a king’s ransom.

These taxidermy dioramas are called ‘whimsies’. A whole case was full of these, with the animals all posed anthropomorphically or interacting with props. The toad is creepy with his fake eyes, but a stingray (!) was even creepier!

So if we left all these fine things in cases (and this is just a portion of the interesting items we spotted) then what did we buy? Here’s the list:

I pulled these comics from dollar boxes where almost every comic seemed to be a different series. I told the cashier there were 25 but she counted 23 so I got them for only $0.92 each. I’ll read all these and then pass them on to students.

This is about fifty postcards, most of which I’ll use for Postcrossing. They averaged about $0.50 each which is a good price for unused vintage cards, and I’ll never grow tired of buying such things. The pile includes ten identical copies of the same card, which I will send to Sue long after she’s forgotten about this blog post 🙂

Printed glasses from the 1980s are somewhat common in antique shops these days, but there was a remarkable abundance of them at this particular warehouse. This was the only video game related one I saw, and it’s a glass with an intriguing origin. From what I can determine, this was made by Bally in 1982 for sale in stores. However they also made very slightly different versions for game arcades, cinemas and even for the burger chain Arby’s. It seems this was a very common glass in its day!

And lastly how could I resist this set of kid’s party supplies from 1978? Obviously inspired by Star Wars, these paper plates, cups and napkins are unused, still sealed and even have original price tags ($0.25 and $0.50) on them.

Antique stores continue to get better and better as we age and the stuff from our youth is now ‘antique’. I’ve already located another big warehouse about an hours drive away that I’ll probably check out later this summer!

Fireworks 2026

  • July 6, 2026

Saturday was our annual BBQ and fireworks celebration. It was raining a bit while we were cooking, but not enough to cancel our grilling. I regret not getting a photo of me squatting under an umbrella eating a steak kebab!

That’s a photo of an intricate wooden model of a galleon Kristin assembled while I was gallivanting around the world…

And there it is burning on the fire. If you’re shocked by this, know that it’s perfectly fine to find enjoyment in making something without necessarily keeping it.

The rain cleared up before it got dark, which meant there was no obstacle to lighting fireworks. Not that it would have stopped me 🙂

That’s my ‘By the Power of Grayskull‘ moment, of course referring to the best film of 2026 my lifetime, Masters Of The Universe. I held this firework a bit too high and rained a few sparks directly down onto myself, which was exciting.

We had much fewer sparklers this year, but the ones we had seemed longer, louder and more voluminous. Most of our fireworks were the kind that shoots into the air and makes pretty explosions, which are difficult to photograph. They were loud and thrilling and I enjoyed every one.

The neighborhood echoed with loud booms since apparently Rochester is full of rogues who turn a blind eye to the illegality of certain backyard fireworks. When we drove to the hotel afterwards thick clouds of smoke filled the suburb. I had read that firework sales were high this year – probably because of the 250th anniversary – and the noise and smoke seemed to support this.

Happy July 4th 🙂

New Roof

  • July 1, 2026

That’s a close up of our old roof, and yes there’s trees growing in the gutter! I used to get up on a ladder and clear them out, but it became more difficult every year and… I just stopped.

Furthermore the roof itself was wearing out, and moss had started to grow on it. Since it was there when we bought the house, it was at least 25 years old, and very likely much older than that.

It was time to replace both the roof and gutters. Finding companies to do both was much easier than expected, and we had both jobs done during the past week. The roof came first.

The first step was to put this giant tarp shield up around the house, to protect everything when the pieces of the old roof came down.

After the tarp was up it was time to tear off the new roof. I was home when this occurred and the noise inside was unreal – like fifty tornadoes destroying the house simultaneously. It took them about two hours to completely remove the old roof and underlay, which included a surprisingly thorough process of cleaning the plywood underneath to prepare for the new roof.

It was dark inside due to the tarps, but as you can see sun was shining into the attic with the roof off!

The top shows the bare plywood – only two pieces of which needed replacing. They then put three layers of waterproofing underlay down (middle photo) before laying down the new shingles.

I had been wondering how they got the heavy boxes of shingles up onto the roof, and the answer was with this ‘laddervator’. A motor-powered elevator attached to a ladder carried them up in moments, and then the workers placed them on the roof near where they’d be installed. Every time they dropped the shingles down the sound inside was like an elephant jumping onto the roof. The cats were terrified!

After the shingles were done all that was left was waterproofing the chimney and installing the piece at the top of the roof (called a ‘ridge cap’). They then did another exhaustive cleanup of the property – including using an electric magnet to comb the grass for nails – before it was all done.

All told it took seven guys about seven hours. It looks great, and is warrantied for fifty years. It will outlive me 🙂

If you look closely at the above photo you’ll notice there aren’t any gutters, since the old ones were removed before the roof went on. It was four days before the process was completed with new gutters being installed.

This process began with careful measurements, before a machine called a ‘guttermaker’ extruded our new gutters in a single forty-six-foot piece!

This was entertaining to watch. They told me the theoretical longest gutter the machine could make was over 700 feet (!) and the longest they’d made was about 150 feet, which required six men to carry.

The gutters are aluminum, which begun as a flat roll of metal. After endcaps were put on the new – permanent – guards were attached:

We don’t have a lot of leaf material falling onto our roof, but these guards should prevent any that does from going into the gutters. This means we (hopefully!) won’t have trees growing on our roof any more.

The new gutters were then attached in a single piece, new downspouts were fashioned and attached, and the job was done:

All told it took three people three hours. Like the roof these are warrantied for decades, and I hope they’ll outlive us 🙂

All told the new roof and gutters was much easier and less expensive than what we expected. If I’d known that in advance, we may have got this done years ago.