Sue and I went antiquing yesterday, which meant almost buying Bernard stuff like this:
Jokes aside, one of the reason I enjoy visiting antique/op shops is the occasional bouts of nostalgia they trigger.
Back in the 1980s there was a calligraphy fad sweeping Australia, and we used to own the above kit (or one very much like it). I remember dad used to do it quite a bit, and we even still have examples of his work in our family Bible. I’m sure childhood me scrawled some nonsense in flowery script somewhere, but today I look back at it with the question “Why?” Of the countless fads back in those days, how did calligraphy become one?
Going somewhere and seeing a bowl full of promotional matchbooks was like winning the lottery. Not only were they free, they were also easily secreted on one’s person and could be used to start fires! For a young teenage boy, this was a dream item. Naturally I always took one (or several) when I saw them offered – often in clubs or hotels – and I even had a meagre collection of favourites I liked enough to never light. Usually this was due to the colour of the match head (bright orange or green were exotic!) but sometimes just because the book had a fancy cover. I still regret the ‘big burn off’ sometime in late 198X when I lit them all at the same time in a short but spectacular mini inferno.
Everyone had a coke yo-yo. I even had a Fanta one! I mused about this yesterday, and Sue reminded me that ‘they’ came to our school selling them. This raises so many questions: why were obvious advertising items sold directly to children and how the hell did the company get permission to come to the school? We didn’t care since we were so happy with our yo-yos as we spun and dangled them like maniacs day after day for at least a week! I have such fond memories of those yo-yo days, and if the above was $5 instead of $75, I would have bought it.
The above small sticker was my favourite item I saw in the antique warehouse yesterday. Almost 30 years old, it was presumably given to workers in a now closed (I think) mine. The photo barely does justice to how flashy and reflective the prism effect is. Of course the price is absurd, and at $5 or less this would have already been attached to a postcard winging its way home 🙂
I’m going to make a prediction here you can hold me to: VHS tapes are never coming back! Of course I know records have – and indeed the used stores are now full of them – but the technology behind VHS is completely obsolete and no-one is ever going to mass produce the players any more. So the apparent increase in the number of cassettes I see in used shops must surely be just for collectors? Who’s going to buy the above? (And yes, I know I should have since it would have made a fine Christmas gift for Bernard.)
Speaking of which, we have this fine tome. Now I’m a man that has paid over $150 for a used book – and even over $50 for a 1980s magazine in Japanese I can’t even read! – but I speculate the list of people on Earth who would be interested in buying the above would be incredibly short. I wonder if there’s a wave ski book collector out there that dreams of finding this book like I do one of Jun Suemi’s Wizardry artbooks?
I enjoy the antique shops, and there’s a few others I’ll visit before I leave Newcastle. What will I find?
Afterwards Sue and I went to a club for lunch and to play the pokies. We threw money into this machine with gay abandon, and like mad fools didn’t cash out when we were 50% up. We kept going and going to see the ‘feature’ but when we finally got it (on a $1.25 bet) we won only five cents. The machine was dead to us then and we walked away in disgust. I won’t say how much we lost, but it may have been better spent on a yo-yo 😉
Those yoyos won’t sell at that price in a zillion years. Sue is right – there were in-school demos. I also had a Fanta yoyo.
Surf skis were another fad. Growing up by the beach, most families had one sitting in a rack, rarely used, in their garage.
That calligraphy set was mine, I got it as a birthday gift. Being left handed made it difficult to use. If I wasn’t careful my hand would cover the still wet letters smudging them. And the ink was not quick drying.