The predominant goal of our recent weekend trip was to buy fireworks. In addition to the Frazetta museum, we also visited a few interesting stores along the way.
The first was a ‘country store’ which is a rural ‘corner shop’ that sells more or less anything. Such stores are uncommon these days, and we love discovering ones that are cluttered and dilapidated and feel a bit like retail time capsules. But at the one we stopped at Saturday I wasn’t at all prepared to find shelves full of vintage Star Wars!
I learned from the shopkeeper that these items were on consignment from a man with an enormous collection. There was such a large selection you could have assembled a close-to-complete collection of vintage figures and playsets/vehicles. Even rare items as the Ewok Village, Droid Factory or Star Destroyer playset! There were two Millennium Falcons and two Sandcrawlers. It was truly an incredible assortment.
It was surreal seeing such a selection in a small shop in the middle of nowhere, but then we explored the rest of the shop and amidst the Christmas decorations, books and typical miscellaneous ‘gifts’ they also had loads of plastic model kits, wrestling figures, train sets and even dozens of Smurfs:
I should have bought one for Bernard 🙂
I’m happy to say I bought a vintage R2! The middle leg is 3D printed and the decal is a retro but the metallic dome is original and I’m more than happy with a bit of repro when the cost is a quarter of what it otherwise would have been.
As I wrote when I was in Oz, antique shops can be wonderful places to find treasures, and we don’t hesitate to stop at them when we see one these days. Does it mean I’m old when items from my childhood are now sold as ‘antiques’?
Yesterday we stopped at a large antique mall on the way to the fireworks shops. It was an old factory that now contains over 110 dealers and moments after we walked through the door we knew we’d found something special.
The building contained aisles and aisles of independent dealer booths like the above, and the variety of items was extraordinary. We didn’t have a lot of time but could easily have spent many hours just browsing since most of the stores were packed with stuff and the feeling treasures were waiting to be found was strong!
The above was $29, but had it been $10 or less I would have bought it in a heartbeat!
This Burger King glass was only $20 and since it was in extraordinary condition I was a fool for not buying it!
The place was an antique heaven, and every few booths had unexpected items like boxed Colecovision games just chilling on a shelf! We bought some magazines, (exactly) 86 postcards, a model kit, a flexidisc, a small dish and this:
A 27-year-old box of trading cards! At $0.15 a pack when released, this was $5.40 worth of packs in 1977, but I think I got a deal at $65. These cards had been on my ‘list’ for years and I could barely believe I’d stumbled upon a full box for such a comparatively low price. The dealer even had two of these and I nearly bought both! I’ll open it on the blog one day 🙂
I think these won’t be the last antique shops we visit this summer…
It was time to go and (finally!) buy some fireworks. Once again we’re going to have a fun July 4th in Rochester with the oldies, and as usual we were determined to deliver to them some high quality explosive entertainment.
The Australians will be looking at the above photo and wishing they could buy the entire thing! And they wouldn’t hesitate to spend a mere $1.49 for this guy:
Alas those little guys are noisy as hell and Kristins mum had requested we only get quiet fireworks. I’d say there’s at least a 50% chance we’ve succeeded 🙂
