I've written about past adventures at the Bellmore Train Station Flea Market here and here and yesterday's trip did not disappoint on the goods. Good weather on Memorial Day weekend always guarantee good vendors coming out and there was plenty of great stuff. Sadly, I've been running out of room to put random junk so stuff really had to tickle my fancy enough to justify buying it. Sadly, not much did but I took plenty of pictures to give me enough buyer's remorse to write about it. Well, not buyer's remorse. What's the kind of remorse you have for not buying something? I have that kind.
When people ask me if I had Prince Albert in a can I'd actually have an answer, but I couldn't justify any kind of price tag on a joke older than my parents.
Hey, a genuine chemistry set that is sure to put some smiles on your kids, and this picture on a few government lists. Can't believe Sears used to sell My Little Bioterrorist sets back in the day. Kids today can't be trusted, I guess. Did I say kids? I meant meth addicts.
Ooh, Second Edition. I'm not that big of a nerd, I have enough giant spiral notebooks full of stuff I'll never read again, thanks.
You want old Disney stuff? Well, there were plenty of tables selling plenty of odd things with Mickey's face on it, with a candy box from...I wanna say China? amongst those tops and that box with Sleeping Beauty on it.
From that same table, a few books, a bank, that sweet Disneyland tin box (looks Mexican), and a Sword in The Stone trash bin. It could have been one of those big popcorn tins but who didn't use those for a makeshift wastebasket?
Old Disney stuff sometimes crosses that blurry line between really crude crafting or equally crappy bootlegs. I see a copyright on the top of the box, it must have been made during that time when toy manufacturers weren't paid enough to give a shit about keeping to character design. Seriously, Minnie's dead eyes are gonna haunt me for a while.
These kids really have that "I wish we were playing with an Easy Bake Oven" look on their faces.
Or maybe they were pining for these awesome electronic football games sitting a few feet away. The games around here all seem to suck but man I miss how awesome box art used to be. They used to set us up for disappointment.
And this neat Disney China set used really old Mickey and Minnie designs and didn't really want to know the price tag. Since there's a lot of Chinese packages on this table, I'm calling bootlegs.
By the way, if you can't read it, the Great Flying Boat at the top of the picture says "Go action with da da sound." That's just enough broken English to be charming and I wish I didn't notice that until just now.
This looked old and legit. And most likely expensive. Seriously, it was under glass, I'm sure artwork that good would have set me back a few bucks.
This, however, was just laying out in the open on a stack of cels from things even I couldn't identify. While having a cel from some forgotten Sugar Bear commercial would be pretty neat to have, I kept getting reminded of what Comic Book Guy told Bart about the value of a cel of Scratchy's arm:
"This is a drawing of nothing, drawn by nobody. It is worth nothing."
A Pink Panther cel WITH the original artwork?! And you're telling me this is one of THREE on sale?! And that they were going for $20 each? Man I wish I was a big enough Pink Panther fan to buy that. If it was Looney Tunes or Simpsons artwork, then you'd have my full attention.
The vintage video game sellers were out in full force today, too with just about every platform under the sun. If you were looking for Blast Corps for the N64 or Rainbow Six for PS1, that's was your lucky day. That mostly MIB NES you are above was probably the best find that day. The gray zapper alone makes it valuable.
The seller had a lot of games in rental boxes, too. Sure they're not the original box but those big plastic boxes are pretty neat in and of themselves. At least they had the artwork on them.
Oh snap, Rad Racer! Yeah, I'm hoping that this'll be the only page on the internet where that sentence has been typed.
Now we're really getting into the "stuff I really wish I went home with" part of the entry. A big, red metal S has a dozen uses, many of those uses involve being mounted on my bedroom wall. My big problem would've been lugging it home and explaining to my folks why I would've spent money on this.
When I was taking the picture, the last guy looking at this said "I would be like Flavor Flav and wear it around my neck" as he walked away. Now I REALLY regret leaving that behind.
Since I'm in New York, memorabilia from the 1964 World's Fair is a common sight at flea markets (there were certainly two or three booths selling stuff from it), so anything from any of the other World's Fairs is a rare sight, even a glass from the Knoxville fair from 1982. I figured I had enough glasses I don't drink out of, and I don't really trust myself around fragile things (I dropped a glass I bought in Vegas for a friend not two minutes after buying it, but that's a story for another time) so I took the picture and left it behind.
Of course the Simpsons fan in me loves it for the association with "Bart on The Road," where Bart and his friends take a road trip to the Knoxville World's fair, only to find the site in ruins and the iconic Sunsphere filled with wigs.
And of course a fellow fan out there already ran the picture through photoshop:
Beautiful. I have a friend who lives in Knoxville who hates it whenever I bring up this episode and even she told me she wanted this glass. And now I'm thinking about scouring eBay for it, and they happen to be plentiful.
And now for the one thing I did buy, this Simpsons thing from 1990! From what I was told, this was a promo card that stores would stick up to advertise it, I guess. I've said it before but I just love the crudeness of early Simpsons merch, it's only here and in bootlegs where Bart wears blue shirts. This was only a dollar and since the guy had like twenty of these I just couldn't pass it up! That guy also told me that these things had been going for $10-20, but I wouldn't pay more than a dollar for this anyway.
I also bought this:
I've been loving Hot Wheel's "let's make tiny versions of classic pop culture cars" series, and finding the BTTF DeLorean is a hell of a score, even if it was in a pile with about eight of the same one. It joins the Flintstones Car, the Jetsons Car, the A-Team Van and The Homer in my collection. I just need to track down the Mystery Machine and I'm good to go.
And with all the stuff I did get pictures of, there was plenty of good stuff I didn't get, like stacks of Jet magazine, license plates from 49 states (Hawaii was nowhere to be found), and genuine Nazi memorabilia. I don't believe in the cause, I don't like them, but man that stuff looked awesome. Please don't take that last sentence out of context. I feel like I'm on enough lists as it is with that picture of the chemistry set.
(EDIT: The pictures in this post were originally posted with the "Instant" filter left on; the colors have been corrected and now look much nicer. Compare the two World's Fair glass pictures, the old pictures were too bright.)
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