Antique Show Finds

I only made it to one big outdoor antique show this summer, but it was a good one. Finds included, in descending order of expensiveness:

-3 antique teddy bears, great characters all
-a set of beautiful antique lithographed wooden blocks
-some vintage plastic space guys
-a bag full of vintage gumball machine charms, rings, and tiny toys
-a vintage Mr. Potato Head fake
-a 1960s Mentor board game
-and a vintage Weeble


Coming soon!

Yard Sale Find: Antique Sulphide Marble

My oldest toy find on this summer's Yard Sale Trail was this antique sulphide marble, a bit over 2 inches in diameter, made in Germany between the 1900s and 1930s. Old sulphide marbles are expensive today, typically priced in the hundreds or even thousands of dollars on the antique store and auction markets. This one's yard sale price? Just $15!

They're also fragile, consisting of a tiny bisque figurine enclosed in a hand-blown glass marble. The seller had this one displayed resting on the open top of a porcelain vase that was sitting on a hanging wall shelf! Gah! Fortunately I spotted and rescued it before the inevitable tragedy could unfold.

I'm not quite sure what the figure is: bear? badger? chupacabra?

The marble find marked the end of yard sale season here in the north country, where temperatures are already dropping, but I still have one outdoor antique show to report on, and the finds there were tremendous. Coming soon!

Yard Sale Find: Vintage Hasbro Inchworm

My favorite yard sale find of this summer was a vintage 1970s Hasbro Inchworm ride-on toy. I had one of these as a child, and it was one of my most loved toys. As the rider propels it along, the Inchworm bounces up and down on its accordion-style body...eventually producing the sort of damage seen in this example.

(Click here to watch the original Inchworm TV commercial: it's adorable, and you'll get to see the Inchworm in action.)

Their fragility makes vintage Inchworms scarce, and they are much sought after. I've seen them reach prices of $300+ on eBay during particularly desperate bidding wars. Glad I held out: this one was just $5 at a Yard Sale Trail flea market!

 How cute is he? Super-cute.

Speaking of cute things: here's a picture of me with my brand-new Inchworm, on a Christmas morning sometime in the 1970s. (I'm also holding a just-opened Viewmaster, effectively multi-tasking as I motor around the living room.)

Coming up tomorrow: my final, and oldest, yard sale toy find of the summer... 

Yard Sale Finds: Vintage Toys

This year's Yard Sale Trail, a 200+ mile route along the shoreline of eastern Michigan, turned up some nice finds (although nothing can really top last year's discovery of a vintage playground spring rider).


First find: a 1972 Come Home Snoopy! Colorforms set. I adore Colorforms, and Snoopy stuff is pretty cool too, but what really made this a great score was the fact that its original owner wrote her name and the date she received it inside the box lid. If only all old toys came with such provenance...

Janice Blackburn, I've got your Snoopy Colorforms! 

(Also, thank you for taking such good care of your toys.)

The next find was also a character toy: a 1962 Barney Rubble doll (of Flintstones fame) made by Knickerbocker. 11 1/2 inches tall, the odd doll retains its original clothes. I don't know why they made his hair green, but that is also original. A few sales down the road, I got this little 5 1/2 inch vintage plastic Fred Flintstone, and happily reunited the two best friends. 

Spotted from the road was this 22 inch vintage tin dollhouse still full of its original plastic furniture, made by Wolverine. It's the epitome of suburban living, circa the 1950s-60s.

Coming up tomorrow: a long-lost childhood toy found again on the Yard Sale Trail!

1950s Funny Faces Puzzle

This Funny Faces puzzle from the 1950s features great characters, and is actually a lot of fun to play around with. Each character is die cut into sections that can be switched and rearranged to make "more than 1000 different faces!" I haven't actually tested that claim, as I imagine it would require more time than I can realistically spend playing with my toys.

The original four characters:

The illustrations remind me of those on Changeable Charlie, another vintage make-a-face toy.