It was tough getting up so early this morning, but my daughter Shelby reminded me that the Flea Market opened at 6 a.m. and we needed to get started if we wanted to find treasures. This absolutely amazing Flea Market is hosted by the Lion's Club and happens twice a year, so folks come from miles around looking for bargains.
There's always tons of very diverse stuff at this particular event, but I had made up a wish list of what I wanted to focus on finding - old photo albums, cabinet cards, old postage stamps, and some very old books. Shelby and I scored almost immediately. She found some vintage note cards and stationary, and I was ecstatic to find a seller that had several old photo albums. I did a brief look through and decided I had to have three of them. I bargained with the guy and got a pretty fair deal. He also had a very sweet 1940s baby book which became part of the package deal. I spent a good portion of my budget on the albums, but they were worth it.
A few sellers later, I found some zip lock bags of older U.S. stamps. I was ready to snap them up, but the price was $20 for each bag which was, sadly, just not budget friendly.
Shelby found 3 lovely vintage handkerchiefs and a darling vintage pink lady's ceramic cigarette box with 2 little ashtrays that fit inside the box. The box has little ceramic flowers on the top and each ashtray has a flower on it as well. No, she doesn't smoke but she fell in love with it because it is so unusual.
I found some old books that are falling apart for really cheap, so now I have some great materials for an upcoming project. I also found an old childrens' reader, Sally and Billy, copyright 1928.
At one of the last booths I visited, I really scored. A gentleman had a box of cabinet cards that were in excellent condition. At $1.00 each, I bought 20. The greatest part was that some had the names of the people in the photos written on the back.
it was a fabulous shopping day. Shelby came home with some very cool stuff. I came home with almost everything that I had set my sights on finding, minus the postage stamps, and only exceeded my budget by $20. Best of all, we had a great mother-daughter, spend time together day.
