Toy Hunter Wayne Toy Show

Sunday February 3, Laurie and I went to Wayne New Jersey for a toy show and a flea market. We had planned to go to the two shows then cancel our plans Saturday night due a clipper snow storm. I woke up on Sunday morning and looked out to see that the snow had stopped. I next checked a television station from New York City and found that weather conditions were not bad as we feared. so we could get over and back without worry about dealing with snow or ice. I wanted to get over to the two shows not only for what I could find, I also wanted to get over to the Wayne Toy Show as Jordan Hembrough of Toy Hunter would be filming for his show.

I got Laurie up under duress and we headed out. The roads were nice and clear. We decided to do the flea market first.  The indoor market charges a dollar a person to get in. The market uses two  rooms of  a local PAL. The flea market  has a nice mix of material. Laurie looks for costume jewelry for resale and I was looking at toys.  One table I found a Marx Bendy Geppetto and  another table had four six inch Marx Indians. The woman said that she had had them for her grand children when they came over, but had decided to sell them before they got ruin. She said she was glad to sell them as it would make room in her inventory.  Laurie found some nice pieces of costume jewelry for her part of our Ebay store. We also got a couple of dinosaurs for $1.00 each. There were plastic soldiers but the prices were too high for me. One dealer had some Auburn rubber figures  including some police figures in red brown.  The person wanted $3.00 each so I passed. The same dealer had some metal Barclay podfoot Indians, which he wanted $5.00, I passed on that as well. I did get from him a Lady and Tramp cereal premium dog for a $1.00. We also met Kevin Lawler one our old customers who got the list. He was one of the dealers at the flea market.

 Done with the flea market, we  headed over to the Wayne Toy show. After parking the car, we saw a camera man filming on the  outside the building, so we skirted behind the camera man and went in. After paying our admission, we headed into the main room. I had planned to go right, but I saw that Jordan and his assistant Steve Savino were to the right so I went left as I wanted to see what I could find before going to talk to Jordan. We found some of the Marx Yogi Bear figures from the Marx Jellystone Playset. The figures were not excellent, but for the price I could buy them to sell to a  collector looking for starter set.  We talked to the dealer  and found out  he had been at the Winter Fever Show the previous week. The dealer told us he had picked up at the Winter Fever Show two Disneykin Jungle Book figures and Disneykin 101 for $20.00. I had seen them, but I passed on them as the Jungle Book Disneykins had been slow for me. We continued  to the back row and I got the surprise of the day, a box of Atlantic 1/32 scale WWII vehicles. I was surprised that the items was there as the last time we had done the show there were no plastic figures except some common Britains Deetail knights. At a toy soldier show these Atlantic pieces would have been gotten before the show opened and I picked them up at 1:00PM! The lot has several vehicles which I have to go therough see how complete they are. We continued on and came to a dealer that had a pair of children’s Zorro gloves. we had passed on them the last time as were not sure of the price. Since that time I have gotten chance to check the internet found they would be a good buy. The gloves are mint and have a Disneyland label on the inside.  since Laurie had found the Zorro gloves the last time we were at the show, I let her do the negotiating.  She got the gloves  lower than the asking price and we put the gloves and our other purchases into the car. Once we had placed our purchases into our car, we went back to meet and to talk to Jordan Hembrough.

We met Jordan and Steve in a small room before you get into the main room of the show where I introduce myself. Jordan recognized my name and mention he had read my letter about the toy duel.  I then told him about the article from Scary Monsters about his appearance at the Chiller show.  I mentioned that the author John Sherrock had been upset that Jordan had glass cases in his booth at Chiller. John said that no dealer would have glass cases in his booth because of the space it would take in his vehicle.  Jordan replied that he has to have the glass cases for television, which what I said in my comment. I next told Jordan that Sherrock complained that the big ticket items that were sold at the end of the show were bought by a dealer who does the Chiller show. Steve, Jordan’s assistant replied that it was a dealer that bought the items sold  the Chiller episode and that dealer had also bought items from them before and had already sold the Green Ghost game he bought on the Chiller episode of Toy Hunter.  I mentioned about passing Mark Huckabone off as a collector only. Jordan cut me off saying Mark is a old friend of his and having him as collector was done for the show.  I wanted to disagree with him, as too many people know Mark as a master dealer, but Jordan  was called away to do a scene for the show.

Prior to going back to the main room, I found several bags of figures with one of the dealers in the small room. The bags were of  knights and a royal family in 54mm that had been sold in dollar stores 10 years ago. I bought the bags for Ebay. Laurie and I went back into the main room and checked a row we had missed on ourfirst go around.  We found nothing so we decided to leave. On the way out, we said goodbye to Jordan and told him we would see him at the Sellersville Auction next month. He was not aware that he would be there.

One thing I was interested in seeing was how they filmed the show. I had been involved in video in college and over the years, we had seen several television shows being filmed. In the main room, the people from Toy Hunter had set up two portable  lights  around a table which they filmed Jordan and Steve. From Steve I found that they can have between 10 to 15 people behind scenes depending on the shoot.  I noticed that one person had a script. Unlike a script with dialogue, this script was more description of the scene.  The staff was all young people who this might be their first or second job. In future I will ask a few people on crew to see if I am right or wrong. I knew they would be filming all day , but I was curious how long would the segment be on the show. I asked Jordan and he said four minutes.

My impression of Jordan, he comes across like you see him on television. He was very upbeat and friendly.  He is ready to defend the show.  I noted to him that the price he paid for the Marx Navarone Playset was too high, which let he pass as I am sure others have questioned him on prices. The only time I was able to throw him off is when Jordan mentioned that one of my references in my toy duel letter was his lawyer.  I replied back that person is my lawyer too, this stop Jordan for a moment and then he said he had  to get in touch with him for some project.

We said our goodbyes to Jordan and Steve and headed to the Clinton Diner. This is a favorite spot for Laurie and myself. Usually we will have full meal with salad bar, but this time we went for burgers. They make several different burgers (they also made large burgers up to one isover 110 pounds!) Once that was done we headed for home to work on our latest acquistions.

We would like to thank Bill Lango for the photos of Jordan and Steve. Bill had been at the toy show earlier in the day.