Delaware Toy Show

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On Sunday October 25, Laurie and I went to the Delaware Toy Show. The show gives us some dealers that we normally do not see up here  in our area and we have a nice eating place to stop at before coming home. We got up to a drizzling rain and got on the road. What is nice on Sunday Laurie can listen to a Beatle show on the radio where they play outtakes and different versions of Beatle’s songs.  We got at the show about 9:15AM and got early rights.  The women on the desk know us as we have told them we had come from Allentown which is about hour and half from the show.  After letting our very good friends Gerry Watts and Chris Lamont know that we are at the show, we headed into the main room.

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There are three areas of the show.  The main hall. the stage  and  the smaller room where Chris and Gerry were.  As we entered the main hall we ran into our very good friend Andy Levinson. I have known Andy for over 30 years when I first met him at toy show at the George Washington Motor Lodge in King of Prussia, PA which is long gone. After we said hello, we went down the aisles and noticed that they were wider.  Also some of the dealers were missing. This could have been due to other shows being held the same weekend.  I found the amount of plastic figures down from the Spring, but I still found a few items. One dealer had the mounted MPC Planet of the Apes gorilla firing the rifle. Another dealer had two Peco figures, one of which was a second series GI which I purchased.  I got for myself for $2.00 a bag of the Zombies at War.

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At any show you been to before you go to the dealers you have bought from before that you know will have plastic. One of the dealers that I always go to is Kerry from Maryland. Kerry had a bag of Marx Steers and some four strand trees I could use.  I will see Kerry at two more shows this month so we will see if he had anything new. Kerry had out of the box Marx Civil War set  and out of the box reissue Untouchables set for sale .

The other person I checked out is our good friend Tom from North Carolina. We met Tom years ago at the show and bonded over his wife also being named Laurie and both Tom and I having an interested Vaughn Bode, an underground comic artist.  I related to him my experience with Vaughn when he visited my college back in the 70’s.  Tom always has a variety of items to pick from.  Two of his most interesting items were a complete set of Groovie Ghoulies figures  and Helen of Toy Blast Off Game which used Giant Space figures.  I got some figures including a MPC Jungle card and  a couple of  cereal premiums. Tom also gave Laurie  a small dinosaur head on a plaque because she collect dinosaurs.

For us next to finding things is seeing old friends and hearing what has been going on with them. One of our friends we saw was our very good friend Bill Kozlowski. Bill is one of three brothers that buy and sell collectibles. I have know the brothers as long as I know Andy as I met them at the same toy show in King of Prussia. Bill told us about how he had found with another person a Dizzy Dean item which he had restore and took to a sports show. He said that he did not get it into his room as he sold it on the way in from the van to his room.  Another friend  we saw was Dean Klien. Dean was in a Lipitor commercial years ago. He had not done the show in awhile and decided to use it to blow out some 80’s toys.  I ran into again my very good friend Andy and we talked about his daughter Elizabeth. She is in Hollywood trying to start an acting career.  At the moment she has gotten some extra work, but she has a speaking part in an upcoming  independent movie, which she hopes it will lead better roles.

At the show was a gentleman pushing bath makeovers for your bathroom! When I first saw him, I thought this was out of place, so I had to ask him why he had set up at the toy show. His response was the company that he works for will go anywhere they think they will reach a crowd of people as they work on numbers.  They feel so many people will pass their display and they will get a certain number of  inquiries. Since the toy show has a crowd they were there.

We spent some time with Chris and Gerry before leaving to catch up on their doings.  We left the show and headed to a local farmers market, which has an authentic Mexican restaurant.  Laurie worked for many years for a travel wholesaler, who did business in Mexico and she got to sample the Mexican cuisine. She has not found anything to match that experience in the states except at the place we ate La Jarrita.  We usually get the Taco platter which is three tacos with refried beans and rice. You can select what you want in each taco, this time we got  chorizo, pulled pork and steak.  We have a Mexican coca cola  and the bill for everything was only $20.00.

We left the restaurant full and got home in time for Laurie to watch her bull riding on television. Overall the Delaware Toy show is experiencing what is happening to a lot of shows a decline in dealers and crowds. As mention before several dealers were missing which could have been due to other shows being held that day. The parking lot was filled, but we did not see many people carrying packages.  Still the dealers we talked to were happy with their sales.  We were satisfied by our purchases and will go back next Spring.

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One Response to Delaware Toy Show

  1. Don Perkins says:

    Good report, Paul —- interesting all the way through, even the “non-toy soldier” parts. I enjoy reading all this stuff. In 2 weeks, we here in Michigan are having our own “antique toy show”, which usually has several dealers carrying all sorts of toy soldiers. Rick Berry either has a couple of tables, or will at least be roaming the aisles with the rest of us.

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