The final big toy show of the year for us is the toy show in York Pennsylvania. This is a big toy show with a wide diversity of toys for everyone’s interest. Laurie and I like it as it has dealers we normally do not see.
The ride is nice pleasant drive with highway most of the way. We had a concern earlier in the week that we would have to deal with snow showers but that did not happen for us. The only problem we had was the exit for the York Fairgrounds as it is not marked and we missed the exit and lost for about 5 minutes of time until we got straighten out. We arrived at the show a half hour after it opened.
The show is divided into two big halls and we usually do the hall to our left. This is because most of our friends are in the other hall. The hall was filled with dealers with a plethora of items for sale. If you are a collector I would be surprised that you dis not find something for your collection. The room was filled with action figures, diecast cars: you named it. I saw someone had two rare Fiodoni puppets. This was an early television show from the 50’s. The dealer wanted $800.00. Another dealer had some Moldarama pieces. The Moldarama pieces are wax pieces you have made in vending machine. These items were popular in the 1960’s and you can still find some of the machines today in parks and zoos. The dealer had Moldarama guitar I had not seen before but I pass on due the other purchases I made that day. I also saw an MPC card of the ring hand Civil War figures with cannon that were tied into the television show the Grey Ghost. The dealer wanted a hundred dollars.
We started up the aisles and we saw Will, a young dealer who I have gotten items from before. This time I only got Professor Zero from the MPC X-L5 playset in orange. Will also had various premium pieces for sale. We continued down the aisle until we came to a dealer who had two Processed Plastic 2 1/2 Ton Army trucks. These trucks are quite popular with collectors. Both trucks are missing their center axle and one does not have its top. Still in this condition they are in they will sell.
We did several more aisles before we had are next score, three Atlantic HO Western Sets in the box. These pieces are getting harder to find and I was happy to get them. Another row over we found a dealer with 10 single row sets of the Mattel Guts figures. These figures were put out in the 1980’s by Mattel. The PVC figures were wide range from ground troops to Laser Troops. Each group such as Green Berets had ten figures, which were sold in single row boxes of 5 figures or double row boxes of the ten figures.. The dealer said that he had been carrying them since last year and we were able to make a deal for the ten sets. The dealer remarked he now room for more stuff and put a large Star War toy on the table. The dealer told us that he had seen the 10 figure Guts figures at another table, but he could not remember where. We later found the boxes in the other room. The dealer had the boxes at full price so we passed on them.
One of the dealers we know in this hallwas Kerry who had a nice selection of Marx and other items. He had two pirates from recent makers for sale and a complete set of the Marx 60mm cavalry in steel blue for $100.00.
From Kerry, we went to other side, by this time we were getting warm so we decided to drop our coats off with our very good friend Gerry Watts. Before getting to Gerry’s tables, we stopped Harry Davis’ table where he was having a discussion with Tom Stein. Harry had bought from Tom the Fighting Lady landing craft and did not need it as he had the other ship (Very likely Harry had the Deluxe Reading Battleship that had been available in grocery stores.} I asked the price on the landing craft and bought it from Harry and then headed to Gerry’s tables. Gerry was with his wife Emily, Gerry had on his tables everything plastic figures to Playmobil. We left our coats and stuff with Emily and Gerry and headed up the aisle. First we stopped at another good friend Chris Lamont and his wife. Chris deals in action figures and loose Legos. Chris later had a very good sale in loose Power Ranger figures.
We started up the aisle and then down the next where ran into Keith. Keith and I had been competition for each other at the Allentown Toy Show, but Keith stopped coming a number of years ago to Allentown. I got some plastic figures from him including reissue Ben Hur Figures. We stopped at another stand where picked up a damage Processed Plastic Submariner, which I figured some collector would use for a conversion. We stopped up at the tables of Bill and Rich Kozlowski. Bill was busy completing a sale of a complete Marx large mounted Zorro with the box so we did not get a chance to talk to him. I later saw another Marx Large Zorro no box or weapons for $40.00. Rich had a lot of items for us, which I purchased. Rich had a good year except for Brimfield which was okay. This was because they set up in a new field (Brimfield is a series of fields of dealers that open up on different days in the same area.) as they could get anyone to share a tent and Rich had not any super items to sell. Rich’s table are full of a wide variety of items for the collector. We found out that it was Rich’s wife Kathy’s birthday and wished her happy birthday.
We were able to find three items for Laurie’s dinosaur and figure collection. First we found at Tony Greco’s stand a Starlux mammoth Laurie did not have. Then one row over we found a ceramic Brontosaurus from Brazil. I had gotten Laurie some of these ceramic dinosaurs at a local bid board auction years ago. At one of the last tables we looked at Laurie found a large pewter executioner holding a head. I also found a lead Custer for a friend.
We headed back to Gerry’s tables and made our final purchases of the day. Gerry had a wide range of items at very fair prices. One unusual item I found at Gerry’s table was Bionic Man eyeglass cover. I also got various figures for resale plus and unusual hard plastic Indian for myself.
We said our goodbyes and headed out to stop at Bob Evans Restaurant. We lost our Bob Evan Restaurant a few years back, so we stopped at the one in York after the show. The food was very good, but the portions were smaller and the salad is now extra. The trip back was pleasant and uneventful.
Overall the show was very good for us. I had not planned on buying anything and there was too many good temptations to buy. It is a good show with lots of diversity as I said before. All the tables except two were occupied. The one complaint I had of the show the aisles were too narrow, which caused people to be rude. I stopped at one point as there was a bottleneck and waited to move ahead. Someone jumped ahead of me not waiting for the bottleneck to clear. Then we had a woman that was weaving from side to side and going at such a slow pace we were at a crawl. We had to go around her several times one of the times she made a nasty remark and I had not bumped into her. When we went over to the other hall, I saw she had a pretzel and soda and was walking around eating the pretzel. Seeing that I moved over one row to avoid her as I felt with our luck, one us would have her spill her soda on us.
It looked lie the dealers were selling and we saw people with packages.
I like the Mattel Guts figures just wish they were a little bit smaller in scale and that Mattel had done more subjects,imagine what a Foreign Legion or Apache set would have looked like.