On second day of the Macungie Toy Show, I was up early. It used to be I would be up early because of wanting to get to the show early. I remembered times of running around with a flashlight. Now I was up early as the boys wanted to go out for their walk. Percy is light sensitive like me and has me up at 5:30 in the morning. I took the three guys out and after their walk I got ready and headed to the show. After I parked the car, I walk back to where John and Mike had their tables double check their items and headed down the hill. One thing I noticed there did not seem to be any new dealers. Also there were empty spaces, the bouncing around of the show after loss of the field and internet took a toll on it. It does not help that the weather can be against you. Usually it rains or it is too hot The heat and the sun this year was bad, I heard had the sun melted some of the plastic pieces of one or two dealers that were not covered.
I walked into a stand I had passed on the day before for some reason and found a Marx Don Alejandro character figure from the Marx Disney Zorro playset laying face down. I remarked to the dealer who it was and asked the price. The price was reasonable so I bought it, I also found seven Remco Romans reasonable, but the same dealer had some silly prices on MPC colonials.
I next went to my very good friend Gerry Watts’ stand and went through his items again as he had added some new items. I found a few items for resale. Gerry kidded me that he was shocked that I was there so early. He usually does not see me until 9:00AM(That is not true I am usually at the one local flea market around seven. On shows I do not get to them until 9:00.) I went across to Steve Savino’s stand and talked some more and how he was doing. Down from him was my very good friend Chris Lamont and his wife. Chris was not there so I kidded his wife, you left him loose to buy. I told her I would stop back later.
From their stand I walked down to the inside building. Some of the outside dealers call it the museum as it has mostly car toy and antique toy dealers. I rarely find anything in the building for me or resale. In fact the only good plastic anyone got was Mike Russo got some Marx 3 inch lineman. I walked over to a friend’s stand to see if he need his stand watched as he went out to van. He did so I watched his stand. Normally he has his brothers to cover him, but one was at a wedding while the other was at a sport show. I also checked on a friend who was doing the show and he told me the directions I gave him were excellent to the show. Seeing he was fine, I went had a fried egg sandwich before going up the hill.
I took the long trek up the hill saying good bye to my various friends, before going home for a nap as Laurie wanted to go to some farmers market for some food. Chris was at his stand and I kidded him on how much he bought and he told me he had bought only a few figures. Back Gerry’s stand I saw Mark Harris who was looking at stuff and saying why do I need this stuff I live in an apartment. I also saw Bob De Angelo who had been in the day before looking for upgrades to his Disney collection.
The show was different this year despite bad weather last year I had done some very good buying. This year I found less to buy, but I was not upset as I was not looking for much as I have had a good buying season. The number of dealers were down and the crowd too. If it was because of the heat or internet I do not know. I saw one dealer who did not set up he did not say why. Another dealer said we are getting too old to do us. That is one of the things you seeing s crowd is getting older and we are getting little new blood into the field. It is not only our field but most of the fields.
Glad u have some fun with find and friends. The melting in Sun and heat is very common, it happen to me once when left in enclosed bad vented attic during several summer or all year round when living in s.Florida, in tin cases some of the figures stick together with melting. Is sad.
In the other hand cold does not affect most plastic(specially old and vintage) I notice one new factory with issues of figures/material if exposes x long period in cold weather. Any ways as I do live in very cold region I’m not that worry about heat ,but still take my precaution as my summers are very hot in fast pace during daylight then cooler at night.
In my opinion :I think the shows and outside sales are affected by all above, the heat will affect any old person more than young .The people are buying more in internet(eBay)- number 1,the cost of life increase in all. Buyers go less and spend less in tables.as they can see almost same in internet and use any method of payment w PayPal.In fact give buyers a lot of coupons, discount and special with out interest that help increase their time and opportunity seating buying, wile sellers got few special but more fees against.
And new generation are not fun of setting table(more modern =hide style of life back seating with computer selling, rather than socializing-talking with humans. I had seen this more often, new generation “”THANKS TO NEW TEC” “talk less face to face and use all time fingers w technology. Sad but true.
Well, this weekend here in Michigan is Joseph Saine’s big Toy Soldier Auction (on Saturday), and then the Michigan Toy Soldier Show (Sunday), all in a nice indoor air-conditioned environment. Attendance hasn’t been as great there as in years past (for the show), so we’ll see what its like this year.
We just got word that Matt Murphy and his crew will be there from Hobby Bunker north of Boston. I was looking forward to seeing the original (Bill Murphy, the founder), but will apparently have to wait for OTSN in Chicago, which, according to the TSSD countdown website, is now just 51 days away.
Incidently, the current TSSD website informs us that LODI Enterprises will be selling its new Trojans and Greeks from the TSSD rooms. It also shows some new photos of the new figures in bags with header cards, with the Trojans in their final rich medium blue color, and the Greeks in what appears to be a nice ivory color.
Good report on Macungie.
I preferred to participate in the air conditioned inside show on Saturday. The show featured easy load in and load out, and opened at 8 am. Lots of higher end automotive/vehicle collectibles, most of which were tagged at very high, silly, prices, so I can understand why it’s referred to as the ‘Museum.’ The venue was crowded until around Noon when things slowed down and some vendors began packing up. By 1:30 everyone was packed up and moving out.
Hat’s off to any collector who either were vendors or visited the outside show, in the hot humid 90 degree weather