Life after lockdown

Sunday's post covered my last purchases before the world went dark, and now that someone's turned on a light again (at least here in TN), I thought I'd "show off" my latest purchases.

One of the places that I've missed going to the most during the quarantine, was the local antique mall. For being out in the middle of nowhere, this place never ceases to amaze me with how much good stuff the vendors have, the prices aren't always great, but at least there's usually plenty of neat things to look at.

I think at this point it's now been back open for about a week and a half, and I went last week, so you can see that wasted little time in going back. I could tell that a number of vendors have been in since the reopening to restock and/or switch items out items from their booths, and even though I was told that plenty of people had been there shopping since it's reopening, there still seemed to be no shortage of fun things to look through, and in my case... to buy!

I have to admit one thing though real quick, my reason for going so soon wasn't entirely for myself, no, you see I forgot all about the rapidly approaching Mother's Day, and didn't have anything on hand, so trying to find something for mom was the primary goal on this particular day.

My favorite booth was among the many that had obviously been restocked since the reopening. There were a number of freshly opened early 90's boxes to select packs from, one of them being 1990-91 Skybox, which was rather fortuitous, as I've had the want to open some packs from this particular product since reading Roy's pack break last week. The twelve packs of series 1 came from one of those newly opened boxes, while the three packs of series 2 came from a box of misc. loose packs. At $0.69 apiece, I know that I overpaid, but I don't see card shows coming back anytime soon, and I don't want to buy a ridiculous priced box off of eBay right now, so my options are sort of limited for the time being.

The singles boxes that are also in this booth, had not been restocked, but I looked through them for what was probably the 20th time anyway. I ended up grabbing two more of old #12 himself. Did I need two more derpy faced Jordan's? No, not really, but again, no shows, and I felt like buying a couple of cards. At 39¢ (don't ask me how they came up with that price) each, these were about 29¢ too much, but I think that's still much less than the current going rate for this card.

Moving on to a different booth now. I found a small stack of Crazy magazine, and this one caught my attention. It's got a little bit of wear, but the $1.50 price tag was good, so here it is. Crazy isn't something that you all that often, so for anyone not familiar with the magazine, it was published by Marvel, and ran from the early 70's to sometime in the early 80's. And as you can probably tell from the cover, it was another MAD, Cracked, etc. satire magazine, although some of the jokes are little more adult-oriented than those of other parody magazines from the time.

Bottle collecting has become really big for me in recent years, and even though I enjoy finding them out in the wild more than buying them, I will occasionally break down and buy something, especially if it's something that I know I have no chance of finding on my own... like this NuGrape bottle!

I guess there is a chance that I could find one of these, but the odds of the applied (painted) label not being worn or washed off, are pretty low, especially if I were to find one in the creek.

This bottle dates to '48, and other than the inside needing a cleaning, is in pretty good shape overall. It's interesting too that I normally can't take a decent bottle pic to save my life, but these came out okay, I might've finally found the right place in the house to take bottle pics -- if so, this could be bad news for anyone reading, as that might mean more future bottle posts!

That'll do it for my purchases this time, not shown are the items that I found for my mom, and yes, I was successful in that pursuit as well. Although I'm pretty sure that had I not found anything, the 30'x1'x1' drainage ditch that I spent Sunday digging out for my mom's new garden, probably would've made up for the lack of trinkets.

Since this post was so short (at least by my rambling standards), how about a bonus round?

My short term memory isn't what it used to be, and doesn't seem to be getting any better, so anytime I'm out and around lots of stuff (antique malls, card shows, etc.), I tend to take a lot of pictures, this is usually done for items that I want to look into more when I get home, but sometimes it'll also be just for things that I don't want to forget -- things for reference if you will. Anyway, I always end up taking a bunch of pics at this antique mall, but don't ever share them on here, as they're for personal use only, but again, short post! So I'm breaking tradition and sharing a pair today.

I really don't need an Electric Football, but this one sure was tempting! It has all of it's pieces, and looks to be in unplayed condition. After checking the eBay, the price seemed to be relatively reasonable too, but still, I don't need it (I'm trying to convince myself of this, more than I am you).

This glass motor oil bottle was a beauty, and the spout was absolutely gorgeous, but for being a generic bottle (brand/company bottles are much more desirable), it was very overpriced ($50). I'm pretty sure that they think that the Duraglas name on the bottom is the name of the brand, it isn't, it was a glass making process, and didn't start being used until 1940, so the sellers date of 1926 is a bit off as well. Even being generic, and likely from the late 40's to early 50's (which was the tail end of the glass motor oil bottle era), I still would've been all over it had the price been more reasonable, say in the $15 range.

Okay, that's a little better length-wise, but how about a second bonus round?

I snapped this picture at a red light on my to the antique mall. It's hard to tell because of the vehicle in front of me, but this was like a big double trailer, being pulled by a smaller semi (I'm sure that those have a name, but I don't know what it is), and had at least a dozen llamas in it. The guys and/or gals that I could see were absolutely adorable, and since llama moving isn't something that I see everyday, I had to try and get a picture.

Third bonus round? I'm kidding, I think I'm good for today, especially since tomorrow's post is going to be picture heavy (and of the card variety), so until then...


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.