One person trying to make peace with how they use their time.
My Year in Hobbies 2019: September, Part I!
Yeah, to keep things from getting any more overwhelming, I needed to break September into parts (it looks like it’s going to be four parts, in fact). I don’t think I’ll need to do this with other months, but we’ll see. Without further ado…
Only made it out there once this year, and this was a good trip, so let’s make it count.
Women In Old Paintings Have Had It With Your Shit, Part I:
A painting of a woman with black hair and white skin, wearing a black dress with a white collar, and holding a small bouquet of flowers while sitting at a brown table with her left hand resting on it, in front of a brown background. The woman is staring straight ahead, and looks really annoyed.Two small, older McDonald’s playground rocking horse-ish rides sit on green grass, with a patch of brown dirt and gravel in front of it at Brimfield Antiques Market, with other antiques in the background. At left, a red white and yellow boat with a McDonald’s logo on the mast, silver handles, and a teal simulated sliver of ocean water at the bottom. At right, a similar ride, but the ride is an anthropomorphic Filet-O-Fish sandwich (a brown roll, brown fish filet, white tartar sauce to simulate the appearance of a tongue, wide white eyes with black pupils, and teal fins) instead of a boat.
Sadly, these were pretty expensive. I think the Filet-O-Fish was about $300.
A 1970s Mattel Godzilla toy (a green action figure-type toy standing about 18″ high with yellow claws, teeth and eyes, and a red strip of fire in its mouth that resembles a tongue) stands on a table, with a blue and green glass Tiffany lamp to its left, and a Mattel Shogun Warriors Dragun toy (also a large action figure, but a blue, red and black robot) to its right. More tables of antiques are visible in the background.
This absolute unit (complete with still-working shooting fist) was $175, which I know because, even though I was extremely careful finding out that the fist still worked, the person whose table this was bellowed the number at me right after I tested it. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t usually make a practice of testing moving parts on antiques, because a lot can go wrong, but it’d been almost 40 years since I’d had a chance there, since, while I still have my Godzilla, he’s been missing his fist for a very long time.
A 1970s Mattel Shogun Warriors Dragun toy ( a red, blue, black and silver robot action figure toy standing about 18″ high) stands on a table, with a wooden box to its left, and a Mattel Godzilla toy to its right. More tables of antiques are visible in the background.
Before all you nerds panic that I’m not gonna show his friend from the Shogun Warriors, here. Here’s a pic of his friend from the Shogun Warriors. Yes, his friend is named Dragun. Yes, I actually did have to look that up, because I’m not nerdy in the Shogun Warriors way, personally, though I think I do have a 3 3/4″ plastic and die-cast figure of him somewhere in the house.
An ornate tower rotary phone standing about 30″ tall, with a gold-brass finish, white inset for the rotary dial, a fleur-de-lis in the center of the rotary dial, and a silver and bronze finish receiver with an ivory-colored handle, speaker, microphone and cord stands on green grass among various other miscellaneous antiques.
This was the best phone in the entire goddamn market, and is in the running for best phone ever.
Two statues, one of a gold leopard with black spots, with golden jeweled eyes, and another of the Virgin Mary, a woman with white skin wearing blue and white robes, stand on the grass with some antique chairs off in the background.
Right after this picture was taken, Mary’s head fell off. I didn’t do it. The dealer did.
A framed picture of professional wrestler Bill Goldberg, a man with white skin, no hair and a greying brown beard, photographed from the shoulders up. The photo is set against a black background with gold trim. Above his head is a facsimile of the tribal tattoo Goldberg has on his bicep, and below his shoulders, “GOLDBERG” is written in large black letters with gold trim.
I had a REALLY hard time not bringing this home, and I have regrets about not doing it. I also kinda wanted the phone, but that wasn’t cheap (I think it was in the $175-275 range), and I don’t have a land line in my house. This Goldberg picture, I would have an actual use for!
A box for a GE AM Miniature Radio with Carry Case from the late 1960s. On it, there are silhouettes of a man and woman dancing, and the body of an electric guitar, both inset on a background that’s purple on the left side and orange on the right. The parts of the man and woman that show up against the backgrounds instead of the guitar are the opposite color of the main background (orange for left, purple for right).
The official AM radio of people who want to simultaneously be Jarvis Cocker from the band Pulp and a secret agent (assuming he’s actually not one, as I don’t think we’ve ever confirmed or denied that).
Glass back panel for a 1979 Gorgar pinball machine by Williams. A red devil stands behind a scantily-clad male barbarian with white skin, wearing a blue helmet, who is trying to rescue a scantily clad woman with white skin and brown hair from a bloody altar. “GORGAR” is written in teal lettering with silver trim at the top right.
Any picture of Gorgar is a good picture of Gorgar.
A painting of a woman lounging against a wall, right hand resting on a pan, with white skin and black hair, in a burgundy Greco-Romanesque overdress pulled down on the left side to reveal a white shift, hanging off the woman’s shoulder. A white rope belt is around the woman’s waist. The woman appears to look at the viewer with equal parts exhaustion and contempt.
And, finally, Women In Old Paintings Have Had It With Your Shit, Part II.
Strangely, I didn’t take any pictures of what I actually bought (a bunch of Fun Foods Baseball Pins to near-finish my set, and a couple of comic books, if memory serves), but I figure these pictures are more than enough to keep everyone busy.
Next up, I head to sunny Florida!
2 thoughts on “My Year in Hobbies 2019: September, Part I!”
Such much great stuff! This looks like it was one of those trips where it would’ve been fun to have some Powerball money. By the by, do you have a thing for telephones too? I have unofficial collection of about two dozen, and am always looking for more when I’m out.
Yeah, Brimfield’s always great for people with money. I have noticed that more and more fields are starting to charge admission, to where you’re probably going to need to pay to shop at any of them soon, at which point I may give Brimfield the bird.
I do not have a phone collection, though. I would really like a Western Electric 2500-ish desk phone, but I also have no reason for owning one, as there’s nothing functional that I could connect it to without some weird sorta hack. It’d be kinda cool to have it set up so it connects to a computer and works with Signal, etc., but I’ve never looked into all that.
Such much great stuff! This looks like it was one of those trips where it would’ve been fun to have some Powerball money. By the by, do you have a thing for telephones too? I have unofficial collection of about two dozen, and am always looking for more when I’m out.
Yeah, Brimfield’s always great for people with money. I have noticed that more and more fields are starting to charge admission, to where you’re probably going to need to pay to shop at any of them soon, at which point I may give Brimfield the bird.
I do not have a phone collection, though. I would really like a Western Electric 2500-ish desk phone, but I also have no reason for owning one, as there’s nothing functional that I could connect it to without some weird sorta hack. It’d be kinda cool to have it set up so it connects to a computer and works with Signal, etc., but I’ve never looked into all that.