Ever wonder what happens to things when time goes by long enough that you don’t see them in commercial stores to the public? You ever wonder why your grandmother’s house keeps getting cluttered with more and more “old” and “useless” junk? The best answer is in locations that you normally pass by without ever taking a second glance at, because even time itself can forget that these places exist except to those who are also lost in time. I’m talking about your local Antique and Flea Market, places that only a certain age group go to when the popular commercialism of the world is too much for them to handle.

I’ve spent many years in the world of pawn shops, flea markets and antique shops when it comes to my hobby of collecting “old junk.” In actuality, it’s the only place to find older items that time has forgotten about. As much as I would like to group in Goodwill to these two places, I won’t because when hipsters and pop stars write songs about Goodwill to get the place more mainstream, it seems to still have a continued existence in today’s commercial world. Flea Markets and Antique Shops exist as an underground commercial center for items of the past, but also show what you have long forgotten about that people want money for those items. My main mission statement, which has never really altered since I was a teen, has always been this: when I venture out in the haven of old crap look for anime/video game/toy merchandise for cheap and buy it. This overall mission statement does have some contingencies to it, but they all go under those three topics. Word of advice: if you go looking for a specific item, chances are you’ll find something else without ever finding what you want. That’s the joy of hoarding- er, collecting.

I was able to spend a couple house of my morning between classes checking out two locations of interest near Anderson University. For the Flea Market I picked on my daily journey, it was the local K&W Flea Market off Hwy 178 that has existed for a couple of years now. I take a trip up there from time to time just to kill time or to see if there might be an item I would like to collect for pennies. As luck would have it, I was able to achieve both of my goals within an hour of moving around the market place, making chit chat with sellers of old power tools and broken television sets. The main key to flea markets is have your eyes open for anything that could catch your interest, because you’ll be surprised on what you might find. A few things I found was an old toy from the 1980’s that had the title of “Mr. Machine Robo” on the small grey box. The only reason this interested me was that Machine Robo is a mecha anime series from the 1980’s that tried to compete with Transformers under the Go Bots toy line, but it didn’t go that far sadly. Of course 20 dollars for it was out of my price range and time, but getting a quick photo of it couldn’t hurt to add to my memory.

Upon making my way through more shops and an area of abandoned arcade machines (which were still there the last time I visited) I happen to find a zippo lighter with the nice wording of “Something Animation.” Well, to an older anime fan like myself, I could easily tell it was a Trigun zippo, which whoever made the box to put this lighter in didn’t care to know what image they were using before trying to sell the darn thing. Of course it was out of my cheap-o price range at a staggering 20 dollars (which is really the common price for Zippos, but I’m cheap dammit!). The only thing I could save from that moment was yet another photo to add to my memory card on my phone, and I was off once again scurrying the marketplace.

On the other side of the market, it was an old man and his old items, most of which were probably new when he was still in diapers, but it did have something that caught my eye. There it was, one more piece to my ever growing collection of Family Home Entertainment Videocassette tape collection, a Jem and The Holograms FULL LENGTH ANIMATED FEATURE FILM! Taking the tape to the counter, the old coot was able to give me a good price of a whopping $.50 cents, which was WELL WITHIN MY PRICE RANGE! Hey, with another piece of FHE history to take home in my collection of other FHE anime titles over the years, I say this was a pretty good morning. Of course, I decided to take a stop over to one more location, the local Antique Store in downtown Anderson.

This two story labyrinth of furniture, books, candles and disintegrated book cases is yet another sanctuary of antique collectors in the world. Antique stores are in no means meant to be organized, its stuff crammed into a square and made to look like you should have it in your home when you really don’t. I was able to run across items that pertained to my childhood, specifically Star Wars, and specifically when it’s all located in one cubicle of junk, and other places. I mean hey, with Star Wars being the hit thing, let’s try and make the antique place sort of fun when grandparents drag their little grandkids along for the fun of… starring at items that all look the same. What grabbed my interest on the upper level of shop was a Mattel Intellivision video game console, that was made to compete with the Atari 2600 in the very early days of the home video game market. If you want the history on that system, the link in the text will explain the system off Wikipedia, because I’m not going to bother doing it in my post. The store was asking $95 for it, which I would agree is a fair price and all, but do they know who they are dealing with here? They only thing they got out of me was yet another photo of the thing collecting dust in the shop, but probably not for long since some retro gamer would want to have it in their collection sooner or later.

That pretty much concluded my two-hour excursion across the market of the old and strange, but that’s half the fun. There is another larger market called the “Anderson Jockey Lot & Farmer” which is off Hwy 29 leaving Anderson University. It’s pretty simple directions: You just stay on Boulevard leaving Anderson University Athletic Campus, and you just keep driving a few miles till you get to it, and it will be on the right. That place has existed probably long than I’ve been alive, which means a very long time. The place can be a maze once you make it inside, but as long as you can use stores on the corners as destinations and memorize them, then it won’t be too hard to get around. But half the fun of going there is getting lost further into the unknown of people’s stuff that you never thought you would ever see, and 50 copies of Blade II all in one box. No really, they still might have those same copies of Blade II there. So if you got a free Saturday and some free cash to spend, go to your local Flea and Antique markets and see what you may find.