Flea Market Finds!

I have lived in Central Oregon for almost 4 years now and I had never been to the flea market. It is nothing like the large ones I remember going to in the midwest. It is smaller in size (maybe 25 vendors in total), a third of the vendors were selling new items like signs or baked goods and a good portion of the others were selling...junk. And I mean that in the nicest way possible.

I did however find a few great finds that made the drive to the fairgrounds worth it. Above you can see some stamps I purchased for $10 a sheet. I didn't even bother haggling because I knew the Janis Joplin and Elvis stamps were priced below face value (as they are forever stamps and cost $.55 a piece) and the Marilyn stamps were selling above that on eBay. The space stamps were just there for the taking I suppose. I have used those stamps before but I wasn't overly concerned with the value, I just knew they were stamps and I like stamps.

After purchasing the Marilyn stamps (I later returned to that booth to get the rest) I walked around looking at the tables HOPING I would find something worth while. I was looking over a table filled with a random assortment of items when I looked over and saw a stack (131 in fact) of First Day of Issue envelopes. There was a price tag on them of $3. Naturally I assumed (based on some other highly overpriced items) that it would be $3 for each cover at which point I would dig through and pull the best ones. To my astonishment though they were actually priced for the whole lot. The lady selling them must not have realized what she had because when I asked to verify the price she lamented it was for all of them as there were no letters inside. I couldn't pull the three dollars from my pocket quickly enough!!

After going through them at home I realized there were quite a few duplicates, but all of them are from 1940 with an exception of perhaps 20 postmarked from 1941. Even in the shape they are in (which admittedly is not great) they could have easily fetched $.50-$1 a piece. Somewhere the postal gods were smiling on me.

While I do not think I will attend that flea market again I hope to seek out others in the state and perhaps try my luck again sometime. Have you ever found a really good find at a flea market?