Vintage Paper Fair

Weekend recap: Remember how I said I was going to register for a ceramics class? I got to the registration half an hour early at 8am thinking I would beat the crowd, only to find out that people had been waiting since 6AM!! I was number 291 in line, and all the ceramics classes filled up well  before I got close to the front of the line. So that was a bummer.

But you know what wasn't a bummer? The Vintage Paper Fair! I roped my friend Cindy into going with me (she was easy to convince), and we made out like bandits.

Background info, for those that don't know me - I love snail mail and I collect post cards and stamps. Whenever I go anywhere new, I like to grab a few post cards for myself as souvenirs. Whenever my friends go new places, they usually send me post cards as well. As far as stamps, my collection is very recent, as I've only been collecting since about 2008 (I know that because this was the first stamp I saved for keeps).

Back to the paper fair, there were rows and rows of tables with boxes upon boxes upon boxes of vintage post cards plus prints, letters, posters, comics, and more. It was nice to see that I wasn't the only nerd collecting post cards. Though if that crowd was any indication, I might be the youngest. Cindy and I got sucked in pretty quick.



I went into the fair knowing that I wanted to find some vintage postage. The post cards were obviously hard to resist, but there were too many to choose from. So I settled on the pair below before moving on to the stamps. They're two old Marineland postcards from my hometown, Palos Verdes. For those that don't know, Marineland was a Sea-World-Esque theme park that operated in PV from 1954 to 1987 when it was abruptly sold and closed. The park was left abandoned until they began development for Terranea Resort in the early 2000s. As a teenager, we used to sneak under the fence and roam the ghost town of this amusement park.



I finally found a couple of stamp vendors, some with binders filled with full pages of old stamps, and some with boxes filled with loose stamps. I went through them all and left with both. The loose stamps were priced at face value, which was an amazing deal.



I was ready to head home when I saw a vendor selling vintage grape box labels. Earlier that week, I had been discussing the history of Silver Lake with a friend/neighbor who lives on the same street - Rowena Avenue. Long story short*, he had found an image of an old grape box label with the words "Lady Rowena" on it. So I asked the vendor if he had it, and sure enough he did!

And then we all celebrated by watching the Seahawks beat the Panthers and ate hot wings. The End.

*You can read more about the history of Silver Lake and why my street is called Rowena here.