There are some truly strange items lurking within the vast array of jewelry, books, toys, clocks, coins and other displays at the 13th annual Clark County Antique & Collectible Show.
Looking for a pin to show your support for Richard Nixon or Nelson Rockefeller? Judith Mason has two big boxes full of them. A Russian nesting doll of cats instead of people? Gisela Fowler has one up for sale. Or perhaps a light-up steampunk mask with moving parts is more your thing? Dena Williams has several. Needless to say, the show has something for everyone — even those with a taste for the bizarre.
“Every show every year is a little different,” Mason said Saturday, watching customers peruse her booth full of paper ephemera like old brochures, maps and early printed boxes. “There are a lot of folks here this year, which is good. We’ve made a lot of sales.”
Mason and her husband find many of their items from shows or antique shops. Typically they buy only a few items, but sometimes they have to buy a bunch of things they don’t really want as part of a lot.
That’s how they ended up with the Nixon and Rockefeller pins, Mason said, adding she didn’t vote for Nixon.
“That came with the purchase of something we actually wanted,” Mason said with a laugh.
Despite a dampened mood due to the August death of the show’s founder, Christine Palmer, attendance has been good this year, said Chuck Palmer, who has taken over running the event on behalf of his late wife.
“Clark County people show up for this show, and they’re great buyers,” Palmer said. “This is a very good year. I’ve been told antique sales are better than last year. And we’re hearing that at all of our shows.”
Attendance in 2017 was 4,200. As of late Saturday, organizers said they expected a turnout of about 5,000 by the end of the weekend.
Still, traffic at antique shows in general seems to be on the decline, said Terry Bunn, who’s run a booth with his father, John Bunn, at the event for the past 13 years.
“We don’t make near what we used to, and that’s across the circuit,” Bunn said. “You have to bring a bit of everything to please people.”
The Bunns have been procuring their stock from estate sales for the past 50 years, but the problem is younger generations don’t seem as interested in going to shows as they do in shopping online, he said.
“The older generation is gone,” Bunn said. “And things like glassware, pottery — young people don’t want that. Toys are still very popular, though, and ’50s things. Also, mid-modern lamps and furniture.”
Bunn’s biggest sellers are a collection of Star Wars toys and items that the family got at an estate sale, he said.
Williams, who’s been selling jewelry and original masks at the show for the past 13 years, said she’s also seen a lot of changes in the antique industry.
“A lot of the people in this business are retiring, so there are a lot of discount booths out there,” Williams said. “The younger people, they mostly want to do this on the internet. They’re looking for fun and kitsch.”
Still, she finds a fair number of younger people checking out the colorful and sometimes macabre skull masks at her booth. She has a background in theater and loves making them herself, she said.
“Steampunk is kind of a growing thing,” Williams said. “Some of the masks have moving parts and blinking lights. It’s gone more mainstream now, so it’s popular.”
Customers often use the masks as wall decorations, although she also sells a lot of them at shows around Halloween, she said.
Fowler, who’s originally from Germany and recently moved from Missouri to Washington, got most of her stock through collecting items herself. Her booth, which has several Russian nesting dolls for sale, is mostly comprised of items she’s trying to get rid of so she can fit into her new home.
“These are all from Germany,” she said, looking over the dolls. “I started collecting when I was 11 years old. I was up to 160 of them at one point. The largest one had 28 pieces in it.”
The cat nesting doll was actually one of her son’s favorite toys when he was young, she said.
“He had this cat nesting doll forever,” Fowler said. “When he went off to college, though, he said he’d come get it after he got his first house. He’s on his second house, and he still hasn’t come to get it, so now it’s for sale.”
Erick Paul, who’s also sold at the show for 13 years, has perhaps some of the most controversial items at the event. Paul specializes in antique military items, including some from the Nazi-era in Germany.
“I know somebody whose father was in a high position in the German Army,” he said. “She moved here and I ended up buying several things from her.”
He also has Civil War-era guns, bullets and a variety of U.S. military items, but the Swastika items tend to draw attention, and sometimes illicit a bad reaction from show-goers.
Still, Paul said, “It’s history. It may be a very ugly part of our history, but it’s all part of history.”
That said, he refuses to sell any of his memorabilia to white supremacists. He hasn’t encountered any at his Clark County booth so far, but recently in Spokane he got into a loud argument with a man with a Nazi tattoo because he declined to sell to him, Paul said.
“There’s a certain part of that dark history that really grabs people’s imaginations,” he said. “But I won’t sell to white supremacists.”
