Allentown Toy Show

This year’s Allentown Toy Show was enjoyable and annoying. Laurie and I had a great time seeing old firends and finding items for resale and the collection. We were annoyed by some of the people we had to deal with at the show.  This year Laurie was free to go along with me to the Allentown Toy Show.  In years past I would have try to get in early,but  now I have the attutide I will get in there when I get there. We arrived a few minutes after the doors opened and went right in as no line compared to past years when it took half hour or more to get in. The first annoyance for the show was an idiot at the ticket booth. He wanted to speak with the promoter from last weeks show for some reason. The ticket seller motioned for someone to talk to him and the person block the entrance way! I spoke in a loud voice and told him to move.  The person seem to be upset that I want him to move and said are you impatient. Laurie replied he is impatient when he wants to get into a toy show.

We got in and walked down the first aisle to see our old friends Bill, Rich, and Bob Kozlowski. I have know them since the early 80’s and they have come up with some wonderful items for me and Laurie over the years. Rich had some French hard plastic figures for me and after I had purchased the figures I noticed this very large dinosaur. The dinosaur stands about two feet tall and made of leather and has black marbles for eyes.  I pointed it out to Laurie who collects dinosaurs and told her the price. She looked it over and told Rich it was sold. You can guess who paid for it.

From the brothers we walked down the aisle and made another purchase of some English plastic. Please with the two purchases we started to walk the other aisles. We found a few interesting items here and there for the collection and resale. There were several Marx playsets at the show. I saw two Flintstone Playsets, an Airport Playset in a Sears box, several farm playsets and Fort Apache playsets. One dealer had Marx Welles Fargo Stable Building for sixty dollars. Laurie did not like the condition so I passed on it. The dealer then said he had two Marx skyscraper buildings around the corner. We went to look at them and found the buildings were incomplete: no bases, rust and one looked like it had a different top floor. The dealer wanted $320.00 each and we passed on them.

We came to the second annoyance of the show. A dealer had boxes of loose plastic figures including the MPC King Kong figure from the playset. MPC did a playset based on the cartoon show. I have a couple of the character figures but not King Kong. I picked up and was told someone else was getting it.  That was fine so I looked at the other items and spotted a partial Ideal Justice League playset in a box.  The box contain the Sanctuary front, Batmobile, the giant robot, a Wonder woman figure (no separate lasso) and vaccuum pieces all cracked for $600.00. I passed on it. I looked another big box of plastic figures which no one was looking at and asked a price.  The dealer said it was for another person at the table. I walked away and talked to my friend John and Mike Russo of Stockade Miniatures about the load and the dealer. They told me that the dealer tried to sell his load of items which also had some Captain Action figures and pieces for $6000.00 the day before.  Several dealers made some offers but he passed on them.  I went back later and Mike had picked up a shoebox which had various items in it. The dealer told Mike that he had not gone through it but he knew that there were some metal figures in the box and wanted two hundred dollars!! Mike and I looked at each other thinking is this guy serious. Mike passed on the box. I hate dealers who do not have their items marked and price.

The third annoyance of the day was similar to the second annoyance he had a bunch of unmarked items including gas station accessories. I knew the price would be high when the dealer said that the pieces are hard to find, but when he said $75.00, I just walked away. There were many items that were great at the show but the prices were too much for either resale or the collection. One dealer had several large sets of Beton in the box, I hate to hear what he wanted for the sets. Another item we saw large Britains Hearld Cavalry box which contains foot and mounted figures. The dealer wanted $150.00 which was a fair price but too rich for my budget. There was good buys. I passed on a Marx miniature castle out of the box for $60.00. It was gone by the time we made a second circuit.

We saw our friend Dean who had done a Liptor commercial there. He was busy with customers both timeswe passed him so we did not get a chance to talk to him. He was telling a customer how he was cleaning a three story building and how a battery operated robot nearly went to the junk pile if he had not spotted it in time. Several dealers we knew were not there. We talk to Mike and John and got the impression that the show was decent but no great shakes. We noticed that not many people were carrying packages and the dealers were bored. Some dealers had started reading books or newspaper right after the show opened. After two hours, we left the show and  headed home to get ready for the next day.