Vintage FAirs: Just Over-Priced Jumble Sales
Jumble sales were honest, unlike over-priced, over-hyped Vintage Fair.
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There's a vogue, a fashion for anything vintage. which has seen a rise in what are called Vintage Fairs. Community and municipal halls up and down the country now regularly host these "fairs". Once we were jostled by old ladies looking for bargains among the piles of donated clothes, discarded nick-nacks and destroyed toys. Now snooty hipsters sporting their latest "thrown-together" high-fashion thrift shop outfit, brush haughtily past each other secretly sneering at the freshly laundered railed of must have vintage fashion. Granny's old "wouldn't give it house room" ornaments all neatly over-priced and labelled as kitsch objet da't. And don't get me started on the prices people charge for the toys we threw out. As avaricious horders empty their attics, under the stairs cupboards and garages. Dust off the useless tat they've kept for years and try to sell it at over-inflated prices to gullible fools.
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I went to touring vintage fair recently, that claimed to to be the biggest and best in the country. I don't know what I was expecting, but what I found didn't sit well with me. I did sneer, not the hipster girl choosing the crimplene a-line floral skirt I remembered my grandmother bagging-up for the local church jumble sale back in the 70s. I didn't sneer at the couple proudly strutting their stuff in full vintage 40s regalia, carefully coiffured hair perched lovingly on high. Good on them I thought. No, the sneer started sometime after I'd paid to get in and first walked into the hall, passed the make-shift cafe in the entrance way. I recognised the trestle tables, the bored faces of the people sat behind them, the random rails of garish polyester and nylon shirts, skirts, frocks and blouses framing their disinterested demeanour. Stalls of clothes and accessories, butted-up next to tables of neatly arranged glass-ware and god-awful ornaments. Somewhere in among the mix were the odd table of toys, vinyl records and boxes of carefully arranged magazines. This is one of these vintage fairs I've heard so much about? I remember these things as a kid, we just called them jumble sales! And back in the day, they didn't charge us to get in. I felt conned. These bastards had charged me to come to a glorified jumble sale, by dressing it up in gingham and calling it a "vintage fair".
Anyway, attempting to ignore first impressions, we'd paid to get in so decided to give it a go and see what was on offer. To sum it up, what was on offer was a combination of everything from my grandparents houses filtered through my mother's house and was one day heading its way to my brother and I. We're going to be vintage oligarchs one day! Wheeling and dealing in tat we really should just throw way, but know out there is some fool willing to pay an inflated price we pulled out of thin-air for it. I digress, my vintage business empire can wait. We milled among the stalls, stopping every now and again to gawk in disbelief at some of the prices. Grabbing up items and saying in a loud clear voice, "Have you seen the price they are charging for this?!" Waving said item in the air, "Who'd buy this?" Before carefully putting the crying boy riding a straw donkey with the name of some Spanish resort badly hand-painted on its rear-end.
"It dispenses cigarettes out of its back-side if you lift its tail!" Says the disgruntled woman on the other-side of the table. I pause for a minute, realise I think that's quite cool. Quickly shaking off a moment of weakness, we move onto a table of plastic crap. Toys, none of them in boxes (you should always keep the box!) scattered haphazardly among box Brownie cameras and horn-rimmed reading glasses. I was sucked in by the sight of the Astro Wars electronic game, I had one as a kid.
"Wow! Astro Wars! Cool!" Way too many short exclamations in one short burst. I picked it up, flipped it over and saw the price. "Fucking hell! Thirty quid!" Now I'd seen these things going on eBay for even more crazy prices, but being stood in front of someone who openly exploiting my childhood at such an outrageous price was just too much. I felt violated, and he was asking my to pay for the violation. This mild mannered chap, who'd spread the contents of his attic on this trestle table, made-up some prices off the top of his head, and smiled benevolently as he saw your reaction to the inflated value he placed on your precious childhood memories. One of these vintage vultures, scouring charity shops, picking all the best finds and reselling them to anyone fool willing to part with good cash for discarded items. Now most charity shops are bereft of those wonderfully eclectic kitsch finds, that made the hours of trudging from shop to shop worthwhile. No longer do you come back, laden down with bags full of booty having only spent the spare change you had in your pocket. Everyone wants a piece of the "vintage" action, pushing prices up. The crappy mass produced ornaments of many working class home of yesteryear now sit sardonically arranged on the middle class book shelves. People pontificating with prosaic platitudes about their latest acquisition. You never got any of this pseudo-cool culture raping nonsense with the good old jumble sale.
Anyway, attempting to ignore first impressions, we'd paid to get in so decided to give it a go and see what was on offer. To sum it up, what was on offer was a combination of everything from my grandparents houses filtered through my mother's house and was one day heading its way to my brother and I. We're going to be vintage oligarchs one day! Wheeling and dealing in tat we really should just throw way, but know out there is some fool willing to pay an inflated price we pulled out of thin-air for it. I digress, my vintage business empire can wait. We milled among the stalls, stopping every now and again to gawk in disbelief at some of the prices. Grabbing up items and saying in a loud clear voice, "Have you seen the price they are charging for this?!" Waving said item in the air, "Who'd buy this?" Before carefully putting the crying boy riding a straw donkey with the name of some Spanish resort badly hand-painted on its rear-end.
"It dispenses cigarettes out of its back-side if you lift its tail!" Says the disgruntled woman on the other-side of the table. I pause for a minute, realise I think that's quite cool. Quickly shaking off a moment of weakness, we move onto a table of plastic crap. Toys, none of them in boxes (you should always keep the box!) scattered haphazardly among box Brownie cameras and horn-rimmed reading glasses. I was sucked in by the sight of the Astro Wars electronic game, I had one as a kid.
"Wow! Astro Wars! Cool!" Way too many short exclamations in one short burst. I picked it up, flipped it over and saw the price. "Fucking hell! Thirty quid!" Now I'd seen these things going on eBay for even more crazy prices, but being stood in front of someone who openly exploiting my childhood at such an outrageous price was just too much. I felt violated, and he was asking my to pay for the violation. This mild mannered chap, who'd spread the contents of his attic on this trestle table, made-up some prices off the top of his head, and smiled benevolently as he saw your reaction to the inflated value he placed on your precious childhood memories. One of these vintage vultures, scouring charity shops, picking all the best finds and reselling them to anyone fool willing to part with good cash for discarded items. Now most charity shops are bereft of those wonderfully eclectic kitsch finds, that made the hours of trudging from shop to shop worthwhile. No longer do you come back, laden down with bags full of booty having only spent the spare change you had in your pocket. Everyone wants a piece of the "vintage" action, pushing prices up. The crappy mass produced ornaments of many working class home of yesteryear now sit sardonically arranged on the middle class book shelves. People pontificating with prosaic platitudes about their latest acquisition. You never got any of this pseudo-cool culture raping nonsense with the good old jumble sale.
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