Flea Market Finds

My wife, Mary, and I have been going to the Belleville Flea Market for quite a few years now. This flea market is held the third weekend of every month at the Belle Clair Fairgrounds in Belleville, IL. Many of the sellers are there every time and their booths are usually in the same place every time. You can buy everything from jewelry, coins, records, military memorabilia, toys, belts, tools, furniture, etc. One seller that I like has old paper related ephemera for sale: magazines, advertisements, books, road maps, etc.

As I mentioned in a previous post, when I bought the 1967 Mercury Cougar I received a copy of the October 1966 issue of Popular Mechanics magazine with the car. This issue was the yearly new car issue put out by the magazine that gave details about the new cars coming out that fall. So, I decided that the next time we were at the flea market I would look for more of these issues from other years.

I found the following issues for $1 each:

Popular Mechanics - October 1962

Popular Mechanics - October 1964

I love looking at the stories from these magazines; especially the ones about products that consumers will see in the future! I would have been pretty excited in the Fall of 1964 that I would soon be able to be able to tape TV pictures at home. I guess that soon was a relative term as my parents, who coincidentally were married in the Fall of 1964, bought a RCA Video Cassette Recorder (VCR) in 1980!