Well, that went quick. The big day is here. Welcome to Halloween all! Here in the midwest, we've been experiencing an Indian Summer with temperatures in the low 80's. Not very Halloween-like, but it's supposed to cool down with a thunderstorm in the early morning of Halloween.
This photo was among the lot I bought earlier this year from which I've posted a few photos. I felt pretty fortunate to find a Halloween photo as they're not terribly common, especially in this size (8" x 10"). The original owner of the photos was a nurse beginning in the 1920's. The back of this photo is labeled "Nurse's Halloween Party Chicago".
I found this book over the summer. The "Chas Addams" name was enough to catch my attention, even if it didn't already have me at "Monster".
I'll admit, I sometimes buy record albums simply for the cover. Particularly if they evoke something Halloween related. This album fits that category.
I'm posting this midday to make up for the missed posting yesterday.
The cat on this diecut is perched upon the nose of the moon who doesn't seem to mind.
Way back in 2017, I showcased one of my childhood grails, the Weebles Haunted House. But, there is an even rarer Weeble grail I was only made of aware of in recent years. It was a promotion with 3M Scotch "Magic Tape" in the 1970's. You might remember the Magic tape spokesman, The Invisible Man, from the commercials.
At an estate sale this past summer, I was in a crowded basement, both with items and people. While I was breezing by for a fast pass seeing if anything jumped out, my daughter was digging through a box of small craft items. She suddenly pulled out a Weeble, but not just any Weeble, an Invisible Man Weeble.
While today's die cut isn't as vintage as some I've posted here this season, it is, to me, definitive Halloween. This classic Beistle Scratch Cat is the one I remember hanging on our classroom wall in Elementary School in the 1970's. I love its vibrant green outline, its wild eyes, and its polished(?) nails. Its hackles are raised, its tail in full bushy mode, its teeth ready to bite.
As soon as the teacher brought out this die cut and hung it up, it was "go time" in my mind. Halloween was almost here and it was hard concentrating on anything in the classroom. Staring at this die cut occupied the time I should have been focusing on the lesson at hand on the chalk board. I'm not sure if the teacher ever figured that out, but she left the die cut up throughout the season.
I came across this vintage Halloween costume minus the mask, but I loved the artwork on it. It screamed '50's Monster Movie to me. The red eyes, the fangs, the blood(?).
Ten (!) Years ago, I posted this Flavour Candy Treat Bag. Today I have another.
I found this beaten scarecrow at the same estate sale as this witch and this witch. I really like the design of this. The colors are still vibrant, the haystacks and pumpkins well-detailed.
Actually, you can't make any noise with this horn. The mouthpiece is missing. I guess you could make your own toots through it if you really wanted to. It has those classic Halloween graphics I love.
Sorry for dropping the ball today and not posting on time, but I'm here to make up for it. You guessed it, more die cuts! I believe both of these are made by Peck. The skeleton and Jack O' Lantern is classic 1970's Peck design.
When you discussing rubber masks (and I do frequently) you are obligated to acknowledge Don Post Studios as the crème de la crème of the mask world (with everything but Yul Brynner!). In fact, he's known as The Godfather of Halloween.
This Don Post "Nostrum" mask dates from 1983 and is essentially, just a giant nose with eyes and ears.
Time to look at (and listen to) another record. This one didn't appear on the back of a cereal box, but was published by Peter Pan. It features a cover of the Ross Bagdasarian (aka David Seville of Chipmunks fame) song "Witch Doctor". I believe it dates from the 1970s.
When you see more die cuts posted, you know I'm running behind on posts and needed something quick. I'm having trouble keeping up this year, despite taking several days off this past week. But anyway, here you go. While these aren't classic die cuts, they are Beistle and they date from the 1980's, so they have a little creep cred.
First up is a classic Dracula.
Today's post again has potential to raise the objection that it's not Halloween related. And I acknowledge there's nothing directly Halloween-y here, but there are some nice Autumnal scenes and a couple of those feature pumpkins, so there's that. I do expect, however, that some readers will have flashbacks to their own childhood home walls when they see this. It seems to be a trigger object for many, including myself.
Continuing from yesterday's blog about disguises, here are some rubber/vinyl masks I found this summer at various garage and estate sales. When I was a kid, rubber masks were for the wealthy.
First up is this vampire mask with "lifelike" hair. The odd thing is, he had sculpted hair already. I guess it didn't do well, so they thought adding additional hair might help. I'm not sure of the maker of this.
When I was deciding on a Halloween costume as a kid, it was always my goal to not be recognized, whether it was through the use of mask or makeup. I generally didn't have the scratch for a costume, so many times, it was makeup. I've written previously about some of my failed attempts at using makeup to disguise myself.
Imagineering and other companies sold kits aimed at making kids think they could successfully disguise themselves without the need for makeup. I recently found the remnants of some of those kits.
Normally each season I try to limit the same kind of object to one per week, particularly die cuts. But this year, I've come into a goodly number of them, many from the same sale, so I thought I'd start posting these a little more frequently.
First up is this Beistle Witch. I'm not sure if she's supposed to be a child witch or just a short witch, but I like her and her frightened Jack O' Lantern. It's one I've never seen before, and I found 2 at the same sale.
Now, I know some of you may argue that today's entry may not qualify as Halloween or horror related. I would counter, first of all, that Snoopy is very Halloween related, given "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" in which he makes a memorable appearance as a World War I flying ace battling the Red Baron. I would then add, that not only is today's entry Snoopy, it's a Hitler-mustachioed, Iron cross-bearing, masked, alternate universe Snoopy in which he was born in Germany under the Kaiser's watch and now fights for the other side. How's that for horror?
I found this original pen and ink drawing at a garage sale over the summer. No context other than I believe it's an illustration for a newspaper, specifically, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. I have no idea what's going on here. I probably don't want to know. The stains add a level of disturbance.
I'm not sure of the age of this Glenn Confections Fun Gum. It has a 9-digit zip code. Zip+4 was introduced in 1983 in the United States. Glenn confections went out of business in 1994. At any rate, it's a survivor. The original recipient resisted the urge to chew it.
There's a popular meme floating around that says something to the effect of, "If you remember records on the back of cereal boxes, it's time for your prostate exam". Well, I do, and yes it is. And if you're a male 50 or over, you're due as well, and that's my PSA PSA (Prostate-specific antigen Public Service Announcement) for today.
I found these two records at an estate sale this summer. I've found them before, but it's always a welcome surprise. In fact, looking now at past posts, I did write about some others I found back in 2022. Man, my memory is going. Well, let's revisit them again. These records were found on the back of Honeycomb cereal and date from 1975 to 1978.
I collect vintage newspapers and estate sales are a good source of them. People tended to save the newspapers from important historical events, typically the Kennedy assassination and following weeks or the Apollo 11 moon mission and landing. Every once in a while, I'll find some from Pearl Harbor or even earlier.
I found this ad in the October 30th, 1940 edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
After yesterday's reflective and somber post, let's return to some light-hearted Halloween fun.
I found this U.S. Metal Toy Mfg. Co. Halloween noisemaker at an estate sale sitting in a case at checkout. This is where estate sale companies tend to keep smalls and valuables to head off shoplifting. While the price for Halloween collectibles has risen considerably at estate sales, it's still possible to find deals and this was one. I think I paid $10. The graphics are very nice on this one. It probably dates from the 1950's.
The older I get, the more reflective I tend to be at estate sales. I begin to wonder what my estate sale will be like, if you get my picture. You try to brush it off as some distant future event, yet the clock continues to tick and the face in the mirror continues to age.
I was at an estate sale over the summer, casually looking through someone's lifetime accumulation, and I came across this mask. I didn't think too much about it other than it was another vacuform mask to add to my collection.
I've posted quite a few Gurley candles (not "Girly", the Gurley Novelty company of Buffalo, New York) over the years here at the blog, the vast majority of them being Halloween-themed.
I haven't come across this one before.
Let's kick off this season's die cut posts with this Beistle I like to call, for obvious reasons, "Boo, Dude!"
Welcome to year 11 of the Countdown to Halloween here at Garage Sale Finds. Just as in previous years, I have no idea what I'm going to post (well, I have an inkling, but you know...) And as in previous years, I'm not sure if I'll be able to provide a daily post, but I'll certainly try because, as I've stated in ad nauseam, Halloween is my bag.
This year's bag comes to us from a distance. Not a great one, but a distance none the less.
September 27th. Almost October. Enough time for one more toaster. One more toaster before October. Just to keep our bread warm.
This is a pre-1920 Beardsley & Wolcott toaster. It's a somewhat unusual design in that the toast drops in the top and then falls out the bottom once toasted. One slice only.
I recently acquired a large collection of vintage photographs from an estate sale. The photos date from the 1920's and 30's, so I'm assuming they were not taken by the person whose estate sale it was, but perhaps a parent or other relative. From reading through them, it appears this person may have been a nurse and the photos are of many different people, perhaps friends and work acquaintances. Most were taken either in Cape Girardeau or St. Louis, Missouri. The nice thing is, many are labeled with the name of the person in the photo and the date the photo was taken, a very uncommon practice from my own experience with vintage photos. I plan on posting some of the more interesting ones over the upcoming weeks. I also plan on attempting to locate relatives of the individuals in the photos to return the pictures or at least provide a scan for them.
Of course, having said that about the labeling of the photos, the first image I offer up has nothing on the back. Just a girl and her mule(?). I question that, because honestly, I'm not sure if it's a mule or a horse. Initially, it looks like a horse, but then the ears look a little large and the mane seems a little tight. Maybe someone with more horse/mule familiarity can clarify.
National Donut Day is today. National Donut Day National Donut Day was started in 1938 by the Salvation Army to commemorate the volunteers who served donuts to soldiers during WW I. In honor of that, I thought I'd share this short clip I found on an 8mm movie I picked up recently at an estate sale. The film was labeled "Bowling" and features a men's bowling team in tournament in Madison, Tennessee sometime in the early to mid 1960's. But the most interesting part of the film is this short clip where they stopped early in the morning for Krispy Kreme donuts, giving a peak into the look of the business (outside anyway).
The early morning sun reflects in the windows which allows a vague glimpse at the menu on the wall. Our bowler balances 4 dozen Krispy Kremes while a cigarette dangles from his lips. A Krispy Kreme delivery van looms in the background.
While I prefer our local donut shop over Krispy Kreme, there is something about them when they glide off the assembly line hot and fresh.
Why not stop by your favorite donut shop today, Krispy Kreme or otherwise, and treat yourself?
Okay, it's really Sunday afternoon, but I worked all night and went to bed at 8 a.m. this morning.
This Farberware model 206 was a recent find, although I have several in this identical or near identical design.
There's something poetic about this slide. Something about the beauty of peacetime after the horrors of war. Anyway, we've gone from squatting in the latrine to squatting in some flowers.
This slide was simply titled "Latrine". Talk about closeness. I'm not sure that canvas wrap is really providing much privacy. I have nightmares about this (not this particular slide, mind you, just this situation). This is from the same set of slides as the previous post. Talk about occupied in Japan. I presume our subject is taking the photo, which is a whole other level of weird. I guess he wanted to let someone at home know about the arrangements.
I acquired a collection of family slides at an estate sale this past weekend. Many are "red border" Kodachrome 35mm slides which puts them at pre-1960. As it turns out, many were from the late 1940's when the original owner was stationed in Occupied Japan at Camp McNair around 1947. I'll be posting some select picks (and pics) in the following weeks.
First up is this photo of a bountiful feast. The color and composition of this was striking to me. The original owner of the slides, Milton Gast, is center.
Pardon me if my age shows while I switch into "kids these days" mode.
It seems the sole source of entertainment for kids these days (see, I told you) are video games. Sure, they come in a variety of platforms, but they're still video games. Pre-Atari, I didn't have much exposure to video games. But there were variety of options for game play I could choose; board games, cards, outdoor physical *gasp* games, and early electronic games. And for a brief time in the late 1970's mixed among those other choices was a line of mechanical pocket games made by Tomy and other companies.
I remember going through bins of these at a local store as a kid, trying to decide which held the most fun and game play.
I found a couple of these this past summer. I had this Jackpot game in yellow. Pull the lever, let it spin, push to button to stop the reels on a dime. Of course, nothing ever dispensed for hitting the jackpot, but it felt great just the same.
I've written before of my fond memories of Scholastic Books and the two magical days in school: when the Scholastic Book Club order form would arrive and the day the books you ordered arrived.
I recently found a few more of these flyers.
Arrow Book Clubs was a division of Scholastic Books. These books were aimed at 4th through 6th graders. There was also the T.A.B. Book Club (Teen-age Books) that were aimed at older students.
