Flea market season is in full swing over here in Germany. Dozens are happening every weekend so picking and choosing the right ones isn't as hard....if you hit a dud, just move onto the next one. I try to look around to see what people are buying, but it truly is a random assortment of stuff. Fortunately, it seems I am the only one in Southern Germany that is collecting cards so that is a positive thing that keeps me going out as often as possible. Here are some of the highlights of one of the local markets:
I picked up this full album of 1937 Cigaretten-Bilderdenst-Hamburg cards of trees and flowers called "Aus Wald und Flur" (Trees and Flowers) for 8 Euro. Its catalog number is 21806-17. As is German tradition, the cards are pasted in the album. This tobacco card series seemed really popular back in the day due to the amount of them I see these days for sale. They are also all over German eBay so I feel like I got a pretty good deal.
World Cup fever was in full swing here until Germany lost last week. Boo, but at least the biergartens are now a lot less crowded. A local store, Rewe, hands out these cards for every 10-Euro purchase. They have done this now for at least 3 World Cups. The cashier took pity on me when I asked if I could have one and he gave me a whole stack of unopened packs. The cards above, however, came from a seller at the flea market. He had hundreds of them and I was able to complete an entire 36-card set for 10 Euro and keep my unopened packs sealed.
The WWF (no, not the wrestling brand), World Wildlife Fund, teamed up with the local grocery store, Edeka, to issue these 4-sticker packs with a purchase of groceries. As you can imagine, each of the stickers contains an image of an animal, or part of an animal for larger, multi-sticker images. There are 180-stickers in the set and once you tear off the borders of the pack, it reveals 4 stickers that are perforated. A seller at the flea-market had a whole stack of them and was happy to unload them all for 2 Euro.
More to follow next week.
Dozens of flea markets? Nice. That World Cup and WWF sets are cool. Can't wait to see what you find next weekend.
ReplyDeleteThey are all over the place. Little ones here and there scattered in between all the big ones.
DeleteWhen I was a kid in the 80s we lived in Germany and I used to love going to the flea markets there. I used to collect old money from the Weimar Republic that a lot of dealers had since it was so cheap to buy 10,000,000,000,000 Mark notes (something of a novelty).
ReplyDeleteNice finds!
I've heard of those Marks before, but have never seen one. Hope to find some more goodies over the course of the summer.
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