ADVENTURES IN ANTIQUING ..... TEXAS
by J oho S. Carini
On March 3, 2001 we flew to Texas for a family
vacation. My wife and son came along, but our
daughter stayed behind because she knew we would
be doing a lot of antiquing, which isn't her favorite
thing. My son Nick, on the other hand, loves to
antique and is quite knowledgeable on coin-op even
though he is only 12.
We landed at the Dallas - Ft. Worth airport. The
weather was warm and humid. We rented a car and
drove from the airport to downtown Dallas. Our
first stop was the West End - a trendy area with lots
of restaurants, shops and taverns. We also visited
several antique shops throughout the Dallas areas
that first day, but found nothing of interest. We
hoped the local flea markets would offer more.
The next morning, we set out bright and early for
Canton. Canton is about 60 miles west of Dallas,
and the weekend before the first Monday of each
month the town hosts a very large flea market.
Those of you who read our articles will recall we
had been there before in '97, and found many nice
coin-op machines. On the way to Canton, we
stopped at the "Waffle House" - a southern chain.
For those of you who have never stopped, they
serve great breakfast and really good waffles at a
low price. We arrived in Canton and parked the car.
Unfortunately, what we didn't know is that the flea
market has grown tremendously in size, and had
split into three different areas --- (1) animals for
sale, (2) crafts, and (3) collectibles & junk. We
ended up by mistake in the animal section. Being a
city boy, I was fascinated by the large selection of
pets and farm animals for sale, but moved on quick-
ly.
After talking to some vendors, we found out the
right place to shop and moved our car. My son did-
n't believe me that it would take hours to cover the
collectibles and junk area, even at our brisk place.
Most of the rummage is outdoors, but they do have
several buildings. We only saw a few coin-op
machines outdoors, including a Victor Half Back - I
picked it up since it was really cheap. Inside one of
the expo buildings I saw a few more machines,
including two separate vendors with Carlton
Rockets. One vendor in particular had two really
high price trades - one a Penny Pack and the other a
small three wheel Trade Stimulator missing the
back door -- and he wanted almost $1200.00 for
each! A few rows down we found a booth with a
number of machines including a green and tan
Ma ters Machine from the 30's with an embossed
longhorn steer (gotta be Texas) on the chute. It was
really clean but priced at $425.00, a bit too expen-
sive for me. The vendor also had an old 30's Slot
Machine and a lot of Old Drug Store Advertising.
But what interested me most was
an Art Granite Match Vendor. It
was in excellent shape with nice
paint and gold pin striping, but it
was marked past book value. After
some negotiations, I was able to
buy it at b 1 0k price (see photo).
The vendor also told me about a
locksmith she knew with some old
30's Master Machines and said she
would contact him for me and let
me know if he was interested in March Vendor
selling. We completed the market in several hours,
somewhat disappointed. Like many other flea mar-
kets, it seemed like the crafts and liquidation type
merchandise was taking over.
After the flea market we drove on to Forney, a town
half way between Canton and Dallas, which is lined
with antique malls. We had also visited Forney in
'97 and found a lot of H& W machines at the shops
there. This time, we found a '33 Ball Gum, some
Silver Kings and several other somewhat common
machines. Most were overpriced. The 1st shop we
visited on our drive back to Dallas had several Coke
machines so I asked the owner if he had any old
Gumball Machines. He told me he had just picked
one up but had broken the globe on his drive back
to his shop. He showed me the machine, which was
wrapped in padding. I could see right away the
stand was a cast iron Columbus Machine stand, and
as he unwrapped the padding from the machine, I
saw a nice '30's cast iron Columbus M with barrel
locks and original paint. He told me he had just
picked it up at an auction and he wanted to get
$450.00 for it. I made him an offer of $250.00, but
he said he wouldn't take anything less than $350.00
so we left.
On Sunday we left for San Antonio. What could
have taken us 4 hours to drive straight through, took
us almost 9 hours because of sight seeing and the
many antique mall stops. Our first stop was the Dr.
Pepper Museum in Waco. We took a brief tour. Like