Flea Market Finds: A goat, vintage iron patio furniture, junk from China and a mannequin head | Mary’s Swap Meet | OKC

Flea Market Flip

I’ve really been enjoying HGTV’s new show Flea Market Flip. It’s in its second season and stars host Lara Spencer. It’s a reality TV series that features two teams of contestants competing for a cash prize. Each team is given $500 to spend at a local flea market. Whatever treasures they find, they repair or repurpose for resale at yet another flea market. In other words, they flip the merchandise. Whichever team makes the biggest profit wins.

I grew up going to flea markets and swap meets. Open-air bazaars of booths, tables and tents filled with another man’s junk. Vendors trying to turn a dollar as buyers time-travel through the generations.

I love flea markets because they’re far from soul-sucking strip malls and big-box stores that have stripped the personality from America’s towns and cities. Standing in the middle of one of those urban, heat-island parking lots, you are seriously in the middle of Anywhere, USA.

Quail eggs at the Flea Market. We saw goose eggs, too.

Flea markets give me a chance to interact with people and be spontaneous. I’m always on the hunt for something with an ineffable quality. My purchases are always random as I scavenged for treasures and toys from the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. Over the years I’ve bought everything from pink Club aluminum pans and blue and yellow Pyrex to colorful parakeets and baby rabbits.

This morning, we took the kids to Mary’s Swap Meet located on NE 23rd Street west of Midwest Boulevard. I’ve been coming here off and on for at least 15 years. I like it much better than Old Paris Flea Market, which is indoors and filled with a lot of poorly made things from China.

Oklahoma City Flea Market Finds

But, I don’t want to mislead you. Sometimes, Mary’s has knock-off clothing, cheap toys, and boxes of soon-to-be expired food. It’s not the Brooklyn Flea Market filled to overflowing with vintage clothing, re-purposed furniture, and collectibles. It’s not the playground of Oklahoma City’s creative class.

But, there are treasures to be found at Mary’s. Today, I found a piece of pottery made by the Shawnee Pottery Company, which operated in Zanesville, Ohio from 1937 to 1961. I bought it for five bucks, and stamped on the bottom is something my generation has seen far too little of: Made in USA.

It is much easier to launch a targeted hunt for treasures at the ultimate online flea markets of eBay and Etsy. But, it’s not the same as getting up before the sun rises and heading out as the early bird to the worm. There is no substitute for seeing goose eggs for sale in the same booth that’s trying to pawn off a macrame owl from the 1970s.

A duck for sale at the flea market

And then there are the goats, birds, sheep, roosters, geese and ducks. Mary’s Flea Market is not complete without a honk and baa; a tweet and a cluck; a chirp and a quack.

But, mostly, I love the stuff that unearths my memories and moves me through the generations. Today, I saw one of those gold swag lamps that features a nude goddess. At one time, oil was pumped along its strings to simulate rain. If I were to curate an exhibit of Generation X relics, we’d have to have one of these things, preferably with some fake greenery.

A popular flea market treasure: An yellow rotary dial phone.

When’s the last time you went to a flea market?

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