Flea Market Wars

Earth	Tatooine

It was like being in Mos Eisley itself! Wren and Reiley and I headed out to the flea market at the N.C. State Fairgrounds in Raleigh – “The Oldest, the Biggest and the Best” – on a tip that there were Star Wars action figures to be had. It was great fun, lots of all kinds of junk to rummage through. There are a couple large air-conditioned buildings and lots of outdoor stalls to peruse. The outdoor stalls are usually tented and many have large fans blowing. If you split your time between the cool indoors, the tented shops, and the nice shady outdoor rest spots (there are lots of them), you’ll have a great time without breaking a sweat. We picked up a cool smoothie before we got there and it couldn’t have been better.

And we really hit the Star Wars jackpot. The first loot we found was in the back trailer of a small shop with blade-sharpening equipment piled up out front. But inside the trailer were boxes and boxes of comic books, including a “Classic Star Wars” series that was cheap to buy and fun to read. But the big payout was yet to come. In the large Scott building at the back of the market was a large “collectibles exhibition”. It was $5 to get in, but kids under 15 were free, so we were sold. The building was huge, but right as we entered we could see the large Star Wars sign at the back. We walked right past baseball cards and ancient toys and old board games to find the largest collection of Star Wars figures the girls had ever seen. Reiley explained that the $5 figures at Target were always the same ones, the selection always minimal. Here, we had a choice of everything from obscure beasties to a $100 Princess Leia original that would have been worth $800 if it weren’t for a small burn on the plastic casing. Wrenny started collecting figures in her arms until she was dropping them. I told the girls I’d give them $10 each, and they each spent another $10, so we walked away with Darth Maul, Princess Leia in the gear she used to infiltrate Jabba’s lair, young Anakin (the girls said they needed someone to torture, sigh), and Bobba Fett, which the shop owner gave to us for $10 instead of the marked $15 – he was a nice guy. The girls have of course been playing non-stop extended Star Wars scenes for days now – the last I heard, “Dark Windu” (Mace turned away from both the Light and Dark sides to form his own sneak-attack army) was putting everyone in the Jedi hospital. Hahaha!