I made it to Portland for the ‘Fall Antique Show’ at the Expo Center by http://christinepalmer.net over the weekend.

This is one of the largest shows in the country with 1,000+ booths!  I first attended the show with my sister this past summer and had such an amazingly great experience so I was eager to come up for the Fall show.

Parking took less than 15 mins this time compared to nearly an hour at the summer show. My sister and I made it into the exhibitor halls within minutes of the show starting.  This year we are interested in growing our vintage Christmas collectibles so we were hoping to find some treasures at the show.

The show started slowly. Some booths were not and all items under cover and yellow ‘caution’ tape blocking the entry. Of the booths that were open for business, many of the dealers seemed grumpy… not happy or excited to see shoppers. They didn’t event greet you when you entered their booths.  We decided to pullover in the food court and wait in line for coffee. With coffee’s in-hand we forged onward.

Items being sold seemed different than at the summer show. Yes, there was still those amazing booths with large collections of spectacular tin toys, robots, comic books, Disney and Disneyana,  vintage Halloween items, but the ‘smalls’ I would normally be going for were not really available this time. We did find some booths with vintage Christmas and lots of bottle brush trees and figurines. Some of these vintage Christmas items were super expensive and dealers were not at all interested in haggling or negotiating. When I attended the summer show prices were excellent and dealers eager to haggle.  It wasn’t until a good 2 hours into the show that dealers started to loosen up and get friendlier.

We did end up with some awesome finds to include vintage made in Japan Christmas bottle brush trees and wreaths. My sis even managed to negotiate an entire vintage Christmas tree that was all decorated with amazing vintage Mercury balls, Shiny Brite and German ornaments. It was great! We had quite the haul!!

The show turned out to be excellent over-all. It was a slow start and 5 hours later we were exhausted and found the treasures we came for. I can’t wait for the 2014 summer show!!

I am listing many goodies I brought back on my Ebay and Etsy stores!