Finding Timeless Treasures at the Istorya Vintage Appreciation Fair
On March 25, I hopped over to the Istorya Vintage Appreciation Fair to support Specurator (my boss’ vintage eyeglass frames business) and to ogle pretty old things.
If you’re in the market for new eyeglass frames, I swear I’m not being biased when I say Specurator has some pretty nifty frames.
Aside from being authentically vintage, these frames are also really, really affordable compared to what you’d find in most stores. Please follow @specurator on Instagram – I promise you won’t regret it.
Meanwhile, The Curious Artisan had a huge display table full of gorgeous typewriters, typewriter ribbon tins, telephones from the 1900s, and beautiful timepieces.
They also had letterpress printing demos throughout the day:
But really, the main reason I went to the fair was to snag some new stamps for the collection that I inherited from my dad and my aunt. I’ll probably write about that collection in a separate blog post.
This stall wasn’t just selling loose stamps – it also sold beautiful old envelopes, postcards, and letters that still had stamps on them.
I feel terrible about not catching this particular stall’s name, or the name of the elderly lady manning it. While I was poking around her huge selection, I overheard another customer asking her so many questions about stamps and sending letters through the post office, which she seemed happy enough to answer.
There were a lot of other interesting things and stalls at the fair, including fountain pens, wooden furnishings, vinyl records, newspapers and tabloids from the Marcos era, cameras, bikes, toys, and archery sets (not shown in photos, but I shit you not, there were a bunch of them there).
I actually brought a few old vinyl records to have them appraised, and possibly sell them. While I didn’t get to sell anything to the vinyl stall (I think it was Bear’s Den Records) in the end, one of the vendors, Charlie, gave me his number so I could let him know what other records I might have.
I had so much fun poking around the stalls at the vintage fair, and I really hope there are more events like this in the future (and hopefully I’ll have enough money to spare for one of those gorgeous typewriters).
El Santos is a marketing & advertising professional by day and gamer/bookworm/tarot reader by night. She’s prone to sudden fits of fangirling over her varied interests: video games, fiction, art, folkore, anime, and tarot. She currently lives with her husband and 2 rescue cats.
