Unique items for sale at Vermont flea market

WILMINGTON, VT. – People who enjoy looking for treasures still have time to enjoy the outdoor Wilmington Antiques and Flea Market.

It will be open until the weekend after Columbus Day.

From Pittsfield, it takes a quick hour and 15 minutes maximum to get there, via Route 8 through North Adams.

Located at the junction of Routes 9 and 100 in Wilmington, the outdoor market marked its 29th season this year. It opened in mid-May.

Dozens of vendors from Vermont as well as other states, including Massachusetts, sell a huge variety of merchandise.

One can find everything, including bird cages and bird houses, bracelets, earrings, necklaces, snowshoes, sunglasses, toy guitars and real ones, to name a smattering.

Booths are protected under white “roof” covers and visitors walk up and down several grassy aisles packed with merchandise.

Wear comfortable walking shoes

Looking at everything being sold can be a rather heady experience and time consuming, too, so go early and wear comfortable walking shoes.

The day The Beacon checked out the market, the weather cooperated perfectly. Pleasant temperatures accompanied bright sunshine.

Most vendors appeared helpful and carried on conversations with potential buyers.

One couple let a seller know how much they loved a huge spinning wheel he was selling but was unconvinced whether or not to spring for it.

“We’ll have to think about it and come back later if we decide to buy it,” the woman told the seller.

“If it’s still here,” the bearded seller said with a big smile.

One man sold colorful garden décor comprised of dinner and dessert plates as well as glasses, all cemented together and attached to poles one would put into the ground. Then there were flashy round decorations that would spin with the wind.

Prices of items varied. Some things seemed quite steep but there were still lots of bargains to be found.

Some Chinese-speaking women sold hundreds of $1 items from scrubbers and markers to writing pads and other office supplies. The variety of items they offered for sale in hundreds of boxes attracted dozens of people on the hunt for who knows what.

Inside a square dishpan filled with water, a mechanical frog with a baby frog on his back swam with all his might. He was for sale, too.

Everything from dolls to trolls

One could find attractive dolls with flowing blonde hair, long eyelashes and lacy dresses or trolls with faces so ugly they could make one wince.

Antique enthusiasts looked longingly at some of the old-fashioned carved furniture like beds with ornate, tall headboards and tables.

Attractive handmade quilts conjured up images of how they would look on the beds back home.

There were even old signs, such as one that read, “Feeding teams in this bridge is positively forbidden by the selectmen.” (The sign did, indeed say “in” this bridge as opposed to the grammatically correct word, “on.”)

The market had lots of vendors selling food products, too. One woman sat behind a table filled with amber-colored honey and another pedaled famous Vermont maple syrup in all sizes.

Tie dye shirts and jackets in eye-popping designs and colors were piled up on tables and hung from poles in one booth.

Wooden salad bowls, ceramic decorations, old glass bottles, hundreds of caps, raccoon banks and even an angel flower pot fountain could all be found at the market and that’s just skimming the surface of all there was to see there.

Near the White House Inn

Up the road from the Wilmington Antiques and Flea Market, high on a hill, stands the White House Inn. It’s a thoroughly delightful place to stay, should anyone want to spend a night in Wilmington.

If an excursion is just for the day, also a short distance from the market is an outdoor restaurant called Wahoo’s Eatery. The smell of their grilled hamburgers wafts through the air.

People eat on picnic tables or big rocks that cover the lawn. The meat, fresh tomatoes and lettuce are all Vermont-grown.

If flea markets are your thing, the one in Wilmington would make a great excursion throughout September or mid-October, when it will close up shop once again until next May.

Posted by Susan M. Wicker Guerrero on September 13, 2012. Filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry