Beijing has an antique market called Panjiayuan. When I was in the USA, I wanted to visit a marketplace of the same vibe and went to the most iconic one in Los Angeles, which is the Rose Bowl Flea Market.
Rose Bowl Flea Market
The Rose Bowl does not need an introduction. It was the main stadium for the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984 and has a 94,000 seat capacity. It has also hosted a World Cup final, and is the stadium that forever will be remembered in association with Roberto Baggio looking up to the sky after he missed his penalty kick. There are plenty of stories in the stadium, and its Olympic legacy is very much attached to the image of Los Angeles in modern times.
Now back to the market, on the second Sunday of every month, the stadium is transformed into a huge flea market.
In the USA, the country has a bit more than 240 years of history. Other countries obviously have a more extensive history, but if you are looking for ancient history at an American flea market, you should manage your expectations.
Are there Chinese items? Yes. Are there a lot? Yes. However, most of them are reproductions. Although you could find a genuine family antique at a yard sale, this is not the type of market where really valuable Chinese antiques are likely to be found.
Even so, the market is really nice for early consumer tech and Americana: vintage cameras, vintage watches, Zippo lighters etc. You might come across water-filling irons, wall-mounted telephones with detachable receivers, WWII film-style ads, and various firearms; Also, wall-mounted telephones with detachable receivers, water-filling irons, advertisements as seen in films from World War Two, and all sorts of guns.
With only a few hundred years of history to consider, no one is going to find a Terracotta Warrior here. The corset should be to search for what you really like, items not found in China that are also interesting.
Personally, I like tennis, so one of my tasks was to search for old wooden tennis rackets. Tennis history is just over a century old, and those rackets are relics of the game's early period. The construction of those rackets was a craft. They were built extremely strong and had small heads, which required complex design to control the shape of the bent wooden strips. The process of bending and shaping the wood strips to create the racket was a craft in itself. Many of those rackets were named after tennis players, just like today’s endorsement deals.
Sometimes luck is important. I found a Wilson racket with the name of Don Budge. Budge was no ordinary player: he was the first man to complete the Grand Slam in 1938. And there it was, the racket.
Just around the corner I saw another wooden Wilson racket with the name of Jack Kramer. That model is admired by Roger Federer.
Kramer was a very good player, but beyond that, he was one of the founders of the ATP. Both Budge and Kramer were legendary tennis players who made important contributions to the development of tennis, both through their achievements on the court and through the equipment they created.
When treasure hunting in America, value is secondary. Buy what you like, especially things that are difficult to find in China. I once saw vintage wooden rackets from the China Open that were priced no less than 3,000 yuan each. These two cost a few dozen dollars, which is a great price considering they will look great on the wall.
My interests are coffee, wine, and tennis. After tennis, my next interest is coffee because I have covered the sport. While coffee is a relatively new import to us, it has been in America for much longer. It was brought over by the European Puritans and then spread to the rest of the colonies. As a result, many old coffee-related metalware and curiosities are found at flea markets.
Old coffee grinders, like these, are not very difficult to find and they do not seem practical. For a friend who owns a coffee shop, I found a 1930s or 1940s advertising poster for a coffee shop. The words were delightful, so I took it and it is now hanging on the wall of his café in Beijing, where it gives him a lot of pleasure. The same principle applies: find something that does not exist back home.
And since coffee has been mentioned, it is only right that wine gets a mention too. In Southern California (Los Angeles is there), the northern part of California is home to the Napa Valley, which is famous for its wines. I was at a market like this, and I wasn’t looking for elaborate histories of wine or great stories. I simply selected the options I liked best. New oak barrels run about $1,000, but after a few years the oak character fades and the barrels are no longer useful for their original purpose. Some innovator bought used barrels for less than $100 and made other things out of them. One rack came from one oak stave, and a cabinet was made from half a barrel — how inventive. $400 for the custom wine cabinet (the rack was included as a gift) and it arrived a week later. Good deal. Maybe next year I’ll go to Napa and see if I can find some ancient treasures out there. To sum up, when looking for finds in America, look for what you love, what you can’t find in China easily, and what you can actually take home. The wine cabinet, of course, will have to stay in the USA.
