Bear Booze

The donor of this beautiful bear bottle full of whiskey claimed it was "at least a hundred years old". Well, the 1977 date stamped onto the bottom suggests it might be not quite so antique (or maybe the donor was from the future).
Still, a 9-year-old whiskey from 31 years ago gives us forty years of smokey whiskey flavor to enjoy. That'll get your motor running.

I'm gonna have to go ahead and ask you to come in Sunday as well. That would be great. MmKay.

A talking Milton Waddams bobble-head (actually, it's a bobble-waist) figure from Office Space. Push the button at his feet and the voice of Bill Lumberg (?) tell you he's gonna need you to come in on Saturday. This video I found shows a similar figure with Milton's voice.

In related news, we have recently been gifted a red Swingline. 

Part of the original Mike Judge animation that is the basis for Office Space.

Best Typewriter Ever?

We just may have a new front runner for the race of the best typewriter donation of all time:

That's right! It's the typewriter that types in cursive!  Amazing.

Rock In - Rock On - Rock Over -Rock Out

This little Yamaha wooden combo amp just needed a little love and we were throwing down tasty licks by the end of the work day.

Print Gocco!!!!

Many moons ago, the Jammer spotted and laid claim to a brand new Riso Print Gocco B6 printing machine. New, in the box, all wrapped up, with inks and bulbs and screens and all that. It was a once-in-a-lifetime score. I'm sure he broke it or lost it or sold it for a bag of magic beans or something.

Then, earlier this year, the fates tossed me a bone and I pulled my own Gocco from the heap. I already own one, but if you think I'm letting this baby pass by then you don't know how we do it in the sorting room. This Gocco was yellow (mine is pale blue), in the box, with a few old screens and bulbs that probably don't work. Still a very, very amazing score. 

If you aren't familiar with the Gocco printing machines, they are basically an awesome mini toy screenprinting device from Japan. It can expose the light-sensitive screens and print with the same unit, and because it prints using downward pressure rather than a cross-screen squeegee pull, you can print multiple colors at once.

In recent years, the Japanese manufacturers of Gocco have discontinued the printing products, sending used Gocco printers and supplies through the roof on ebay. I think I'm going to send this one to an artist friend in Philadelphia. 

Link: the Save Gocco website

Now It Belongs To The Ages

We get a lot of art here at the junk store. Some of it is so bad that it is good. Most of it is so bad that it remains bad. However, this poodle painting, clearly, is fantastic.

Unsigned. No date.

The old Pen Dispenser

A vintage dispenser of pens. Amazingly, there were still a few old pens lodged in there. Not amazingly, there was also a ton of dust, rust, grime, and mold. It is was manufactured by Jammer Corp! Well, Jamer Corp, anyway, but close enough.

life-size game of Jenga

We like to stack heavy cardboard boxes floor to ceiling. Some of the boxes are half-empty (hopefully those at the bottom). When things get precarious we secure the boxes with scotch tape. Top Cat and Big Merl almost got buried in an avalanche of cardboard and fabric scraps when this big boy took a tumble. I have to say it was well worth the risks.

another day, another pencil sharpener

If you are a big fan of my previous post about hand-cranked pencil sharpeners (see it here), not only are you in luck, you are also a big loser. It's just another wall-mountable pencil sharpener... get over it.

Monkey News

Two different styles of wind-up monkey toys came in just a few hours apart. Wind-ups are definitely a new collection that is happening. You gather 30 or 40 different wind-ups (preferably stored in a large glass jar), crank 'em up, set 'em loose, and you got yourself a party.

Spirograph

Get ready to have your mind fucking blown...

and if you liked the "Magic Graphic" kit (on the right in the above photo), we've got a bonus generic "Spiral Art" for you...

Another collection of Spirographs can be found here.

NES with Super Mario

A Nintendo Entertainment System, with one controller, and the Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt cartridge...

The awesome looks-like-a-monitor-but-is-really-a-tv was purchased by The Jammer for $10 at the competing junk store down the street. You just can't beat a value like that. 

And what's really amazing about this find is that the game worked right away when we put the cartridge in. And, as anybody who still has an old NES around (or has used one in the past 20 years) knows, you usually have to blow on the game and click it around in the system for about 10 minutes before it works properly.

Junk Pirate Archive: Star Trek TV Tray

It has been a pretty slow week as far as blog-worthy donations go, so I'm gonna dig into the vault for a little something...

From the Junk Pirate Archives:

Someone donated a near-mint Star Trek the Motion Picture tin TV tray featuring that lovable Mr. Spock... highly illogical.

Game & Watch: Bombsweeper

Long before Nintendo reinvented itself with the Wii and the Nintendo DS handheld, and even before the greatest selling video game system of all time, Gameboy, was created, Nintendo dominated the handheld video game world with its series of LCD screened Game-&-Watch games. These simple games are still fun and usually work if there isn't corrosion in the battery compartment. 

What we have here is one of my favorites: Bombsweeper from 1987. Recently, but before this blog was started, we also got in Multi Screen Zelda (1989) and Multi Screen Black Jack (1985) (in the original box)! Also in the Junk Pirate vault are Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong II, and the amazing Donkey Kong 3 Micro Vs. System (in the box) with little controllers that fold inside the game. A very regularly updated Game & Watch website with every game in the edition, can be found here. You can play an online Java version of Game & Watch Bombsweeper here.

Madballs!

After years of waiting and concentrating on manifesting it, I finally spotted an old Madball among a big bin of musty toys. It is Screaming Meemie, from the original Series One Toys by AmToy from 1985. This is in excellent condition considering it is 23 years old and made of foam rubber.

Madballs went through two series of 8 balls each, plus a series of 4 larger sports balls (called Super Madballs). They later spawned a comic book, a few cartoon episodes, and other toy products. The New York hardcore band, Madball, was, in fact, named after Madballs toys. A redesigned series of Madballs updates have recently been available in toy stores.

Madballs commercial from 1985

Madballs cartoon: Escape from Orb (part 1)

3 Lava Lamps in 1 Week

We just got 3 (three) lava lamps in 3 non-consecutive days this past week. Two of them came from the same donation. The lights in all three worked, but only the red-and-black one got the molten lava flowing good. Not the biggest collection of Lava Lamps (one of the original "Plug-Ins") we have seen, but a good haul for one week.

Other People's Photos - Taxi

The extreme Junk Pirate value of this photo is obvious at a glance.

Freedom Is Not Free

"Oh beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain..."

Junk Pirate Archive: Dolls

From the Junk Pirate Archive come these pictures of a few of the better mint-in-box dolls we've seen. You got the Trailer Trash doll and the Drag Queen doll (both 1st Edition!) .

The link I used to have for these toys (trailertrashdoll.com) now leads to the "Redneck Warehouse" where you can get such favorites as the "Vintage Jeff Foxworthy Redneck Collection" and "Dancing George Bush Doll". God bless America.

the Odyssey 300

Holy crap! It's a 1976 Magnavox Odyssey 300, one of the first home video game systems to use a single dedicated microchip. It plays 3 games: Smash, Tennis, and Hockey (basically three versions of Pong) all with the use of only two knobs (instead of six like the Odyssey 200). Ralph Baer and Magnavox (the creators of the original home video game system, the Odyssey, in 1972) would go on to make several other Odyssey versions, plus even more versions only available in the international market.

This specimen comes in amazingly good condition for a 36 year-old machine, with the power cord, in the original box (with some of the original packing styrofoam)! Who knows if it works, and who cares. These systems are sleek and gorgeous and look better on the shelf than in use.

We have gotten some great old gaming systems here in the past: Atari 2600, Nintendo Entertainment Systems, a boatload of Sega Genesis, Coleco, and even an Intellivision, but I think the Odyssey 300 is the best score of them all so far.

You can see all the Odyssey systems at the pong-story website here.

Vintage Pencil Sharpeners

Old office supplies are the best.

Back in the day, stuff was made from hardwood and steel. These pencil sharpeners are many, many years older than me yet they still work better than any mamby-pamby, battery-powered electric ones they make today do. With a little elbow grease you could grind a new pencil down to a sharp nub in under 30 seconds. No classroom or art studio should be without one of these. Plus, once you get three variations of a similar thing happening you call it a collection and let the hoarding begin!

I especially love how there are variable hole sizes, in case of the rare instance when you need to sharpen one of those extra thick pencils.

Skull Mug

File this one under the heading Cool Mugs and Drinking Glasses That Are Shaped Like Things:

It's a pirate skull mug.

Pretty big, too. It probably holds about a pint and a half of grog. Maybe more. The fact that it is glass and not ceramic adds a couple of bonus points.