Junk Find Five: Gruene Antique Company

It's time to start a new recurring segment.  We'll go to flea markets, antique shops and swap meets in Texas and find five interesting things for sale.  They may provide some interesting insight into Texas Culture or they may not.  But they are the five items that caught my eye on that particular trip.

Today's stop was at the Gruene Antique Company in New Braunfels, TX.  They are located in the Gruene Historic District and is housed in the historic 1903 Henry D. Gruene building.  It's a huge building that is packed with interesting antique goodies.  So let's see what we found:

5.  Pillsbury Doughboy Teapot & Napkin Holder

Who doesn't love the Pillsbury Doughboy?  I'm always a sucker for advertising mascots.  These might not be too overly vintage but their ceramic nature gives them that potentially breakable and thus temporary lifespan that is a refreshing change of pace in a world of cheap plastic.

4.  Bugle Lamp

Recycling and re-purposing at its finest!  Think about it...what's your lamp at home made of?  Regular lamp stuff?  Wouldn't it be much better if it was made out of a musical instrument?  Yes, yes it would be.

3.  Fiesta San Antonio Dr Pepper Bottle

Full and unopened from 1977, this is a bottle of old school Dr Pepper from the biggest party in San Antonio and is just waiting for an adventurous soda historian to crack it open and give it a try.  (I would not recommend it though.)

2.  Weird Mask

Ok, what is going on here?  I want to assume that this was used historically in maybe the military or possibly in an industrial context but I think we all know that whoever buys it is probably not going to use it for those purposes.

1.  Rotary Pay Phone

If you have kids, a fun game you can play with them would be to give them a 100 guesses to figure out what this is.  It bears practically no resemblance to the sleek rectangles they stare at all day and was only used for talking.  It will blow their minds!