Treasure Hunting at Hershey, the World’s Largest Old-Car Swap Meet

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For the last 60 years, every October, old-car enthusiasts have converged on Hershey, Pennsylvania, for the mammoth four-day, Antique Automobile Club of America (AACA) Eastern Division National Fall Meet. Known simply as “Hershey,” it’s the world’s largest old-car flea market. Sprawling over 85 acres at Hersheypark, boasting more than 9000 (!) vendor spaces, maddeningly scattered in no particular order, the seemingly endless swap meet is overflowing with old cars, new and used parts, rusted sheetmetal, memorabilia, and petroliana, not to mention an RM Sotheby’s auction at the Hershey Lodge and a 1200-vehicle judged car show.

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I’ve been attending since the early 1970s, and I’ve only missed one or two years. It’s hypnotic. Every flea-market space holds treasures waiting to be discovered. The distinctive odor of freshly poured chocolate wafts over the field, (the Hershey factory is a quarter-mile away), mixed with the aroma of golden Bricker’s french fries and sizzling Polish sausage, and underscored with a whiff of oil and gasoline.

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The faithful trek to Hershey to buy that special old car, rare sales folder, glass gas globe, neon sign, or any number of elusive vintage car parts. It still possible to find NOS (new old stock) parts in their original boxes. Flipping through a pile of catalogs, I discover one, in perfect shape, for the Museum of Modern Art’s 1953 “8 Automobiles” exhibition. The seller doesn’t know what it is. “How’s $5 sound?” he asks. I’d have paid much more. I’ve been looking for one for years.

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Hershey is one of the few places on earth where a sandwich board is an effective means of communication.

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The cars on display range from unrecognizable rust buckets to preserved beauties to pristine restorations. It’s not uncommon for a 90- or 100-year-old car to be pop-pop-popping down the aisles. This year, a 1916 Oakland V-8 Tourer, a giant primordial beast from the pre-WWI brass era, dazzled crowds. Still running, it’s been owned by the Gapp family in Minnesota for a century. Seeing it underway is like watching a time warp.

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Over the years, vendors with hard parts like fenders and bumpers have diminished, replaced by sellers who offer petroliana (gas station signs and oil cans), but there are still vendors whose array of heavy metal must have taken days just to load up. If you’re looking for a door handle, an ignition coil, a horn, or a heater, there are specialists for all those items and more. Savvy shoppers bring pictures of that they’re after, or part numbers. If you’ve come to Hershey from far away, as many do, it’s hard to return an incorrect item.

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Unrestored cars are often seen at the Hershey show. Despite bearing the scars of time, this 1928 Marmon ran and sounded great.

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Only two things have really changed. For years, the swap meet was held on low, grassy fields that instantly became muddy bogs when it poured, as it often did. We used to pray that Herco (Hershey Entertainment and Resorts Co.) would pave the flea market. Now that they’ve done so, the hard surface is more difficult to manage. The grass, even when it was wet, was soft and resilient, making walking much easier on the feet.

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There are nearly “22 miles of aisles,” as Hershey devotees say, and you’ve got to walk it. Golf carts are verboten except for officials. Scooters are only allowed by permit, and rollerblading (as we’ve found out) is not permitted. Hershey veterans wear really comfortable footwear, bring rain gear (just in case), and arrive early before the close parking spaces are gone and you have to walk for miles just so you can walk for miles. This year, adjacent parking lots were full by 8:30 a.m. and there was a sea of people. Foreign accents were frequently heard, fat rolls of cash were displayed (but only after a deal was agreed upon), and sales were bristling.

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The Hershey region sells a handy catalog with field maps, so if you know a vendor’s name or specialty, you just might be able to find him. There were seven listings alone for door handles and window cranks, five people offering Edsel parts, seven Duesenberg vendors, 53 license-plate guys, a man from Michigan selling beautifully restored vintage outboard motors, 26 fellows selling race-car parts, an Autocar truck specialist from New Hampshire, and hundreds and hundreds of generalists.

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There was plenty of interest in these Thunderbirds in the Car Corral, as ’55–’57 two-seat T-Birds, especially supercharged F-Birds, are in high demand.

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Sellers and buyers on the four color-coded fields use cell phones to let friends know where a particular treasure can be found. Tales abound about incredible bargains on the first day, when a vendor who may not know the value of an item crosses paths with a collector who knows exactly what it’s worth. If you see something you want, you can always bargain. Prices are usually marked up by 10 to 20 percent. But don’t hesitate. The guy behind you may be waiting to pounce, as I found out one year when I hesitated over a rare flathead Ford intake manifold and it was snapped up as I tried to decide whether to buy it.

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Here’s a nice Kaiser Golden Dragon for just $11,500. Who says you have to pay a fortune for an old car?

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In the Green Field, several would-be buyers inspected a 1951 Kaiser Golden Dragon sedan. With styling by Howard “Dutch” Darrin, it seemed a bargain at just $11,500. The Kaiser’s rusty bumpers might have caused some to hesitate but I think I saw a replacement set for sale in the Chocolate field. The Bumper Boyz—all the way from Los Angeles—along with 21 other chrome platers, were on hand to re-chrome them, in any case.

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We stopped to chat with the acknowledged king of Hershey’s vendors, the affable and extremely knowledgeable Charles Schalebaum of Allentown, Pennsylvania. Charlie’s been selling here since the third Hershey, 62 years ago. He always displays the most rare, interesting, and expensive items. “Many of my customers are getting older,” he noted. “And it’s getting harder to find good things.” A crowd in his tent inspected an array of vintage trophies and medals, automotive-themed bronzes and statuary. Want the commemorative shovel that Adolf Hitler used to turn the first spadeful of earth for the first autobahn? Charlie had it, complete with photos and documentation.

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This Model T, with a Faultless Torpedo Speedster body, begged the question: leave as-is or restore?

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Fire trucks, DIVCO milk wagons, motorcycles, horse-drawn carriages, boats and pedal cars, tin toys, and even airplane parts are there if you want them. You just have to look. Mark Hyman, a classic car vendor from St. Louis, always brings interesting cars. This year Mark had a rare Faultless-bodied Model T Speedster that looked as though it had just been dragged out of a barn—which it had.

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This Viotti-bodied 1935 Ford boattail Speedster was once owned by Italian racing ace and author Count Giovanni “Johnny” Lurani.

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The Dragone Brothers, Manny and George, always have a tent full of intriguing cars. They displayed a ’35 Ford boattail speedster bodied by Viotti in Italy, reportedly owned by Count Johnny Lurani, a famous Italian racer, and a Buick Riviera that was customized by George Barris and driven by James Darren in the movie For Those Who Think Young.

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Customized by George Barris, this Buick Riviera appeared in the 1964 film For Those Who Think Young.

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Many buyers investigate every flea-market space. Some vendors sit surrounded by indiscriminate stacks of rusty parts, while others have their wares price-tagged and meticulously arranged in wood-framed glass cases. You can spend hours looking for a part you want, and then impulsively buy something you never knew you needed. That’s Hershey.

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An eclectic mix of speed equipment included a supercharged Ford flathead engine, Edmunds high-compression heads, exhaust headers, and more.

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Bob Whitehead, all the way from Arkansas, is a Hershey regular. His space is cluttered with Ford flathead speed equipment, including a SCoT supercharger, made in Turin, Italy, just after WWII. Whitehead has an enormous speed-equipment collection, so he uses Hershey as a way to sell duplicate items and occasionally acquire something he doesn’t have.

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Kirk F. White and his wife Marilyn, from New Smyrna Beach, Florida, sell tin toys, spindizzies (motorized model race cars), and other racing-oriented toys. Kirk’s been coming to Hershey for many years. “Every year I think, ‘this is the last time,’ ” he says. “But when October rolls around, I can’t resist being here.”

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Over in a corner of the Green Field, an intrepid team of mechanics from Hagerty Insurance, worked feverishly to assemble a ’47 Ford quarter-ton pickup from parts they have found in the flea market. They arrived on Tuesday with a body and a frame, sourced an engine, a transmission, brake parts, wheels, and tires, and by late Saturday, they had the truck moving under its own power.

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A ’41 Ford pickup sold for $29,900.

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I fell in love with a ’41 Ford pickup truck on sale in the Car Corral. Nicely restored, lowered a tad, equipped with throaty dual exhausts, it was finished in medium green and attracted onlookers for three days. By Friday, a lucky buyer had parted with $29,900—not an insignificant sum—and it rumbled off the tarmac, headed for a new home. If you didn’t have the money for that truck, there was a rusty, unrestored example in the Green Field, with a price tag of $18,000. It was still there on Saturday morning. The Car Corral’s success is tied to the fact that more people today want restored, drivable vehicles, and fewer people have the time, money, and skills to restore a rust heap.

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RM Sotheby’s had a two-night auction at the Hershey Lodge, and sales totaled $16.3 million. The company astutely packs its Hershey sale with American brass cars. A 1913 Pierce-Arrow Model 66A brought $830,500 and a 1907 Thomas Flyer—almost identical to the famous New York–to-Paris race-winning Thomas—went for $330K. My favorite, a big 1936 Chrysler Airflow, brought a high bid of $176,000. Long ignored because their windswept styling was considered too radical in the mid-1930s, the Airflows are finally coming into favor.

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For $7500, you could have taken home this 1936 Chrysler Imperial Airflow; another Airflow at RM’s Hershey auction was bid to $176K.

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All too soon, the Saturday car show winds down, and the hastily assembled tent city begins to fold up and disappear. There’s no selling on Sunday, so by late Saturday afternoon, vendors are packing up and heading home. I linger over a couple of old books in Ron Ladley’s tent, have one more container of freshly made Bricker’s fries, then drive slowly out of the park, already thinking about next year.

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Hershey is truly a visual feast for the auto buff. Standing on the show fields, walking the convoluted aisles, admiring the changing fall foliage, and smelling the familiar aroma of chocolate in the air from the Hershey factory, there’s nowhere else to be in October if you’re a classic-car enthusiast. We’ll be back next year.

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