Old park merchandise.

I have some old perk merchandise, and I was wondering if it might have any value. Mostly t-shirts, Mugs, and brochures. I also have an old wooden cedar keep sake box from Deer Park Funland, that I bought for my mom, many years ago. It says Mom on it, and has Deer park Funland on it printed in black stencil. Very good condition.

In my search through my brothers things I found an old souvinir map guide of MI adventure from 1998. It has Shivering Timbers on the front, and has it as new 98. Also inside is the full map. It also features the old park entrance by the Ferris Wheel, Mutleys's Putt Putts, and Chaos is also on the map.

I was also surprised in looking at how much of the park was actually built by the Jourdens, and not by Cedar Fair. The only rides Cedar Fair added to the water park, are Funnel of fear, Beach Party, and the Hydroblaster slides. The rest was all built by the Jourdens. Park admission in 98 was $18.00, and parking was $5.00

Also in my search, I came across a Great America Park guide from 1997, with Giant drop on the cover as the new ride. With the buy one get one free admission stubs still inside the brochure. Shocking at $40.00 I don't remember it being that high. I think they might have been 2 day tickets.

Also inside was a showtime guide. With the following shows. Warner Bros stunt show, Great America on Ice, What's Up Rock, Ragtime Rascals, Professor Precipitus Rain Maker, Mariachi Ameca, and 2 one time shows of The Fellingham family, (whoever they are) and The spirit of america parade.

I think it was really cool to find these, and they are both in perfect shape. Admission tickets are dated may 31, 1997.

Is that cool or what.

Please do not take this as a dig, merely an observation on getting old.

I find it amusing that things from the late 1990's are now being referred to as "old" and "nostalgic." I'm from the mid 70's myself, but I don't think of artifacts as "old" unless they are from the 80's (my childhood) at the latest, and "nostalgic" unless they are from before I was born. The exception being if said artifact brings back memories specific to me. I understand that that's what these artifacts do for you. I'd say hang on to them.

I work in the travel industry. I used to pick up every single amusement park brochure I could from airports, hotels, etc. They'd sit in a pile on my "reading chair" until sometime around mid winter, when I'd toss them and start again when the next years batch was distributed. I eventually stopped doing this, because 1) I'm not much of a collector, and B) Park brochures started to suck a long time ago. If you can even find them, they are now more "leaflets" than "brochures." Exceptions being the Orlando Parks, which still put out massive folding brochures.

I used to be a big fan of rack of rack brochures myself, Tommy, and through the decades have collected many. I kind of quit when I noticed the quality going downhill. Vacation destinations like Disney, Dollywood, Silver Dollar City, and Busch still do a good job.

The worst, in my opinion, are the ones from Six Flags, any park any state. They may be multi-fold, but the text and pictures are usually terrible.

I guess it heralds the eventual demise of print media?

And the general cheapening of *everything.*

One of the reasons I didn't care for them a whole lot was that the pictures of the new rides they were trying to advertise were never accurate. Of course, I understand it's hard to publish a picture of a ride that's not even built when they went to print. So you end up with stock pictures of coasters with names (badly) photoshopped, and half the time not even the same color as the ride being built.

Now that you can just click over to Google, I don't have to rely on these to get pictures to drool over anymore.

I know I saw old Hershey and Dorney felt banners at an antique store that were in okay to kinda ratty condition selling for around 20-30 dollars. Id imagine a collector of these kinds of things would pay a decent price.

Oh yeah, TimberRider-
eBay? Might give you a clue what "memorabilia" like that goes for. And I hope you're not disappointed.

I quit collecting that kind of stuff way back when the internet got popular and the travel agencies were beginning to close left and right. When the travel agencies were open though, I was the creepy guy who rode my bike there a few times a year to gather my collection. I would fill my backpack with photographic treasures from faraway parks. I brought them home and kept them in a cardboard box and looked over them all year long.

I especially liked the amusement park maps. I drew fantasy park maps all the time. I think I quit drawing them when I was about 16 or 17.

I dreamed of going to the more further away parks. I would sit in my bean bag chair and daydream about the parks a lot.

I still have a lot of those old maps and brochures. Pretty much everything I have can already be found online somewhere though.

The keepsake box from Deer Park Funland may be from 1979. And the print items I have from the 90's are guide maps, not brochures. Though I do have brochures from parks going back to the 80s.

I agree though, that print brochures are not what they used to be.