You Can Own a Piece of the Great Danbury Fair

Can you believe the last Danbury Fair was 40 years ago?

On October 12, 1981, 400,000 people attended, and afterwards, all of the rides and attractions were auctioned off. A good portion of the Danbury Fair attractions were purchased by Arthur Gillette and he installed them into multiple theme parks, including Land of Make Believe, Hoffman's Playland, Catskill Game Farm, Animal Land, Carson City and Indian Village, Story Town USA, and Magic Forest in Lake George, NY.

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Next week, Arthur's son Jack Gillette is auctioning off his huge personal collection of a lot of the items used in the Danbury Fair. This may be a chance for you to own an artifact from your childhood.

The auction for hundreds of items from the Danbury Fair is being handled by Collar City Auctions. It started on September 1, 2021, and the bidding closes Friday, October 1, 2021. There's an item preview going on in Lake George, NY Monday and Tuesday, September 27 and 28, and you have to pick up and move your item between October 11 and 15.

I browsed through hundreds of items and there are some very interesting ones that will surely send you back, The Wicked Witch, The Mad Hatter, a really cool Buckingham Palace display, Jumbo the Elephant's tusks, Pecos Bill's spurs, Goldilox and the 3 Bears, a Mr. Pete Ice Cream Man, Three Men In A Tub, Little Boy Blue, and Pirate figures galore.

If you went to the Danbury Fair, Catskill Game Farm, or any of the classic theme parks between here and Lake George, here's quite a few that I thought were cool, take a stroll down memory lane.