What’s for sale at Historic Macon Flea Market? Here are 3 of our favorite items
Looking for quirky trinkets, eclectic furniture, analog media or just want to revel in historic Macon relics?
You will likely find all of that at the Historic Macon Fall Flea Market, a biannual event coming up this weekend.
Oby Brown, director of communications for Historic Macon, gave The Telegraph an early look at the flea market, which is Friday through Sunday at 357 Oglethorpe Street.
“It takes a year-round thing to pull it off,” Brown said.
Volunteers spent months meticulously organizing, pricing and even cleaning up donated items in a warehouse that felt like Santa’s workshop, or a massive estate and garage sale, on Sept. 17.
“The volunteers are just the salt of the Earth,” Brown said. “They’re really the best.”
They divided items into sections including toys, antiques, kitchen supplies, knicknacks, linens, house furniture, holiday decorations, art and more.
A few dining room tables were set with sterling silver crockery, which was a bit tarnished when it was donated. Not long after, a volunteer brought it home and cleaned it, and now it looks brand new.
“We want to get a good price for it,” Kathy Griffis, a longtime volunteer, said. “We will even weigh it to make sure the price is current.”
Besides the wafts of sterling silver, Griffis was also surprised to see collectable Madame Alexander dolls and shelves on shelves of CDs and records.
Some items that don’t sell will be saved for the next market. If an item still hasn’t sold after a few markets, it’s donated to the Rescue Mission of Middle Georgia, according to Brown. The nonprofit “provides free, long-term residential life recovery programs and community outreach” for people facing housing insecurity.
Free public entry is 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, and 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. Early entry is available on Friday starting at 5 p.m. with the purchase of a VIP ticket.
Here are three of the thousands of fascinating finds that you can get your hands on at the market:
Mystery man clay figure
An ominous unnamed lifesize clay bust of a man created by a former Mercer University art head caught our eye.
It was one of at least 10 clay heads of Macon figures – such as William Butler Johnson, who built the Hay House – created by the late Marshall Daugherty, who was the chair of Mercer’s art department, according to Brown.
All the busts have gradually sold at the market except this one.
“We’d ask folks, who’ve grown up here and lived here for generations, who these people are, and we identified most of them but some we didn’t,” Brown said. “And this is the last bust.”
Daughtery’s family found them “at his barn, way out in the country,” then donated them to the market, according to Brown.
‘Dammit doll’
A mysterious and worn purple doll with limbs held on by odd stitches and buttons leaned on top of a wooden shelf.
A type-written tag attached to red string read an unsettling poem.
“When you think you want to climb the wall and stand right up and shout! Here’s a little Dammit Doll you cannot do without,” it said. “Just grasp it firmly by the legs and find a place to slam it. And as you whack it’s stuffing out, yell ‘DAMMIT DAMMIT, DAMMIT’!”
Rhonda Wood, a volunteer, laughed while speaking of the doll.
“Some people put pins in it, and other people, if you get mad about something, you just, dammit,” Wood said, and hit it against the shelf.
Tom Thumb typewriter
A metal green typewriter from the 1950s with the Tom Thumb convenience store logo was going for $50.
Betty Sweet Ladson, a volunteer, said she used to have one as a kid.
“I was born in ‘42 and I had one,” Ladson said, and chuckled because the item is more likely now used as decor, rather than function.
She used Google Lens to take photos of the product, and compare prices and quality. That’s how they priced it.
“It tells you about vintage,” Ladson said. “It generally sells for under $100 on auction. We use it as a guide, but we know we might not get that much for them.”
This story was originally published October 1, 2025 at 6:00 AM.