[Milsurplus] Aberdeen Vehicle Show and Flea market

[Ray Fantini]

Today I drove up to the Aberdeen Maryland Military Vehicle Show, Swap Meet and Flea Market, An annual event held at the Ripkin Stadium every year. It is promoted as the largest event of it type and I have been attending at least one of the three days for a couple years now. In terms of size I would say it’s around the size of the Timonium hamfest with all the vendors being outside, and also it’s a free event at least for the general public that attends. Do not know the cost for flea market spaces or for showing your vehicle. The show starts on Thursday and is over by Saturday night. The flea market has about a dozen rows of sellers selling all manor of jeep, truck or any other type of wheeled military parts. In addition to this there are several sellers of radio equipment who routinely attend. There were numerous VRC-12 components from the big radio in the $200 to $400 range, auxiliary receivers $200, and mounts, antennas and cables for way less. Its not uncommon to see the VRC-12 mount for $5 PRC-25 and PRC-77 were still selling high, more then Hamfest prices with me seeing at least one PRC-77 with the AM-2060 for $700.00, GRC-106 complete sets were in the $500.00 range and there were radios that have almost no value to the Ham community like the RT-66, 67 and 68 (GRC-7/8?), complete systems with mounts, cables and auxiliary receivers in the $500.00 price range. Imagine if you own an M-38 what you have to use. The things that are cheap are the accessories, items like new H-250, M-80 and LS-454 for $5 to $15, antennas, cables and other accessories are there in large numbers. Myself I finished reading the FM 24-20 not to long ago and have been looking at items like cable reels and cable reeling machines, saw a couple RL-172 systems and a couple CE-11 with DR-8 spools for $35.00 each, did not want to pay that much myself but did buy a small reel of wire just to play around with a couple 312 sets I have around the house. There were also new MX-306 wire dispensers but can not for the lives of me see how you can ever get the wire back into one of those. It appears the stadium may be turning a blind eye to the firearms band, saw people selling the Russian Mosin Nagant rifles new for $125.00 each along with several WW2 Japanese rifles and at least one SKS for $350.00 what ever happened to the days of SKS rifles selling for $50? Lots and lots of the demilled ordnance like 20, 37 and 40mm rounds and the ever popular demiled grenades, how do you explain that to local law enforcement if you get stopped on the way home? The sale will be there tomorrow but I wont but am cretin that Mr.  Smith, a regular fixture there with his M151 will have much more to say.