Yesterday I made a visit to the Van Eaton Gallery in Sherman Oaks, CA to check out the Story of Disneyland exhibit before it goes to auction this weekend. This was an extremely impressive collection of Disneyland (and some Walt Disney World) memorabilia that was – get this – accrued by just one person. The gallery employee told me the collection owner is moving and decided now was the right time to sell his entire collection. I’m not sure how someone could possibly want to part with all these Disneyland treasures; I sure would have a difficult time!
The gallery is a small two room space but every square inch was filled with amazing collectibles, including small items like ashtrays and shopping bags, and large items like a Tiki Room flower boat or an actual “head” from a Mickey costume. I really enjoyed flipping through some of the smaller paper items, like old menus and promotional posters. I love looking at vintage items from Disneyland in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, and imagining what the park must have been like!
Viewing this collection up close was a really memorable experience. I’m going to *try* to bid on a couple of the smaller items, but I don’t think I have any chance. I’ll just have to add a few things to my eBay watch list and hope they pop up someday, when I’m rich and famous, hopefully! If you want to place a bid this weekend, or just browse all the items in the collection, you can visit the Van Eaton Galleries website.
I took a ton of pictures of anything that seemed interesting, and it’s near impossible to narrow them down for this blog post, so I’m just going to share all of them and hope you enjoy them!