It’s amazing what you find sometimes when you hit the thrift store. Case in point, at Unique Thrift Store/Value Village in Hillandale Shopping Center, Elyse and I found this:
Those of you who have followed this site for a long time will recognize what Elyse is holding. That is a Sony Mavica CD400. I owned one from 2002 to 2008, and called it “Big Mavica”, because it was my second Sony Mavica camera, with higher resolution than the first. Thus it was a “big” Mavica.
Last time we saw Big Mavica, it had gotten wrecked in a rainstorm, and was being shipped to a recycler in Michigan to raise money for some sort of charity. So imagine my surprise to find a CD400 camera identical to Big Mavica on the shelf at the thrift store. Check it out:
Hello again, Big Mavica. It was like meeting up with an old friend after a long time apart, as it had been nine years since I’d held a Mavica. Nonetheless, it all came back:
Just like old times. Except I had more hair back then. Elyse also posed for a few photos with it:
I was also amazed about how many memories finding a “Big Mavica” style camera brought back. Elyse was wondering what the video from Big Mavica looked like. So I showed her a few videos from back in the day. I feel like I really started to grow and develop as a photographer during the Big Mavica era, as this was my first “prosumer” level camera. There were lots of settings to fiddle with and learn how to use. Compare my first Big Mavica photo set, Autumn Leaves, with Downtown Lynchburg, from the middle of that period, with a later Big Mavica era set, Weekend with Katie. The photography definitely improved quite a bit between the three sets. Mind you, I now consider my Big Mavica material to be the work of a much younger man, but nonetheless, you can see some growth.
Nowadays, though, Big Mavica has been far outpaced as far as cameras go. It was a great camera for its time, but that time has since passed. The cameras that replaced Big Mavica in 2008 both were higher resolution, and beginning with my Motorola Droid phone in 2010, my phone camera has had a higher resolution than Big Mavica. Plus Big Mavica’s design is very much a product of its time, being relatively large, plus having that big round side. Compare to my camera today, a Nikon D5300 DSLR, which looks like a traditional camera. Big Mavica just looks dated these days.
Besides one of Big Mavica’s relatives, we also found some other interesting things, like these handpainted Care Bear figurines:
Grumpy Bear!
This bear seems like a cross between Cheer Bear and Wish Bear. The shooting star is like Wish Bear, but the rainbow belongs to Cheer Bear. And that blue color doesn’t match either bear, as Cheer Bear is pink, and Wish Bear is a light turquoise color.
Then there was this giraffe:
That tongue. What is going on with that tongue?
Then we also spotted this:
Commodore disk drive. Wonder if this still works…
“Target & Blue” mug. I did a little research on this, and found out that it’s a community outreach program in order to form good relations with local police departments.
And then at the Habitat for Humanity thrift store, we found a piano. I played a tune:
Yes, that’s me trying to play the tune in the music box from the Today’s Special episode “Music”. It’s not a bad tune, but I am not doing the tune justice by and means.
So all in all, I’d say that we had fun at the thrift store. I always enjoy going to the thrift store, even if, in this case, we came out empty-handed.