I love old toys, but you have to know values,” Mark said. “Any old toy I get for a good deal, I’ll keep. The older ones, well, he’ll give it a thought. Still, he stands by his mantra: He won’t pay more than $1 for most PEZ available today. “We went there and our eyes popped out when we saw what some of them sold for,” Mark said of his early experiences. Mark travels to shows and sales across the region, including the much-talked about PEZamania show in Cleveland each year. When you were young, you ate the candy, played with the toy, maybe broke it, and threw it away,” he said. The real draw is in PEZ dispensers that survived the ’70s and ’80s. There are too many of them, and they’re not that special any more. Though PEZ dispensers hang near cash registers at almost every convenience store, Mark says those mass-produced items will never be worth much. The friend eventually sold his collection to another dealer and left Mark to collect the best for himself. “I’ve never came across anything good for a quarter. “My heart would be pounding, searching for a box full of PEZ,” said Mark. Soon the two men were collecting PEZ, raiding more than 50 sales per week. Shawn Mark’s addiction gripped him about five years ago.Īn avid collector of old toys, he traveled to garage sales and flea markets with a friend to scope out the scene. The display featured hundreds of dispensers from the 1950s-1990s, including seasonal, cartoon and movie characters, limited editions and more. Mark shared half of his collection with public viewers during February at the Warren-Trumbull County Public Library’s Cortland Branch. The dispensers reflect pop culture and are a hot collectible for children of all ages. According to PEZ, more than 3 billion of the candies are consumed annually in the United States alone. The candy has since been adapted to quench sweet tooths with fruity flavors. The German word for peppermint – pfefferminz – was shortened to PEZ. It was first marketed as a compressed mint candy more than 70 years ago in Austria. PEZ candy has been an American icon for 50 years. The kids eat the candy, he gets the packaging. Each PEZ there is a gift from a former or current student, Mark said. Their presence hardly sweetens lessons, but adds flavor and fun to the classroom. The Simpsons, Kermit and Miss Piggy, scary monsters, Chewbacca and Princess Leia watch their every move. Approximately 250 PEZ dispensers stand at attention on a classroom’s perimeter shelf, looking down on Marks’ eighth-grade science students. In the past five years, the Cortland man has amassed a collection of nearly 1,000 PEZ candy dispensers, and the collection grows more each day. He can’t even get his 4-year-old to eat those candy sticks packaged with each PEZ dispenser. Just ask 33-year-old Shawn Mark, a self-proclaimed lover of old toys and PEZ-head, for details of his collector’s world. It’s all about the outer appearance – the color of an outfit, body condition, a pretty – or ugly – face, scars, cleanliness. CORTLAND, Ohio – Ignore what Mom and Dad taught you: It’s really not what’s on the inside that counts.
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