vidsal wrote in 10th Anniversary Edition Sets - what happened to the rest?:Long ago back in high school picture a young freshman lugging around a large red duffle bag.  Inside it was a dozen or so TSR modules of various kinds all in the shrink wrap.  Each had cost ~$1.  Under that pile in the duffle was a new shrink wrapped brown boxed 10th Anniversary Edition D&D set being delivered to another freshman Dave K.  This freshman with the bag was me.  I had paid maybe $15 for that brown box as best I can recall.  This was a normal day some weeks although I didn't always have that extra heavy brown box.  Where did I get all this stuff?  My memory is a little fuzzy as to how it all started, but this was Milwaukee in 1986.  

Sometime that year I had been made aware of a flea market where my Mom had been told of a guy selling D&D stuff.  Whomever had told of this wasn't into the games and didn't understand the value, but they were these "paper pamphlets" all for a dollar or two each.  We visited the market and managed to track down the vendor by the name of Mark Mashrua (sp)....I can't remember the exact spelling and I'm thinking he actually didn't have the material with him on first contact.  We eventually got his phone number and he brought these strange books to the next flea market event at our request.  They were mostly D&D and not AD&D as was the rage in my gaming group.  The story was that TSR or possibly a retailer had a pile of this stuff and needed it gone eventually selling it all to one wholesaler, Mark.  Then came the wild part now looking back.  He had dozens of brown boxes with gold embossing on them (lending some weight toward this coming directly from TSR).  He wasn't sure what they were worth and actually at the time these weren't selling like hot cakes at a flea market with all the clothes and scattered antiques.  I bought quite a few modules and several of the anniversary sets with whatever money I could scrounge up.

Eventually the other gamers at school learned of my new source of D&D stuff.  I managed to sell a good amount of what I had first gotten from Mark and made a couple more trips to the flea market.  Mark was distinctive in that he couldn't speak clearly maybe due to a cleft lip.  He didn't usually bring whatever was left of the D&D stuff to the market and we had to make special arrangements which actually was somewhat difficult if I'm remembering correctly.  Eventually the market for the stuff with my friends died off and really this wasn't very valuable stuff in those years.

I ended up keeping at least two, maybe three 10th Anniversary Sets.  One was pristine in the shrink wrap.  Some of stuff from the flea market had been moved around a lot I think.  The shrink wrap wasn't always intact.  

Fast forward to the year 2000 or so.  I had lost my job and was looking for another surfing the Internet.  I found some 'newsgroup' and came up with the idea of posting one of these 10th Anniv sets.  Immediately someone replied to the post offering me hundreds of dollars.  I jumped at the chance and this person not knowing me at all, sent a check.  I was happy to sell it.

Now comes the search for what I think is one remaining set in my boxes of stuff packed away for over 15 years.  I just started moving stuff around and this box pictured below looked promising, but doesn't have the set.  I'll open more boxes and take more pictures this weekend.  I'll also ask my family if they remember these trips to the flea market.

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vidsal wrote in 10th Anniversary Edition Sets - what happened to the rest?:

muaddib5 wrote in 10th Anniversary Edition Sets - what happened to the rest?:
Milwaukee in '86....this wasn't at Rummage O' Rama at State Fair park by chance was it?  I got stuff there from a guy selling comics.  Not nearly as much, or as cool though.

Yes!  That was it.  Rummage O' Rama!  I confirmed this with my Mom who remembered the location too.  John Mashrua (sp) was likely the guy.  I still haven't had a chance to dig more into my boxes and bins, but soon.