Hiawatha chalkware bust

A few Craigslist gifts culled from the thousands

If you must shop online this year, consider keeping your credit card secure and unburdened, and look instead at that great international flea market that is Craigslist. Not only will you keep your money local, so it bounces around the regional economy a while longer before being sucked away by some corporation headquartered in the South or overseas, but it also counts as a recycling. You’re reducing the consumer demand for more and more production by going with a secondhand gift.

And what gifts lurk there! Consider these:

1954 Park Edge Beverage Calendar

For just $10, you can give someone this red leatherbound desk calendar, a promotional item for a shop that used to be in a plaza at Delaware and Great Arrow. Very cool memorabilia—and it will be completely accurate again in 2016!

1967 Playboy Playmate Puzzle

Just $20. Caveat emptor: Make sure all the pieces are there.

Flemish giant buck

Want to buy a rabbit? How about a four-month-old, for $40? He could go as big as 16 pounds, says the seller. A gift suitable for friend or enemy.

Hiawatha chalkware bust

$100 or best offer. He helped to persuade the disparate tribes of the Iroquois confederacy to throw in together. Give someone a little important local history.

200 Shout! magazines

All from the Buffalo Bills’ Super Bowl years. Good late January reading for the melancholic Bills fan in your life. Just $20, cash and carry.

Overpriced map of Italy

$3,000. Somebody has been trying to sell this thing on Craigslist for years. You can probably get the site’s habitues to pitch in and buy shares in the thing just so it’ll stop getting posted.

Neighborly Shopping: Grant Central • Hertel Avenue • Elmwood Avenue • Allentown

One Stop Holiday Shopping
Shopping Online, Locally • Cash Mobbing • City of Light
Celebrate Main Street • Show Your Thanks