Brownie Camera

[abruzzi]

Not the kind you were expecting:

Its a 120 film camera for girl scouts? Anyone know anything about it? (feel free to buy it, I'm not going to...)

https://www.natcam.com/products/official-girl-scout-brownie/

 

[DREW WILEY]

620. I vaguely remember those, though any kind of scouts were scarce where I grew up. More of a city thing. We had 4H, Future Farmers of America, that kind of youth opportunity instead. Rodeos with real bruises and broken bones, not merit badges. Yes, blue ribbons for a prize bull or sheep, but also real financial incentives for the winner. I had a classmate who paid his entire Vet school tuition by selling off his grand prize bull. But my mother long used a black box-style Brownie. Every picture she took was tilted. She always looked up, said Smile, and pressed down hard the shutter, skewing the angle every time. No wonder I carry a solid tripod everywhere.

Buy it and relist it on EBay as Rare and Collectible for $ 3,000.

 

[Nicholas Lindan]

Made by Herbert George, Chicago, Il. See https://www.junkstorecameras.com/project/mark-xii/

"Brownies" were young Girl Scouts, the current rankings say ages 7-8, but I think the age range was broader back in the days this camera was around. Similar cameras were badged for the Boy Scouts.

But, an asking price of $40 for something that Goodwill would sell for $2 seems a bit much.

Edit: Well, I'll be damned - https://www.vintagegirlscout.com/girl-scout-fun-games for the complete history of Girl Scout cameras.

 

[gone]

Don't think that many thrift stores will sell something like this for $2, most of them are hip to things and know how to google and ck completed listings on eBay. You never know what will be arriving each day. Last month we got a tiny black Rollei w/ a Sonnar lens. Things like that I ck out to make sure they're working properly, then they go on eBay, and another person handles all that shipping business. Thrift stores make BIG money because our product costs are 0.

Of course, w/ thrift stores, the price you pay at the register depends on who is working that day. We're not a business in that sense, things are always negotiable on prices. And, you get to bring your pet in because we're The Humane Society Thrift Store! As a cat person, the dogs I could do w/o, but some are cute being pushed around the store in their strollers.

 

[Donald Qualls]

My experience has been that sometimes a really nice camera goes for next to nothing in a thrift because the pricer didn't know (or care) what it was, and sometimes they overprice junk (as with anything else). But it's very correct that the stuff that gets recognized as "good" is more likely to wind up in an online auction (Goodwill has their own site for this, but the rest use eBay for the most part) than in the store for the past ten years or more.

 

[Tel]

Ah, Shopgoodwill! I stumbled across this when it was first launched and bought a couple of old cameras and a laptop for thrift-store prices. The cognoscenti have long since discovered it and now it's the same overpriced junk as you'd find on the evil place.

 

[abruzzi]

Edit: Well, I'll be damned - https://www.vintagegirlscout.com/girl-scout-fun-games for the complete history of Girl Scout cameras.

nice find. Interesting how far back it goes.