This means something. This is important.

So The Wife and I took a few hours a couple weeks back to wander the aisles and corridors and back corners and nooks and crannies (but, sadly, no dimly-lit basement!) of the Orchard Park Antique Mall. This wonderful space, of which I’ve written before, is an old supermarket that was converted to an antique mall when the supermarket built itself a spiffy new location a mile down the road. It’s always a great place to kill some time, as I always find something cool there, whether it’s something I want to own or something I want to look at. Take, for example, this glowing art deco airplane lamp:

Or the Space Needle cigarette lighter (which is about eight inches tall):

Or the creepiest damned lamps you will ever see, ever, for the rest of your life.

I almost always find something to buy, however. On this trip I snagged a really lovely set of sushi dishes (photos forthcoming, I haven’t taken them yet), and, from one of the Used Book cabinets, this bit of movie memorabilia:

If it looks like a plain stiff paper folder, of the kind you used to use in school to keep your class papers in a semi-organized state, it is. But what’s neat is that inside the folder are the real goods. See, this is an actual Official Press Kit, issued by Columbia Pictures, for the release of Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Special Edition. Inside the folder are a number of items: a synopsis of the movie, a bio of Steven Spielberg (to that point in his life, obviously), and a complete roster of the film’s cast and crew. All these are typewritten on regular paper.

In addition to that, there’s a brown paper envelope that contains about a dozen black-and-white production still from the film.

Note the Columbia address down in the lower right corner.

I have absolutely no idea on the sequence of events that led to this thing sitting in a cabinet of an antique emporium in Orchard Park, NY, but I’ve got it now. Huzzah!

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