With fifteen vendors and the nice, cool basement venue of All Pilgrim’s Church, the Steampunk Swapmeet was a lovely way to spend a hot summer afternoon.  The goods were what you’d expect from a Sci-Fi Victoriana craft market – corsets, parasols, jewelry and accouterments with extra gears attached, and lots and lots of goggles.  Prices ran from a few dollars for brightly colored old computer parts (score!) to several hundred for scratchbuilt model steampunk guns (so pretty…).

After I got my fill browsing the appropriately anachronistic merchandise, I sat down to talk with Diana Vick, the Swapmeet’s founder.

How did you come up with the idea of having a Steampunk Swapmeet?
A bunch of us were at Steamvents at the Wayward Cafe on a Monday night and someone said they had a bunch of stuff they weren’t going to use. So, why don’t we have a swap?  The problem is that it’s hard to find someone that’s an exact size match, so why don’t we have a sale instead? And nothing came of it until I decided to do it myself.

Can you tell me more about Steamvents?
Steamvents is a bunch of Steampunk fans that show up at the Wayward Cafe from 7-10pm and talk about anything under the sun. Anything.

Is the Swapmeet associated with Steamcon? How did Steamcon come about?
I’m helping with Steamcon, but no, the Swapmeet is just me and [my husband] Martin. A bunch of people were saying, “We want a steampunk con someday“…Martin and I know that when people say “someday” it’ll never happen. So we started organizing Steamcon.