Super Flea & Collectibles Show

On a show weekend the Industrial Building at the Central Wyoming Fairgrounds, on Fairgrounds Road in Casper, fills with dealers’ tables from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Ruth Doyle, president of the Casper Antique & Collectors Club, described the May 2022 show as “almost 200 tables of items for sale by Wyoming dealers, ranging from vintage, handcrafts, upcycle, antiques, plants, jewelry, firearms, knives, furniture, and baked goods…..to name a few.” Coverage of the March 2026 show listed toys, clothes, handmade art, books, comics, movies and jewelry. In 2020 vendors came from across Wyoming and from other states, selling glass, tools and jewelry. Admission to the October 2025 show was $2.50. In 2011 it was $2, and children under 12 got in free.

Tables in the Industrial Building

The shows fall early in the year, in spring and in fall. Doyle gave the dates in 2022 as the first weekend of March, May and October. Laura Pickle, who shares the post of Co-Show Chairman with her husband Bob, said in 2023 that every four months or so the building is “completely overtaken by dozens of vendors.” By her count nearly 2,000 people came through on the Saturday of the March 2023 show. She expected at least half that many on Sunday, which would make about 3,000 over the weekend. Vendors keep a waiting list for space.

“This is a wonderful community event, because a lot of people come out here just to socialize,” Pickle said. “You haven’t seen each other all winter long, and you want to chat.”

Steve Wallace, a vendor at the March 2020 show, described the moment the dealers wait for: “The fun part is really when someone comes in and they say, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve been looking for this for 20 years,’ and they find it on your table it’s like they found a real treasure and they were happy that they found it and you were happy that you had it to sell to them.” A Star-Tribune photograph from the November 2011 show shows Kathryn Kirlin looking over the merchandise of a dealer called Karen’s Kollectibles. The paper ran the story under the headline “Super Flea offers ‘just about anything.’”

Where the admission money goes

The club is a nonprofit, and the flea markets pay for its giving. Pickle said in 2023 that the club gives monetary donations to about 35 museums at the end of each year, about $20,000 annually. “So all the money that we clear from here goes straight back into the museums,” she said. Danny Horkan, who heads the club, put the number at more than 40 museums around the state in 2026. He said the club also helps fund local organizations such as Sleep in Heavenly Peace.

Some individual shows have had their own cause. Doyle said the March 2022 show benefited the local Patriot Guard Riders, who honor veterans. Ticket sales from the May 2022 show, held on Mother’s Day weekend, went to the Senior Center in Casper. She said the club had given $10,000 to museums the year before.

From antique show to super flea

Accounts of the club’s age differ. The club’s own website gives 1972 as the year it was established, and Doyle marked its 50th anniversary in 2022. Horkan says it started in 1971, and that “none of those original members are with us anymore, but it’s been a strong club.” Pickle remembered it differently: “Well, a long time ago in the 1980’s or so, some people started the Antiques Club.”

The sources agree that the club began with antique shows. Pickle described the change in 2023: “we used to do two antique shows a year and two super fleas a year. Now, we’ve changed it, so we have three shows a year and they’re all super flea.” The club’s website still lists two of each, with an average of 62 vendors. As late as 2020 the club held a spring antiques show in early May. Horkan describes the result: “We started out as an antique show and we’ve evolved into a free market throughout the year.” A 2021 listing billed the Super Flea as Wyoming’s “oldest quality show,” and a Casper radio station called it in 2025 “one of Casper’s oldest events.”

The club also meets between shows, and the public is welcome. Meetings are held on the third Thursday of each month at 7 p.m. in the WOGCC Basko Building on King Boulevard, except in August and December. The programs cover the history of members’ antiques and collectibles.

A lantern collector and a 1919 cash register

Horkan, an antique trader and a Casper native, was on the club’s executive board and helped organize the 2020 show. By 2026 he led the club. He collects Coleman lanterns and says he does not know where the interest came from. “There are a lot of crafter shows in town, but we’re basically the only flea market where anything works,” he said. “Antiques are kind of a hobby that puts the jingle in my pocket. … I bump into people I went to high school with, so it’s a fun time.”

His wife, Cris, works the room with him. “People are really looking to recapture their youth,” she said. “I really believe that.”

Horkan dates his own start to about age 5, in a neighbor’s basement. “I’d picked up skeleton keys on the floor, and an old Whiz-Ball machine. You put a penny in it and it spun a metal ball into a spiral, and you tried to get it to land in different holes.” The neighbor gave him something else too. “He also gave me an old cash register from the Texaco station down on Second Street,” Horkan said. “Underneath the drawer, it was dated 1919, Second Street Texaco.”