Figurines from the 1960’s for sale at The French Market Marin on Sunday, June 9, 2024, in Marin, Calif. Over 100 vendors offer vintage and antique items for sale at the monthly event held in the parking lot of the Marin Civic Center. For Bay Area lovers of antiques, second-hand bargains and vintage anything, there are some well-known weekend flea markets that provide good hunting grounds.
Loiacono was ostensibly on the hunt for turn of the 20th-century porcelain dolls from Paris and Germany that she collected and sold. But the street vibe of the world’s largest antiques market gave her so much else to savor. Marin’s French Market can’t offer visitors the streets of Paris, of course. But it still operates in the park-like setting of the Marin County Civic Center campus, in a parking lot near a scenic lagoon and the county’s signature Frank Lloyd Wright-designed administration building and Hall of Justice.
The quality of the vendor displays and the items they sell also gives the French Market the classiness of the markets Loiacono liked to visit in Paris, according to Pam Lee, one of the market’s longtime vendors. In other words, the French Market isn’t known for selling junk, Lee said.