Terrible wax museums rule. Granted, good wax museums are really cool, I’ve got nothing bad to say about superior artistry or the skillful evocation of a likeness, it’s just that awful wax museums deliver different kicks, a more what-the-fuck kind of experience. Just up Clifton Hill from the actual falls area of Niagara Falls, Ontario there’s a really tacky entertainment district, which, among other gloriously, unabashedly garish attractions, boasts an incredible concentration of comically inferior wax museums. My absolute favorite, the Criminals Hall of Fame, closed down a couple of years ago, and I really wish I knew what became of its inventory (apart from its Hitler figure, which was brazenly stolen right from its case in 1999).

No need to wonder about the inventory of The Hall of Presidents and First Ladies Museum. It wasn’t in Niagara Falls, but judging by photos of its collection, it’d have been a good fit. The Gettysburg, PA institution just closed in late November—how someone could fail with a historical attraction in Gettysburg, I’ll refrain from speculating—and its figures and other ephemera are going up for auction. The collection is exemplary—exemplary for why I adore cheap wax museums. Everything about the likenesses is just off, some in subtle ways, but plenty are just marvelously, unmistakably wrong. It is truly regrettable that this place closed before it had a chance to “honor” Donald Trump.
 

Allegedly, this is JFK.
 

Per the auction catalog: “Very fine President John F. Kennedy plaster sculpture head.” Very fine indeed. Also evidently AX CRAZY.
 
More wax Presidents after the jump…

 
Someone in the charmingly named town of Bird in Hand, Pennsylvania, is overburdened with wax figures of Amish children and is using an ad on Philadelphia Craiglist to unload them. Here’s the ad:
 

I have 28 wax figures. I’m asking $300 EACH. There are 4 mechanical. I’m selling 1 figure with a desk for $300. There out of the weavertown one room school house in bird in hand pa. They were made by dwarfmans in 1969. They were appraised at $450 to $800 each. Would love to sell as a set . If your interested in all please contact me. Please NO low balling. I had several offers that I turned down! I have no problem with offers if you buy the 28 as a set (no low balling) and no scams. I take cash on pick up . I can also take credit card but prefer cash.

 
As Gizmodo’s Katharine Trendacosta figured out, the Weavertown One Room School House is “an authentic one-room school” dating from 1877 in which “life-sized animation brings this interactive classroom to life.” Until May 1969 it was a school for Amish and Mennonite children, but then it became a museum.

One might wonder, what’s up with the museum if all the wax figurines are for sale on Craigslist? A note on the Ultimate Cinema Guide website (??) states that “we are still working on getting the wax figures moving again very soon,” but I wouldn’t be surprised if that note were on the old side. So perhaps they abandoned plans to fix them?

The reasons why and wherefore are secondary. What matters here is that if you can scrape together 8,400 simoleons, you can populate your very own fake Amish classroom—and we won’t even pry all too much as to why you would want to do that…..
 

 

 
Many, many more wax Amish kids, after the jump…...