Vampire-killing kit

A BB reader spotted this antique vampire-killing kit at an antiques show this weekend. You may purchase it from Best of France Antiques in Buckingham, Pennsylvanie. Included are a pistol, a stake, garlic, holy water, mirror, bible, silver bullets, and crucifixes. It's $9,000, which is quite a bargain if you are in need of such a kit.

• [Gulliver]

  Typical food human propaganda. Everyone knows those things don’t work…so don’t bother trying them.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Fortunately, snacks rarely have an extra $9K sitting around.

• [Gabriel Nagmay]

  Antique?  I am not an expert, but the construction seems to be from mismatched parts chosen to look old. What’s with the wicker and table-leg knife handles?

  I would love to see it analyzed by the people on road show.

  • [Robert Baruch]

    The proper term is “antique”. Makers, a challenger appears! Can you make this for under a few hundred bucks?

    Is that thing in the lower left a Mighty Hammer of Smiting?

    • [Jamie Sue]

      I was thinking the same thing… no, actually, I was mentally sourcing parts.

  • [David Csiszer]

    Or Pawn Stars, Chumlee will take a look at it

    • [Rich Keller]

      I haven’t seen that show. Is his name spelled “Chumlee” but pronounced “Cholmondley’?

• [Joseph Francis]

  A visit to Necromance on Melrose Ave could probably put one of these together. :D

• [nosehat]

  Too bad the comment threads are gone from the other 4 vampire killing kit boing boing posts that you’ve linked.  As I recall, there was a huge collection of great reader information about these in a couple of the threads.

  The manufacture of “antique” vampire slaying kits is quite a cool cottage industry.  The only ones I’ve seen personally have had something wrong with them, like laser printed labels on the antique-style paper labels on the little bottles.

  Good find.

• [Palefire]

  Antique vampire killing kits are a popular item, from what I understand.  However, they are also popular items to fake.  Would be interested in knowing how old they date this?  I’m skeptical.

• [David Seaver]

  These kits are a popular DIY project in steampunk circles. The box and some of the doodads therein may very well date to the Victorian age, but I suspect that calling it an antique vampire-killing kit is at best disingenuous. The fact that most of the methods we associate with killing vampires were put together in a single package by Stoker and later writers and film-makers militates against the existence of these kits within the stated time frame.

• [Neural Kernel]

  Geeze, trying to use this outdated crap is a good way to get bit… where’s the UV lamps and white phosphorous?!

  • [Guest]

    Willy Pete and a pneumatic stake shooter is all I need… :P

• [Bill B]

  We saw a strangely similar one in a Savage Mill, MD antique shop a couple of weeks ago. It had a large ivory crucifix as well as a miniature ivory bible (or book-looking item). Price tag: $15,000. The detail of the work looked exquisite, but since it was in a large glass case, there was no way to inspect it more closely to determine authenticity. I’m posting the photo my partner took.

• [achernow]

  Heh.  The things under the cross look like vacuum tubes, which I don’t think would do any good.  Plus aren’t silver bullets for killing werewolves?

  • [Pag]

    Don’t you know werewolves and vampires are natural enemies? You wouldn’t want to be stuck in the middle of a fight between the two camps without a way to deal with both sides.

    • [achernow]

      Good point!  But at that point…you’d be kinda uh…f-ed anyway.  Unless you had backup, of course.  (Or formed an alliance with one side….)

• [donovan acree]

  this isn’t even a very good fake.

• [nanuq]

  The modern vampire tradition really isn’t that old.   Bram Stoker came out with Dracula in 1897 and that was what really launched the modern genre.  Any “vampire kit” that predates the beginning of the 20th century is almost certainly a fake.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    The modern vampire tradition really isn’t that old.   Bram Stoker came out with Dracula in 1897 and that was what really launched the modern genre.  Any “vampire kit” that predates the beginning of the 20th century is almost certainly a fake.

    New Englanders were digging up their relatives and staking them several years before Dracula was published.

• [grumpus]

  I smell a fakey-fake. Best of France Antiques should feel embarrassed.

  • [Lester]

    I drive past there on the way to the in-laws. The front of the place is littered with ginormous bronze statues of the super-tacky I-have-money-now-and-need-to-show-you variety. Bleh.

• [James B]

  I like the off axis wood turnings on the handle.  You have to reposition the workpiece relative to the tailstock a couple of times to get those eccentric curves.  If you look at contemporary artistic wood turning, it is like they think they invented the technique or something, but it has been around for a while.

  • [T.]

    I’m positive these turnings are taken from an old chair leg…

    • [James B]

      Now that you mention it, I can see where these definitely could have come from a chair.   But I would venture a guess that they were stretchers, not legs.  On the bottommost mallet,  you can see by the carved cross where the stretcher is mortised into the more substantial leg that was sawed off to make the mallet. Another giveaway that this is a sawed up chair is that they used the wicker chair seat in part of it.

      I need to go out in the shop and make some of these to sell on etsy. Marked as antique reproductions, of course.

• [Spookyland]

  I am very suspicious about most of these auction kits – most of them are beginning to distance themselves from an association with Professor Ernst Blomberg – You can read the latest regarding this famous vampire hunter here, and you can view a large collection of vampire killing kits here at SpookylandCrypt. 
   
  Still, I want to believe that some of these are vintage kits produced for European tourists following the relase of Dracula in the 1890s.  Or a response to an older, more genuine fear among rural people in eastern Europe.
   
  Mr. Spooky.

• [Spookyland]

  Whoops – the link for the collection of vampire killing kits is here and includes a trove of Blomberg and non-Blomberg kits, most of which were sold at auction for thousands of dollars.

  Mr. Spooky.

• [Bubba73]

  You folks have all got the wrong end of the stick. These are for killing antique vampires.

  • [billstewart]

    Oh – that explains why you’d want a kit with really old garlic in it!

• [Guest]

  You better hope you have proper documentation showing the wood and ivory in that kit is legal.

• [David Carroll]

  If a random two by one is good enough for Faith or Buffy, it’s good enough for the rest of us.

• [jparkuntz]

  Only a couple of miles away from Buckingham, the Mercer Museum has a different kit:

  http://www.flickr.com/photos/curiousexpeditions/2427952073/

  As a former resident of Bucks County, I can attest that the area has its share of odd characters.

• [Bucket]

  Dammit, I already have way too many projects floating around my head and my house in various states of unfinishedness, and now I have a whole bunch more:

  An alien abduction protection kit from circa 1947 New Mexico.
  (I’m seeing a GI army footlocker with a .45, couple grenades, a gas mask, maybe some syringes labeled with various infectious Earth diseases.)
   
  A series of anti-zombie kits from various time periods.

  Anti-AI kits for the coming robot apocalypse.

• [Art]

  I hope it comes with it’s own 5000 word instruction booklet.

• [Taggart Grant]

  No worries.  Don’t need it.  

  Because this can kill vampires for just $7.99. 

• [Nathan Roberts]

  The kit was on sale this weekend at the Baltimore Summer Antique Show for $9800.

• [Brad Ackerman]

  Does the pistol have to be shipped to an FFL?

  (Not that I really care — $9k would cover quite a bit of modern weaponry.)

• [Michelle Matheny]

  That’s terrible. Looks like someone went through all the 1960s furniture from my grandparents’ house and made a kid’s toy out of it. Wicker from the rocking chair, legs from the coffee table… random bits of religious icons and metal and glass from the junk drawer. Yuck.

• [Will Robey]

  The exterior box is from an English “Tea Caddy”.  My mother has one almost identical.

• [T.]

  In my opinion, the kit is probably a hybrid.  The chest appears to be old, and then furnished with modified furniture to look the part.  I’ve made one of these kits (I belive it looks a lot better and at less than half the price of this one), but I do proclaim it to be an antique reproduction, though it does contain some authentic antiques, everything else inside is a reproduction and most of it was made by hand.  I get a lot of grief for it, but I’m not trying to pass the thing off as anything other than it is… antique reproduction.  If you like Vampire Kits, check this one out  http://www.thegreendragon.us/vampirehuntingkit.html

• [Alex Shiels]

  The wood might be old, but even the box is modern.  A period box would have used dovetails, not mitre joints like those shown in the photo.

  • [T.]

    Not all period boxes were made from dovetail joints, especially smaller ones.  Many boxes were mitered; especially those intended to be veneered.  It created a more elegant and refined design.

• [Carol Barns]

  This is about as antique as the bathrobe that I jst bought at Wal-Mart

• [Audrey von Gease]

  Hey! I have some old stuff that I could put into a box and call a vampire killing kit. Anybody want to order one? There are a real bargain. Priced at $49.99! And if you order yours within the next five minutes I will include a second vampire killing kit at no extra cost!* Call 1-(800) RONCO Now! And order yours today! 
  *Shipping and handling rates are $8,950.01 extra.
  Ok… There are a couple of pictures that posters have posted that look way more authentic then the one at top.Weather or not they are really good fakes I can not tell. This one though, for many many reasons is an obvious fake.

• [zʇǝɥɔ uɐɹǝ]

  What do I do if the vampire is Jewish?

  • [Felton / Moderator]

    Get a bunch of Stars of David, sharpen the edges, and learn to throw them with deadly accuracy like a ninja.