As Christmas approaches, I've been nostalgic for the variety, low prices, and ease of shopping in Europe's open-air markets. In an attempt to replicate the experience (well, sort of), I finally stopped yesterday at the Brass Armadillo Antiques Mall (BAAM), which I pass regularly on the drive to the animal shelter. On the outside, BAAM looks like a warehouse. On the inside, its contents were nearly as diverse, if decidedly American, as the offerings at the daily market at Les Marolles in Brussels.

I didn't find any Danish art glass at BAAM, and there were just too many vendors with old Matchbox cars to search for the VW Beetles that I also collect. I did discover two American ceramics makers that I'd never heard of, both located in places I've called home. (Let's be honest here, the only vintage American pottery that I could have identified prior to yesterday was Fiestaware. And speaking of vintage Fiestaware, my brother's friend Steven, who collects it, is probably worth more than many Wall Street bankers, based on the prices that I saw yesterday.)

Roseville Art Pottery was manufactured in Ohio—we lived in Cleveland Heights for eight years—in the first half of the 20th century. Most of the pieces I saw yesterday were too over-the-top design-wise for my taste, such as this er, um pitcher. At least now I know what I'm looking at.

Weirdly enough, the pottery that really caught my eye was manufactured by Coors. Yes, that Coors. The beer company manufactured ceramics, mostly utilitarian items like dinnerware, for about two decades prior to World War. The patterns, such as the popular Rosebud design, were simple and came in a variety of colors, à la Fiestaware. I was quite taken with a bean pot—a pot just for beans, imagine that!—in this blue Rosebud pattern.

BAAM also offers vintage Western-themed items, including horse brasses, elaborately engraved silver spurs, pairs of shoot-em-out guns in tooled leather holsters, cowboy boots, ten-gallon hats, and (yuck) cowhide lampshades.

The strangest antique at BAAM? A wooden milk box for home delivery from the Cleveland Heights Dairy, which was so old that the phone number on the side began with letters rather than numbers. How did a milk box from Cleveland Heights, Ohio end up in Wheat Ridge, Colorado?

Note to Gayle and Tim: If it hadn't cost nearly $100, I would have bought that milk box for you on the spot.

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Having just perused the New York Times list of the top 100 books of 2008, I have concluded that I have ceased to be a well-read individual. Of all those titles, I've read exactly one work of fiction (When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson, a British author that Hattie, a fellow expat, introduced me to) and one of non-fiction (An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken, author of The Giant's House, one of my all-time favorite novels).