Geppi's Entertainment Museum in Camden Station
At Camden Yards, home of baseball’s Baltimore Orioles, you’ll find Camden Station, an old train station that now houses two museums. Downstairs is the Sports Legend Museum, which makes sense given the proximity to a major league baseball stadium. Upstairs, however, is an unexpected treasure trove of comic books and pop culture memorabilia inside Geppi’s Entertainment Museum.
My colleagues and I weren’t sure what to expect when we were taken up the elevator to the Geppi’s Entertainment Museum. It had been described as a “pop culture museum”, but that term didn’t tell us much. Our guide explained that the museum focused on the evolution of characters in pop culture, from the early appearances of the brownie used to market cameras to today’s movie characters used to market everything.
Still not sure what you’ll see during a visit to Geppi’s?
For one, the most impressive comic book collection I’ve ever seen:
A small portion of the comic collection at GEM in Baltimore
The collection is remarkable not only because of its size and the fact that it belongs to one man (Stephen Geppi), but because of the quality of the individual items.
First Superman comic
Beyond comics, you’ll also find examples of how characters have been used for merchandising and marketing.
Figurines at Geppis Entertainment Museum
I'm Batman.
The museum promises to be “fun for all ages”, and it’s one of the rare attractions that lives up to that claim. What makes the museum a fun experience for an entire family is the wide range of topics and decades that the collection spans. While adults can enjoy and share their nostalgia, younger generations will recognize favorite characters from their own lives. It’s fun to see the multiple ways that the past and present are connected, even when we’re talking about action figures, super heroes and the faces on your cereal box.
Admission to Geppi’s Entertainment Museum is only $10 for adults and $7 for kids 5 to 18. Children 4 and under are free. If you use Baltimore’s public transportation system, bring in your ticket stubs for the current day to get $2 off your admission cost.
Photos by Britt Reints. Thanks to Visit Baltimore for my complimentary visit to GEM.
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[...] all the historic attractions, I’m dying to take them to the American Visionary Art Museum and Geppi’s Entertainment Museum. Chicago, [...]
[...] Often overlooked because of its proximity to Washington, D.C., Baltimore is a city worth visiting all on its own. Catch a baseball game at Camden Yards, visit the visually stunning aquarium at the Inner Harbor, or checkout one of the world’s most impressive comic book collections at Geppi’s Entertainment Museum. [...]