The Assemblagist

The last Wood­side Antiques auc­tion we attended must have been in, what… Jan­u­ary? That’s when we acquired the Vic­to­rian scrap­book and the sewing bas­ket filled with dozens of spools of vin­tage thread. And the Vic­to­rian hand­made lace, the 1920s dresses… great bunches of “stuff” at some very low prices. Yes, I’m talk­ing to myself. Didn’t I end up with a huge box filled with match­books? It was the time I bid with­out know­ing I’d done so? Yeah, it’s all com­ing back to me now. Well, seems the $5.00 pur­chase price may not have been so igno­rant after all. Turns out, match­books are col­lectible. Who knew? You did, right? Why didn’t you tell me?

I have, quite lit­er­ally, a cubic foot of match­books. Some from 1940s New Orleans clubs, oth­ers from Las Vegas in the 60s, and hun­dreds more from all over the world. Tonight, as I scoured the ephemera offer­ings on ebay, I came across a selec­tion of match­books up for bid. Click­ing around for more infor­ma­tion yielded start­ing bids of $2.99 and up for one matchbook.

Over the com­ing fort­night, I shall endeavor to com­pile a few dozens of those dig­i­tal pho­tographs every­one is talk­ing about these days. Images of my many MANY matchbooks.

Stand back col­lec­tors! Soon ye shall feast your eyes upon the splen­dor that is MY Match­book Col­lec­tion. Talk about ephemera… Matches. Just how much more tran­si­tory can an item be?

I’m exhausted tonight, spent a large part of the morn­ing enter­tain­ing the #1 grand­bal­loon and then all after­noon cre­at­ing a front porch mobile (used part of a mule har­ness for the starter, the some old 78 rpm records, a set of 1960s-​era plas­tic gold­fish, and…) which means this post is ram­bling and only base­line coher­ent. Pray I have time to edit before it posts itself the evening of April 6^th.

c