Matchbook Covers as Art

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 6th.