His insurance agent almost fainted once when told of the numbers. The match covers are stored in hundreds of books in Borton’s house.
The scrapbooks are like headstones for departed eating places: David’s San Francisco, the Fontanelle, the Gathering Inn, Langolo’s Pizza, L’Armagnac, the Nookery, Papa Bears, Pete’s Red Pig Diner. It has been valued at $25,000.īorton’s collection testifies to the high mortality rate of restaurants. The few exceptions include sports-themed matchbooks of the ’30s - which tend to fetch considerably higher prices.Īnd the most valuable matchbook in existence might be an 1896 book promoting the Mendelson Opera Company in New York - one of the first examples of a matchbook used as an advertisement. Matchbooks typically sell for a penny or two each at conventions, according to Bob Zack, also a Columbus collector. The hobby is sometimes called a poor man’s coin collecting. With his interest going back to his childhood, Borton revived it in the early 1970s when he discovered a national association of collectors called the Rathkamp Matchcover Society. She collects “features,” or matchbooks with wide matchsticks that have designs printed on them. “I realized we were going to go to conventions and swap fests, and I might as well learn to like it.
“I fought it for several years, but I finally gave up,” she said. Yet his wife, Paula, has learned to love the hobby. In some households, having to find a place for a truckload of matchbooks might kindle marital disputes. And that’s just the R’s.īusinesses that lasted a long time - the Clarmont restaurant, the Neil House hotel - are represented by several generations of matchbooks. Open one of his scrapbooks, and the names of long-gone Columbus dining spots leap out: the Red Ox Steak House, the Riviera, Reeb’s, Riccardi’s. I shouldn’t have been surprised: He has a quarter-million matchbooks.īorton, a retired accountant for Nationwide Insurance, has collected matchbooks - or match covers, as they are also called - since the early 1970s, specializing in Ohio restaurants and hotels. Matchbook artefact collectible location Go up to the top floor of the. When I reached his Upper Arlington house, he handed me six. Schefflers Firefly pendant collectible location Jump down to the lower level of. Bob Borton was pretty confident he could find a restaurant matchbook from my hometown in his collection.įrom little New Castle, Pennsylvania? Surely not, I thought.
0 kommentar(er)
