Friday, May 15, 2020

Cards and vintage things: more matchbooks

I picked up a lot more matchbooks recently. One huge lot and one tiny lot.

I'll start off with a little baseball content. Then it's all matchbooks the rest of the way for this post.

I'm happy to say that I am a good enough baseball fan that I recognized this guy immediately. It's the cover of a 1955 Ohio Blue Tip matchbook. It was unlicensed, and is not in the Beckett book or TCDB, so I'm not considering it a baseball card. Fun little thing to have though.
For those of you who couldn't figure out the player - it's Ted Williams. Fun to have a '55 Williams collectible of any kind.

Both lots had cool Pepsi matchbooks. I've got a nice little collection of these now. Here are the two new ones.
 The "Think Young" matchbook came in a little lot of 10. Cost about $7. Other interesting matchbooks were two for the NY restaurant Sardi's. Both had a phone number on the inside, one in the old-style alphanumeric, the other in the new style all-digits. The others were mostly San Francisco-area matchbooks, some of them fairly modern.

The other lot cost twice as much as the first lot - $15. For that $15 I got about 850 matchbooks. Most seem to be 1950s-1960s. So 85 times the matchbooks for 2 times the cost. This was the one where I thought the seller ghosted me, but I think she was just annoyed that it cost her more in postage then what she got for the matchbooks, and took her time sending them. Here are some highlights. There was a fair amount of duplication so if you are interested in anything you see let me know. At least half of the matchbooks came from Texas, seems to be the Austin area.

Some more in the soda category, including two-and-a-half Coke matchbooks.
 A variety of familiar brands here.
 Lots of drugstore/medical matchbooks. Old brands like Rexall, Dristan, Anacin, etc.
 Quite a lot of Hunt's tomato sauce matchbooks. Each one had a recipe on the back.
 Some cool gas station matchbooks.
 Some great automotive matchbooks. '61 and '63 Chevrolet, '62 and '64 Ford.
 There were two of this fantastic Continental Airlines matchbook, allowing me to show the great inside as well as the outside.
 I had never heard of Blackie Sherrod but apparently he is overwhelmingly considered the best sportswriter in Dallas history. He was about 10-15 years into his career at this point. He ended up working for over 60 years. You might recognize the girl in the right from the last matchbook post. Then she was on a kitchen company matchbook, here she is on a dry-cleaner matchbook.
 Such a wide variety of matchbooks that really create a snapshot in time. Afro-American Life Insurance was one of the country's largest black-owned businesses, and it is in the same lot with a caricature that would not be acceptable for much longer.
 The inside of that matchbook may even be more offensive than the outside.
 Matchbooks for children? I couldn't find much online about the "Zany Zoo" series. Seems to be 1960s.
 Anyone out there a USC graduate/fan? Lots of these matchbooks. Also one for Cal, and a couple from Tulane. The Tulane's have the 1967 football schedule inside.
 Lots of 1962 Seattle World's Fair matchbooks.
 There were several older NYC matchbooks. Richmond Hill is in Queens. WEAF became WNBC in the 1940s, dating the matchbook to this time. In 1988 WNBC became WFAN, the sports talk station (and current home of the Yankees).
 This is one of my favorites from the lot. A great piece of Long Island aviation history.
 Lots of military related matchbooks. These are mostly Air Force Bases and military hospitals in Texas.
 Some of the boxes came in this vintage Hershey's box - that will be a fun add to my vintage collection. Probably 1950s. And there are real pipe cleaners in the Sir Walter Raleigh package, also 1950s.


5 comments:

  1. That's a very cool Ted Williams collectable!

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  2. Great acquisitions! So much cool stuff here. I think my favorite is the Mayflower matchbook. I remember seeing those moving trucks throughout my childhood. The colors and graphics really stood out.

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  3. That Williams matchbook is awesome! I also love the Seattle World's Fair ones too.

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  4. It's looking like you might have to start up a separate matchbook blog! That Hershey's box sure is something, I'd definitely pick one of those up if I ever found one cheap.

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