I've gotten asked a few times how I store my matchbooks/matchcovers and I always forget to answer it. Here is what I do right now. It's a work in progress, I'm not completely satisfied with it and am open to recommendations.
Most of the matchbooks I now keep in modified baseball card boxes. I take a longbox, bust open one side and tape it up in the new shape. The ends I leave untaped to open and close. This works because matchcovers are somewhat narrower than baseball cards but much taller. I sort them by town by state. It's a fun way to organize it but it takes up a surprising number of boxes, as when I get matchbooks i don't remove the matches and save just the matchcover like "real" collectors. The flat matchcovers store great this way, but the matchbooks aren't truly flat and don't really compress. Still, I like having them in their original condition and at this time have no interest in altering the matchbooks for the stake of storage. Right now I am using 16 boxes. This particular one is just New York City. Don't bother wondering what Gene Woodling has to do with this; I just needed a card to make this "cards and vintage things" and it was nearby.
When I purchased (and flipped) a matchbook collection a few years ago, the previous owner had them displayed in 9-pocket pages. The downside was they'd slide out sometimes and were very bulky.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely liking the album idea. I wonder if a place like The Container Store would have a storage product of some kind that would work for matchbooks.
ReplyDeleteIt's great to see how you're doing things. I've always seen them in card pages, either 6 or 9 pocket, or at least that is when I see them for sale somewhere.
ReplyDeleteFun! My mom had a collection. Curious about the 8-pocket pages in that album. Did you source those, or did they fall in your lap?
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