Obsessions: History In Your Pocket
BY NORM POWERSPHOTOS BY MATT ROSE
To characterize Bill Retskin as a collector is a bit of an understatement. He’s been collecting things — almost anything — since he was a child: marbles, bottle caps and beach shells in his younger years, and later, mechanical pencils, ice hooks, judges’ gavels, pocket knives, and cigarette lighters. “I have no idea why I collect what I collect,“ Bill says. “It’s part of my nature.” What Bill collects the most of, though, is matchbook covers, of which he estimates he now has one-and-a-half million, an inventory that includes not only covers but match boxes, sales catalogues printed by companies that make matches and what Bill calls “odd-ball paper” related to matches and the making of same.
Bill, an Asheville resident, is also the president and founder of the American Matchcover Collecting Club (www.matchcovers.com), which he created in 1986.
He has collected an array of things during his careers as a photojournalist, as a consultant for a high school yearbook, and as a computer analyst. Along the way, he has also written three price guides on matchbook covers and a Master’s thesis on matchbook cover advertising during wartime.
“My first real acquaintance with matchbook covers came when I was walking through a flea market in Springfield, Virginia,” Bill recalls. “I came upon two albums of used match covers and was hooked. I couldn’t put them down.” He was so enamored of his new discovery that his wife had to drive them back home to nearby Reston while he pored over the albums. “I had all I could do to maintain a civil conversation during the short ride home,” Bill remembers.
Matches have been lighting fires, candles, pipes and cigars since the 1820s, but it wasn’t until the 1890s that a Philadelphia lawyer named Joshua Pusey figured out how to fix 20 matches onto a folded cardboard cover. The Diamond Match Company was soon knocking on his door and bought the patent from him in return for lifetime employment with the company.
The hero of matchbook cover collectors, however, is Henry C. Traute, a salesman for Diamond Match who was the first to market matchbook covers as advertising space. Traute can also take credit for the phrase “Close Cover Before Striking.” He convinced his bosses such concern for customer safety was good for business.
Traute’s first sale was to the Pabst Brewing Company, which ordered 10 million matchbooks advertising the Pabst Blue Ribbon brew. Before long, the Duke Tobacco Company in Raleigh began using what Traute called his “20 little salesmen.” This was followed by an order from the Wrigley Company for one billion matchbooks to promote their chewing gum.
Traute’s idea ushered in a heyday for matchbook cover advertising that lasted until the Surgeon General’s report on cigarette smoking sent the business into a slow decline. Every business from automobile companies to movie studios hawked their goods on what were effectively miniature billboards, Bill says.
Fervor for collecting matchbook covers grew as well and in 1957, Retskin says, Mirror Magazine claimed it was the country’s fastest-growing hobby, outnumbered only by stamp collecting. Today only about a dozen matchbook cover clubs exist besides the American Matchcover Collecting Club.
Bill says the club has numbered as many as 900 members. Members’ thematic interests these days, he says, are sports, politics, beer, cigars and “girlies,” the matchbooks buried in your father’s sock drawer after a night out at the men’s club.There’s a lively business in matchbooks on eBay, for which Bill’s website serves as a portal, and where a pre-World War II matchbook from the Hotel Swastika in New Mexico sold several years ago for $500 — big news at the time in the matchbook collecting world. “Right now there’s a Honus Wagner Lion Match Company ‘Giant’ matchbook on eBay for $750,” Bill notes. “And I’ve brokered a 1927 Charles Lindbergh luncheon matchbook for $2,700.”
Matchbook covers may not have the financial clout of rare stamps, but they’re a more accurate reflection of the everyday life of a culture and a time in history. Who can resist the siren call of a bright yellow matchbook cover advertising a glowing red 1952 Oldsmobile with a Rocket 88 Engine for sale at Luke’s Motors in Chester, PA, the allure of a Pabst Blue Ribbon “It’s Blended. It’s Splendid!” cover from the 1920s, or the stirring red, white and blue “Defend America” cover from World War II?
“Collectibles, from my viewpoint, have to be desirable, attractive and personally valuable,” Bill says. “If they have some monetary value, that’s OK too!”
