Everyday as we go through our daily lives, the world is producing the collectibles of tomorrow as far as ephemera is concerned.  We recently helped a young couple clean our their grandmother’s home, we don’t do estate sales, we just advise people as to the best way to handle an estate. During our visit, we found folders after folders of information that had been saved for the past forty or more years.  This lady was very particular about her household affairs.  As we began to go through files, we found the original reciept for a purchase of a painting, without that reciept it was just another painting, but the paper trail showed the date it was purchased and that she was the original owner of the work. The value of the painting went from garage sale $100 to a gallery collector’s piece of $4,000.  It is to be auctioned very soon at a fine art collections auction.  This is an example of the difference just one piece of paper can make. Is it any wonder ephemera collectors want to always look through the trash pile at estate sales !

Paper is not expensive to print and the designs of artists appear on a world wide variety of work. For the most part these small fragments of a larger picture are put in the attic or thrown in the trash can, and usually it can be collected free of charge or at a very small price.  A box full of paper at an estate sale is always a collectors dream, even if you only get one or two pieces of ephemera from the box, usually the small price you pay is well worth the effort of the dig.

There really isn’t a golden rule as to what is ephemera and what is not ephemera. If you are a theme collector and all you want are snowmen, then you are constantly searching for old Christmas cards, tags, decorations, wrapping paper, postcards and anything else that has been printed with a snowman. I know one lady that will gladly pay the asking price for a set of  green paper luncheon napkins with a snowman on it, as long as the hat he wears is black and there is actually a carrot nose on the snowman !  Theme collectors love to find the printed items that go with the 3-D objects they own, even if its a magazine advertisement for the product. It gives a display one really unique look.

Collecting by occassion has become a very popular way of saving ephemera. We have daily planners from the years everyone in our family was born. We have magazines from the day we were born, newspapers, just the same.  If our favorite toy from the 60’s is on a antique store shelf, the first thing we do is ask if the paper from the box was put somewhere.  Do you know many antique stores have a what not box full of paper that they just don’t know what to do with and many times, its paper that goes with the very items they are selling. Its hard to put in a display for them or they didn’t know they had a match. We have found some really nice Christmas Bridge Tally cards stuck inside books and no one took the time to remove them before shelving the book.  The price of the book wasn’t near the cost of what those tally cards would have cost if they were being sold. 

Collecting by date takes patience. We were first introduced to this by a man that stood in our booth for hours looking through over 3,000 postcards.  He collects anything mailed on December 7, 1941, although it was a Sunday, many post offices had skelton crews that stamped the postmark and had the letters ready to mail on Monday. He said he usually finds one or two each time he goes out searching. He said he has more time than money invested in his collection. Imagine items mailed from New York on September 11th, they are sitting in drawers somewhere and will be an ephemera collectors find one day. Collecting by date can also lead to a unique collection of items.  Dallas, Texas ephemera collectors still look long and hard at estate sales for items mailed on the date of the Kennedy assasination.

Collecting by mail cancellations, postmarks, stamps are another way people collect paper that has been through the mail system. There is a lady we like to talk to who collects all postmark from cities that have affectionate names,  Loveland, Colorado.  If she finds a valentine collection that still has envelopes, she is in heaven.

We were watching the Texas Rangers play baseball and I soon realized that we were about to witness Kenny Rogers pitch his perfect game.  I told my daughter to go out and by another program or two and to pick up any tickets she found on the ground along the way. We had gone to the game to watch Bo Jackson play in right field and instead we witnessed baseball history. Now we combined our tickets, the program and a Kenny Rogers baseball card we were given that night by Mother’s cookies and we had our perfect game collection. Kenny Rogers threw ninety-eight pitches that night for his perfect game.  and the attendance at the ballpark that night (46,581) was the largest crowd that had ever attended a regular game at the baseball field at that time. July 28, 1994, we were there and we have the paper to prove it !  Did anyone else think this was important, well one man did, he bought the remaining 1,000 programs  at the top of the seventh inning. We only got our extra one because who can refuse a cute little girl asking to buy a program.

You just never know when you will be a witness to history or what you are handed will become historical. If you haven’t started an ephemera collection but are interested, why not put a shoe box on a closet shelf.  Each time you attend an event, put the piece of paper you are handed into that box, the program, the ticket, maybe even a picture of someone from the cast.  You can clean and purge as you go or you can figure out what you want to collect from the by-gone eras based on what you find appealing in what you have been throwing in your box. Matchbook collectors are never picky, they bring home every printed matchbook they can and then use what they don’t want as barter or trade. One man only collects hotels, while another only hamburger joints, pretty soon you are networking your collectibles and trading items.

Do you need some help figuring out what you will collect. Look at this list and then check a few items. The next time you go on a junking expedition take your list and see what paper you find.  What if you collect items that are related to :  Education, Medicine, Railways, Hotels, Travel, Church, Electricity, Dancing, Law, Turnpikes, Theater, Cookery, Taxation, Hygiene, Circuses, Libraries, Aircraft, Banking, Travel, Cosmetics, Gardening, Navy, Charity, Insurance, Cinema, Crime, Agriculture, Fairs, and on the list will go.

We hope we will see you at the next flea market we attend, we will be the one sifting through paper finding anything printed with pictures of ladies doing farm chores.  Oh look, there is one now right on the front of the Carnation Milk recipe book.