Interesting Matchcovers From The 2013 Southern Swapfest

A couple of nice, older covers from an album of low phone numbers I purchased at Saturday's auction.
 

A great early 1950's Durham Bulls matchcover featuring Ace Parker. The Durham Bulls, once named the Durham Tobacconists are a Triple-A minor league team from Durham, North Carolina and became nationally famous after the 1988 movie Bull Durham with Kevin Costner.

This one made me laugh: Lando's Hide-A-Way in Acuna, Mexico. Lando Calrissian of Star Wars fame sure gets around. If you notice, aside from peddling Coconut Fizz, he also has a side business selling curios, liquor, silver, and furniture among other things.

Didn't I just mention how rare covers from McDonald's are? Here are three 30 strikes I found during the convention. The one on the left is from Canada and the other two from the United States.

A few nice looking 10 strike covers purchased from Charles Wolf's collection. The Hires Root Beer is my favorite. These will look great in Janet Stout's custom pages made especially for ten strike covers.

A cover for Alan Hale's Lobster Barrell, a restaurant owned by the one and only Gilligan's Island S.S. Minnow skipper, Alan Hale, Jr. In business during the 1970's and 1980's, it was located in Hollywood, California at 826 N La Cienega Boulevard.

Mitch Match and Hot Dot

Garbage Pail Kids were collectible trading cards with stickers sold during the 1980's depicting disgusting children that burped, barfed and blew their way on to the scene in 1985. They were Topps bubblegum cards response to the cutesy Cabbage Patch Kids toy dolls marketed to little girls. In 1985 when I was in 7th grade, they were all the rage and everyone had some of these.

The above cards, Mitch Match, number 494a in the series and Hot Dot, number 494b are from the Garbage Pail Kids 12th series from 1988.

Matchbook Art

Denver, CO artist Joseph Martinez creates tiny, amazing paintings on the inside of matchbooks. Let's hope he uses those generic white covers and not Federals, Crowns and DQ's.

http://www.josephmrtnz.com/paintings/matchbooks/

2013 Southern Swapfest

The 2013 Southern Swapfest in Altamonte Springs, Florida (near Orlando) was a huge success. This years convention was the first one to be held at the Hilton Altamonte Springs hotel. The hotel offered matchbook collectors a top-notch breakfast and accommodations. However, I did miss the sunny breakfast area and spacious courtyard of the previous hotel.

Mark Edelman had a large dealer space with material from Charles Wolf's estate with proceeds going to the Wolf family. I spent about a day and a half looking through the vast collection and found plenty of great covers in the categories I collect. Charles was a longtime collector and marked each cover on the reverse with where he acquired the cover and what year. I overheard someone say that Mr. Wolf would be happy they were in the hands of a fellow collector. 

A big thanks to Frank Denzler, Bill Hayes and everyone else involved in making it such an enjoyable convention. I don't think anyone went home empty-handed.

A New McDonald's Matchbook... Sort Of

For every 1000 Diamond Quality matchcovers you come across you'll find a legitimate McDonald's cover. That's how I've figured the math. Well, a few years ago Mickey D's came up with a brilliant idea: leave these matchbooks on bars and tables at late night hotspots to advertise that the Golden Arches were open 24 hours. The clincher? There's no matches inside, but there are images of Ronald's tasty french fries.

Read more here:

http://blog.epromos.com/food-drink-restaurant-promos/custom-matchbook-mcdonalds-round-the-clock-hours/

MARVA mentioned in Comics DC blog

Mike Rhode stopped by for a few minutes at a MARVA meeting last May and even mentioned us on his blog, comicsdc.blogspot.com. Thanks Mike!

www.comicsdc.blogspot.com/2012/05/cartoons-on-matchbooks.html

1930's Marlene Dietrich Coca-Cola Cover

I found this great Coca-Cola cover on the web today. This is a very old one and one I have never seen before. Not only is it an old Coke cover, but it's a movie ad as well, for Dishonored starring Marlene Dietrich. The movie Dishonored was released in 1931, dating this cover to that time. Unfortunately this cover was bob-tailed as many covers from that era were.

On a side note, one of the things that interest me with collecting matchcovers is the history and sometimes the detective work to find out the history. There is no city or state listed on this cover, but a simple google search for "ambassador theater 7th and locust" will tell you that the Ambassador was in St. Louis, Missouri. Opened in 1926, the theater portion of the building cost over 5 million dollars to build.

From Jerry's Brokedown Palaces:

"The Ambassador opened August 26, 1926, in the Ambassador Building. Critics at that time heralded the building with such comments as the Ambassador "will take its place among the world's most beautiful and modern buildings" and "St. Louis' newest palace of wonders". It cost $5.5 million. The day the Ambassador opened, St. Louisians flocked to see this unique palace."

For more info about the Ambassador Theater or other movie palaces, please visit Jerry's Brokedown Palaces blog here:

http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com