Covers From The 2015 Southern Swapfest

The 2015 Southern Swapfest was a blast, as usual. We enjoyed plenty of sunny, warm days and the evenings were nice enough for just a t-shirt. A real relief for us Northerners who've been frozen since Halloween. Anyway, here are a few nice covers I came across while there:

First up, we've got this older Diamond Match Safety First cover. I'd never heard of Dort Automobiles, had you?

The Dort Automobile Company was founded in Flint Michigan in 1915 that made cars there until 1924. The companies founders, William Crapo Durant and Josiah Dallas Dort, actually started making wagons back in 1884. Although their automobile company was short lived, their ads where very prevalent in print during those years.

 That puts this cover between 1915 and 1924, making it my oldest cover by at least 2 years. 

The striker is mostly gone on the weathered Crown match, but it's still a keeper. 

A few of the covers I liked the best. A couple of these came from the old collection the club had acquired and graciously allowed us to help ourselves to.

A nice lot of dog racing covers, which I don't come by often.

Recent Acquisitions

I recently bought a large lot of matchbooks and matchcovers and was pleased to find a lot of nice stuff. There were six of these mint condition Cadillac Glass Co. features.

There were about 25 features and printed stick matchbooks in the lot, all in brand new condition. 

Some of the nicer material, WWII patriotics, train lines and World's Fair covers had duplicates.

This late 1930's David Lionel Press cover for a beauty shop offered permanents. For more on this manumark, see:

 http://matchpro.org/Archives/Know%20Your%20Cover/dlionel.pdf

Photos from the 2013 Southern Swapfest

Gayle Hofacker has added new photos from the 2013 Southern Swapfest. Thanks Gayle!
http://www.southernswapfest.com/Pages/MOREPHOTOS.aspx

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.

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.