Hardcore history: 6 reasons I love ‘Pawn Stars’

1. They’re current – and they’re hip. Like “Antiques Roadshow,” the hit History Channel show “Pawn Stars” appeals to the collector – as well as the profiteer – in all of us, because they both attempt to answer the most enduring philosophical question in human history: “How much?” One notable difference, though, is that PBS generally doesn’t have to bleep out anything from “Antiques Roadshow.” Another is that the “Roadshow” is a local event wherever it goes, attracting A LOT of people with lots of things to choose from, virtually all of them, well, ANTIQUES, as the show’s name indicates (although they do have some recent pop-cultural items). “Pawn Stars” often gets into newer stuff that is not antique per se but is nonetheless collectible: Super Bowl championship rings, video games, collectible athletic shoes, “Star Wars” and “Star Trek” items, etc. In short, the collector’s next frontier …

2. They feature interesting stuff with broad appeal – but it’s still a “guy” show. Loyal watchers of “Antiques Roadshow” know the drill: Each hour-long program features one or two pieces of furniture, a painting, a couple of ceramic or glass pieces (often Asian), a sports item or firearm, some jewelry, a toy or doll and something distinctly American, like an NRA or War Bonds poster, plus odd item that may not fit into any category. Personally, I’m not fascinated by jewelry, dolls or ceramics – but that’s just me. The “Pawn Stars” guys tend to focus on the stuff that I personally find more exciting, even if I don’t collect it: antique weapons and militaria, motorcycles, pinball and slot machines, old lunch boxes …

There are good reasons for this, of course: Part of it is the personality of the “Pawn Stars” folks, Rick Harrison, “Old Man” (Richard Harrison, Rick’s dad) and Big Hoss (Rick’s son Corey). These guys run Gold & Silver Pawn Shop (also called Gold & Silver Coin Shop, www.GSPawn.com), a working 24-hour pawnshop in Las Vegas, with comic relief from Chumlee (Austin Russell, Big Hoss’ boyhood buddy).The Harrisons have a much better chance of selling a Kentucky long rifle than a stack of old issues of Vanity Fair or Playgirl. And while I don’t know the demographics, I suspect the viewership of “Pawn Stars” is mostly male as well.

It also comes down to numbers. The “Roadshow” has a huge pool of folks bringing in their treasures and trash, in cities around the country, and an army of appraisers to pick out the more interesting stuff – and they aren’t shelling out their own money to buy any of it. “Pawn Stars” is set in a working pawnshop in Las Vegas: They have a much smaller staff; they feature only items that they have an interest in selling in the store; and you better believe an item has to tickle their interest or be an easy sell for them to make an offer.

That’s the business of collecting right there – the buying, the selling, the haggling – and that’s something that “Antiques Roadshow,” by its very G-rated non-commercial nature, can’t match.

3. They show the importance of doing your homework. “Antiques Roadshow” appraisers are experts in their fields: They know what things sell for and, if unsure about an item, they research it online or consult their colleagues before their segments are filmed and they give a price range. On the other hand, again, they are not there to buy what people bring in (although I don’t doubt that some people contact them after the show), and therefore they’re not supposed to be have an interest in the sale or purchase of what they appraise.

The “Pawn Stars” people do. Therefore, it’s not only prudent for them to call in experts to describe and appraise the higher-end stuff – especially things that require restoration – but it provides a little drama, a little education, some basis for negotiation. That makes for great TV. It is also a constant reminder to collectors and sellers alike that it pays to know your, well, stuff before you make an offer or accept one. DO YOUR RESEARCH!

4. They’re pretty up-front about how much an item is worth. When the “Pawn Stars” guys know something about an item, they can be pretty firm in their bargaining, especially if the item in question is not that unusual, not that expensive and/or not in great condition. That’s understandable: As the guys explain, they need to make a reasonable profit; display space is limited and they don’t want the thing sitting around; and if it needs some kind of restoration, well, that’s got to be figured in. However, sometimes they do go out on a limb a little and throw out an offer on something they aren’t sure about, either on a hunch or an impulse. God knows, I do …

(On occasion, Big Hoss has risked a bundle on, say, a Chris-Craft runabout in need of major restoration, but it usually worked out in the end, and he gets a lot shrewder with every new season of the show.)

When the guys DON’T know the value of a potentially rare, high-end or counterfeit item, they call in an expert – and this is what makes “Pawn Stars” great TV. Everything is laid on the table, once an expert prices a piece; it’s just a matter of whether Rick and company want to buy it, and if they can make a deal. That’s when Rick invariably has to explain to at least one dummy on every show that he can’t purchase an item at the retail price and sell it for a profit.

I’ve noticed that Rick generally offers somewhere between 50 and 70 percent for stuff that he wants, with the higher percentage for really cool stuff that he takes a fancy to and feels he can sell easily. Most collectibles dealers won’t settle for that percentage, let alone tell you what they expect to sell an item for: As I have said more than once in this column, even so-called respectable dealers will screw an unwitting seller to the wall in a New York nanosecond if they can, paying only a small fraction of what they will resell the item for. So I can’t help but laugh when some guy brings in an old flintlock pistol, for example, and wants $500 for it, and Rick brings in an expert who says it’s really worth $2,000, then the seller gets miffed when Rick won’t offer more than $1,200 for the gun. Talk about chutzpah!

5. The show features restoration as part of collecting. The collector’s mantra: “Condition, condition, condition!” It’s ideal to get an item in perfect or near-perfect shape; in fact, the trick is to get stuff in as close to its original, mint-new state as possible.

Unfortunately, life rarely shakes out that way. Sometimes unique or hard-to-get pieces need some professional TLC to transform them from flea-market trash or junkyard rats’ nests to highly prized collectibles, and the “Pawn Stars” guys are quick to get master restorers in on the act. In fact, one of the best “Pawn Stars” spin-offs or imitations that I’ve seen is “American Restoration,” which features one of the guys who restores the “Pawn Stars” purchases. To me, this is one of the best things about the show: seeing a rusty old clunker transformed into a Big Daddy Roth dream machine, with flaring chrome exhaust pipes and liquid-fire detailing. For these guys, restoration is a labor of love – and the results are spectacular!

6. They love history! OK, a visit (real or virtual) to a Vegas pawnshop may not be the same as a pilgrimage to the Smithsonian or the British Museum, but I’m one of the few people I know who has been to both (as well as CBGB), and I barely got past the front door in any of those places. In fact, all I can remember of the British Museum was some Egyptian statuary and the Reading Room, where Marx (Karl, not Groucho) wrote “Das Kapital.” (I also remember the open sewer that was the pissoir at CBGB – and even less about the Smithsonian.) In the case of the two museums, that is a lifelong regret: I just didn’t have the TIME to see more – another reason to be thankful for the Internet: A virtual tour is the next best thing to visiting a lot of places in person …

But I digress. My point is that “Pawn Stars” absolutely screams history, even if it’s pop cultural history. And if you manage to retain a stray fact or two from the segment on the colonial lottery ticket signed by George Washington, or the recent one about the metallurgy book owned by Isaac Newton, that’s worth more than all those hours in a junior high school history classroom from which you took away zilch.

The Harrisons LOVE history: These guys have a certain amount of charisma, but they are not actors; yet, you can see enthusiasm pouring off them – even the normally saturnine Old Man – whenever they talk about an item’s place in history and its possible importance. They may not offer much for the piece, but that fascination with the past – priceless!

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History Channel: Wheels of Fortune

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Images and video courtesy of History Channel Press.

Coming soon! 6 ideas for improving Pawn Stars

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‘Greetings from AmeriCollector’:
The art of linen postcards

I just went to eBay’s “Collectibles” category and clicked on “Postcards”: 1,788,849 results were noted, in categories ranging from “Advertising” and “Amusement Parks” to “U.S. States, Cities & Towns” and “International Cities & Towns” (along with “Supplies & Reference” – i.e., postcard sleeves, album pages, etc., for collectors – and “Other,” some 100,000 miscellaneous cards).

That’s a lot of postcards! And yet, almost all of the categories concern the subject matter of the images on the cards; only one, “Real Photo,” relates to the artwork, the production process or the texture of the cards.

This is interesting, because postcards have changed a lot over the past 125 years or so that they have been in regular use – since before most people had telephones, and in some places the mail was delivered twice a day. Most very early postcards that I’ve seen were plain-Jane functional – basically, index cards with printed postage on them, a design that the U.S. Postal Service was still selling up until fairly recently, if they aren’t still. As lithographic processes advanced, postcards got more artistic and more colorful and were generally printed on better card stock to hold the ink.

In the early 1930s – when art deco style was the look – “linen” postcards (printed on paper card stock with a linen-like appearance) went into large-scale production. They are easily recognizable, the “Greetings from [fill in the place]” kind (known as large-letter cards, which were actually depicted on a series of U.S. postage stamps) being the most famous examples: printed in striking pastels, with a matte cross-hatched textured finish that, if you hold the cards up to the light, actually looks like a linen weave.

Rare, striking and unusual linen cards are highly sought after by collectors, not simply for their graphics but because they absolutely scream post-Depression, World War II and postwar America. There are 1939–40 New York World’s Fair cards, “Keep ’Em Flying” wartime cards, direct-mail product adverting cards, Route 66 cards and diner cards and a gazillion other roadside cards from the early baby boom, when many American households bought their cars and started to hit the road to see the country they had defended against fascism.

To me, an avid although sporadic collector of linen cards, these are windows to an era, a time when people actually WROTE messages to one another, stuck stamps on and popped them in a mailbox. Some linen cards are just so cool, they are models for advertising artists even today – and just light-years ahead of e-cards in terms of design sense. (Again, if art deco is your thing, then linen postcards may be just the collecting area for you: Check out the many Miami Beach hotel cards and the ones featuring streamline diners and locomotives and Greyhound bus stations.)

The guy who “wrote the book” (the first real book, as far as I’m concerned) on linen cards – as well as a price list for the clueless – is Mark Werther, a Pennsylvania architect and orchid grower who collects a lot of different things (porcelain, flamingos, Mexican sombreros) who not only hits all the postcard shows he can but has also written many articles for Barr’s Postcard News (www.BarrsPCN.com), the Time magazine of postcard collecting. Mark’s volume, co-authored with Lorenzo Mott, is titled “Linen Postcards: Images of the American Dream” (published in hardcover 2002 and available for $39.95 on Amazon.com) is both art book and reference work, as is his paperback “Linen Postcards: Images of the American Dream Price Guide 2004” ($11.95 on Amazon); in fact, considering that many sellers of postcards on eBay don’t really know a linen card when they see one (and beware the difference between “linen” and “linen era” cards: Read on …), I think these are a must. (Note: Mark is working on a new price guide, hopefully available this summer.)

I first read about Mark in 2002, when “Linen Postcards” was just published, in an article about linen cards written by Bart Ripp, one of the best writers the Tacoma News Tribune has had in recent years. (They got me hooked on linen cards – as if I needed another hobby.) I have asked Mark his advice many times over the years and am much impressed not only with his experience but his artistic sensibilities (again, he’s an architect): You may not be lucky enough to find a Rembrandt etching at your local Goodwill thrift shop, but Mark may help you spot a great and possibly valuable linen card among a box of postcards the next time you go to a garage sale or flea market.

Recently I asked Mark for some basic information on linen postcards:

AmeriCollector: When were linen postcards produced?

Mark Werther: There were forms of linens produced in the United States as early as 1906 or 1907. What is considered a classical linen postcard was first issued in 1931 by Curteich of Chicago. Linen cards were produced until about 1959.

AC: What’s the difference between a linen card and a “linen era” postcard? How can you identify a linen card?

Mark: A linen card has a raised pattern of fine lines usually perpendicular to each other, similar to linen fabric. All the linen cards required intensive rendering work from craftsman. The number of lines, depth and pattern vary greatly from manufacturer to manufacturer. There were other cards produced during the 1931–59 linen era using matte paper with no raised line patterning. I believe that these matte cards are as valuable as the linens. Other types of cards, like chromes (shiny picture-type cards), also started during the linen era but are in totally different category

AC: Why did postcard makers stop making linens, and what were they replaced by?

Mark: Linens were produced for close to 30 years. That is a long run. When the chrome-type cards were perfected by the mid-1940s, they caught the interest of the public and were far less labor-intensive to produce than the linens, thus the start of the demise of linens. The popularity of the chromes, combined with the availability of inexpensive cameras in the mid-1950s, like Brownies and Anscomatics, allowed the masses to take their own color pictures of the sites, so the linens were less desirable.

AC: What is the price range for linens? Are they going up in price? What are the rarest cards?

Mark: Linens have steadily risen in price, but they can still be found in 25-cent boxes. Usually, individual linens are in the $2 to $6 range. As the artistic quality, scarcity, and interest in the subject increases, so do the prices of the cards. Better-quality cards in categories like diners, drive-ins, great restaurants and advertising are commonly priced from $10 to $75. Great advertising cards that are scarce can command prices up to hundreds of dollars.

AC: What are the hallmarks of a great linen card? What are the most popular categories?

Mark: Lorenzo Mott, my friend and co-author of the “Linen Postcards: Images of the American Dream,” used the term “stunner.” A great linen card usually falls under the “stunner” category and is a card that is superior based on better graphics, color, contrast, sharpness, composition and display of subject. These cards stand out from the average cards. Luckily, the “stunners” can often be lesser-priced cards. The popularity of linens is in the eye of the beholder/collector.

AC: How important is condition in general? What condition issues make a card unacceptable for a collector?

Mark: I have always believed that unused, near mint to mint linens are the most valuable cards. (Note: “Mint” means no rounded corners, edge wear, creases, stray marks, stains or fading. – DC)

AC: How important is condition if a card is really rare?

Mark: I rarely purchase a less-than-near-perfect card, even if very rare. If it is extremely rare, I might make an exception, but not often.

AC: Should collectors avoid postally used cards?

Mark: There are collectors who like cancels and messages. It is a matter of setting one’s own standard. I have avoided the used cards, as they most often do not meet my requirement of near mint to mint condition. I do make an exception with those with special advertising, salutations and commemorative cancels and with important addresses and messages on the backs.

AC: What advice would you give a new collector? Where are the best places for collectors to find great cards?

Mark: I avoided postcards for nearly 30 years of collecting. There needs to be a catalyst that lights the collecting fire: a special subject, color, a time period, historical references. When I started, I relied on postcard dealers at paper and postcard shows. Unfortunately, they were not providing all of the answers. There was no one book on linens that covered the subject. My friend Lorenzo and I then decided, since we were doing the extra research, we might as well condense it into a book and published “Linen Postcards: Images of the American Dream” in 2001. This was followed by the price guide in 2004. So this sounds like a self-advertisement, but the book is still the only all-encompassing reference guide. It is a short course in one location and gives the new collector a great advantage in appreciation and identification of linens. For further information, there are individual references to diners, “large letters” and hotels, and specialty books on cartoons and some locations.

AC: When will your new price guide due to be published? How many price entries and photos will be in the book?

Mark: I plan on about 40 pages with updates on prices on the 500 images in the book: 100 images in the 2004 price guide plus another 200 images and prices. Hopefully it will be out by mid-2011.

AC: Are you discovering anything new about linen cards?

Mark: I am discovering new linens all the time and am amazed at the wealth of historic information contained in the images and descriptions. Especially rewarding is to find “stunners” that represent the best of the linens.

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All images courtesy Mark Werther

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‘Collector’s items’: Catalogs received

Schubertiade Music LLC

(Winter 2011 catalog; received by e-mail)

I admit it: I’m tone-deaf, can’t carry a tune, couldn’t even master playing a kazoo, and don’t collect anything music-related, but I always look forward to getting catalogs from Schubertiade Music (www.SchubertiadeMusic.com) because, frankly, I LOVE music, in spite of my lack of aptitude, and Schubertiade Music always has an interesting mix of autographs, photos, books, prints and ephemera. The newest catalog, just received, is no exception.

There are handwritten book reports by an adolescent Leonard Bernstein ($3,600); a business card of Gustav Mahler’s inscribed by him (“Would you please return my songs, which I need for a performance abroad. With friendly greetings”; $3,000); a testy Richard Strauss letter in which he declares, “I am not a factory of musical notes that works with guaranteed delivery” ($1,000); and lots more. If classical music isn’t your thing, there’s a great unsigned photo of Josephine Baker in one of her risqué outfits (or out of it) for $500 and one of her in casual attire, inscribed, for $375; three original photos of John Lennon and Yoko Ono ranging from $500 to $4,000 (the latter by Annie Leibovitz); and, for guitar mavens, a re-issue left-handed Höfner semi-acoustic bass guitar like the one used by Paul McCartney when the Beatles appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show” … and this one is actually autographed by Paul in black felt tip on the mother-of-pearl pick guard ($6,500, hard-shell carrying case included).

The multitalented Gabriel Boyers, owner of Allston (Cambridge), Mass.–based Schubertiade Music, is an accomplished violinist and concertmaster with a very impressive musical resume; he’s also a poet who has been published in The Paris Review and Midstream. He’s also a member of the Professional Autograph Dealers Association and the Music Library Association. If you’re a serious music collector and you aren’t on Boyers’ mailing list, you’re missing the beat.

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All images courtesy of Schubertiade Music LLC, www.SchubertiadeMusic.com.

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Christophe Stickel Autographs

(Auction 180, closes Thurs., Feb. 24, at 9 p.m. PST; received by e-mail)

I’ve bid in several Christophe Stickel Autographs auctions and come away with some real prizes each time. Christophe runs a smaller operation than most auction houses, which and he usually has rare items mixed in with low-rent stuff (think of a Baron Manfred von Richthofen signed portrait alongside one of Larry the Cable Guy). Go figure. This month’s auction features an 8 x 10 black-and-white photo of the Japanese surrender aboard the U.S.S. Missouri at the end of World War II, signed by – get this! – Winston Churchill, Chester Nimitz, Douglas MacArthur and Admiral “Bull” Halsey (est. $5,500); a signed copy of Albert Einstein’s “The World as I see It” (est. $1,850); an inscribed copy of L. Frank Baum’s “The Master Key” (est. $5,000); and a 7 x 10 “Green Hornet” pin-up removed from a booklet and signed by Bruce Lee as Kato and Van Williams as the eponymous insect (est. $2,500) . . . along with a signed cast photo of “Boston Legal” (est. $150) and an autographed 8 x 10 of Ryan Seacrest (est. $45). Needless to say, there’s more: The fun is in the searching.

Christophe Stickel Autographs is based in Pacific Grove, Calif., and is a member of the Professional Autograph Dealers Association. Check out the offerings at www.StickelAutographs.com.

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The Fred Oldfield Western Heritage & Art Center presents: A Robert Walton oil painting workshop

If Americans are fixated on a special time and place in their history, it’s the Old West, that boundless vista so full of variety and extremes: the looming mountains and grassy plains, the brooding forests and parched deserts; the thundering herds and shy, solitary creatures; the native peoples and the immigrants, the noble and the nefarious, exploiters and exploited; the realities, the legends and the purely conjectural.

Small wonder that the art of the West is so highly prized – it’s a stagecoach ride right into the national psyche – with the most accomplished artists revered for their skill in transporting the viewer to breathtakingly unique, almost mystical landscapes – even if they are, like Mount Rainier, ones that you can see from the freeway when you commute to work each morning.

Fred Oldfield is such an artist. Robert Walton, who will be teaching a three-day palette knife oil painting workshop at The Fred Oldfield Western Heritage & Art Center in Puyallup later this month, is another.

A recipient of numerous awards, recent inductee into the venerable Oil Painters of America (www.OilPaintersofAmerica.com) and an avid mountain climber, Bob Walton is represented by six galleries in six Western states. He has also painted absolutely spectacular murals – but don’t take MY word for it: See for yourself at www.RobertWalton.com.

This is a great opportunity for local artists to build up their skill sets in advance of the warm weather and all the outdoor painting opportunities that will come with it. But space is limited, so don’t delay! And let us here at AmeriCollector.com know how it goes!

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All images copyright © Robert Walton. Used with the artist’s permission.

For more information and to register: Call (253) 445-9175 or e-mail foldfield@comcast.net.
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‘Collector’s items’: Catalogs received

Babylon Revisited Rare Books

(Catalog 72, received by snail mail)

Babylon Revisited, of East Woodstock, Conn., specializes in books with dust jackets published in the 1920s to 1940s – from modern classics and mysteries to “business fiction” and “sexposés” (see “You CAN judge a book by its cover – or, rather, its dust jacket” in AmeriCollector, July 8, 2010). Many of the books and authors are long forgotten, but oh, those jackets: pure period packaging, especially the ones featuring art deco designs. Cinema buffs will find some great early photoplays as well. Personal faves: the first American edition of Graham Greene’s “Brighton Rock” (1938), priced at $2,000; “Banzai” (1926, $225) by John Paris, about “a young Japanese boy seething with unrest and discontent, who comes to free himself from the shackles that the rigid conventions of Japan forced upon him”; and “Chinatown Inside Out” (1936, $165) by reformer Leong Gor Yun, a Chinese Jacob Riis writing about the seamy side of the city that few non-Asians knew of. Visit www.YesterdaysGallery.com.

Download catalog > We’ve provided a pdf version of the Babylon Revisited Rare Books catalog for your convenience.

Image and catalog courtesy of Babylon Revisited Rare Books.

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Ten Pound Island Book Company

(Maritime List 197, received by e-mail)

There are precious few booksellers who really specialize in maritime material; fewer still who have a varied and ever-changing stock, publish a dynamic and informative blog, issue frequent e-mail catalogs AND – of no small interest – offer great material at prices to match (I know: I’ve compared them). Greg Gibson of Ten Pound Island Book Company in Gloucester, Mass., is such a one; I briefly profiled Greg in “Collector’s items” on July 27, 2010, and want to remind nautical collectors, voyager-wannabes and the holiday gift-givers who shop for them to visit www.TenPound.com for books, documents, broadsides, photographs, trade cards and other paper seafaring memorabilia.

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Mike Brackin Americana & Militaria

(2010 Holiday Mail Catalog 143, received by snail mail)

I had never heard of Mike Brackin American & Militaria until his holiday catalog arrived in the mail earlier this week, probably because he got my name from another dealer’s mailing list. No problem: I love discovering new sources – especially when THEY come to ME. Mike offers a large and diverse selection of Americana – books, documents, photography and relics – from the antebellum period, the Civil War, the Indian Wars and subsequent eras. The price range is broad, with many interesting and affordable items – especially for those with Civil War collectors on their gift lists. (Keep in mind that next year, 2011, marks the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War!) Personal favorites: a regimentally marked 1868 Springfield trapdoor rifle with “19 CO D” on the stock ($750); a matching knife and fork set from a Civil War mess kit with two-piece bone grips and stamped “Passaic Cutlery Co” ($45); and an unmarried Connecticut woman’s 1771 request for court-ordered financial support for a “child begotten of her body in Fornication by one NW of Groton” ($125). (Note to self: There is nothing new under the sun.) Visit www.MikeBrackin.com.
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Chicago and beyond: Art Shay photo exhibition features 60 years of unforgettable moments

~ An AmeriCollector.com Exclusive ~

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A buff and smiling yet self-conscious-looking Marlon Brando, age 26, relaxes on his Libertyville, Ill., farm in the company of his spaniel, that steadiest of companions, sporting its own canine grin … A sea of mourners courses through the streets of Memphis to see off the plane carrying Martin Luther King Jr.’s body to Atlanta; the parallel to Moses dying en route to the Promised Land – King’s own prescient analogy – is striking … A welding crew on a GATX railcar assembly line, blowtorches alight, works as feverishly as a cavern full of dwarfish metalsmiths in a Tolkien fantasy … Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan holds a tambourine halo-like above his shaved head as girlfriend and fellow musician Jessica Origliasso smiles up at him beatifically like a Giotto Apostle.

There’s nothing bland, trite or contrived about the photography of Art Shay, who we had the pleasure of profiling on AmeriCollector last summer (“Focus on Art Shay,” Aug. 24, 2010): If you want fluff, check out the dog and cat calendars at your local Barnes & Noble. Art Shay is all about the real, the unprepped and the unexpected: the crazy angle, the partially obscured figure, the dropped pretense, the suddenly revealed view so ironic as to be, pardon the cliché, iconic.

Thirty-two of Art’s images, both black-and-white and color, are currently on display in an exhibit titled “That Was Then” at Chicago’s Thomas Masters Gallery through Thurs., Dec. 23.

John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, Nelson Algren and Saul Bellow, James Baldwin, Hugh Hefner and Oprah Winfrey are among the show’s subjects.

“In my opinion, Art is a genius artist,” his archivist, Erica DeGlopper, told me. “His power to observe and brilliantly communicate makes him a master storyteller. He is brave, hilarious, serious and direct in his approach …

“He doesn’t come with an approach to find a prefigured story: He finds the story,” Erica added.

Art has taken thousands of photos on assignment for Life, Time, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, the New York Times and other publications. His work is in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and many other institutions, public and private. He’s also the author of more than 50 books, many for children.

The Thomas Masters Gallery is located at 245 W. North Ave., Chicago; for more information, visit www.thomasmastersgallery.com or call (312) 440-2322.

Signed copies of Shay’s most recent books (“Album for an Age,” “Couples,” “Animals,” “Art Shay: Chicago Accent” and “Chicago’s Nelson Algren”) are available from Titles, Inc., in Highland Park, Ill.; call (847) 432-3690.

I asked Art some questions about photography and, as always, got a kick out of his replies:

AmeriCollector: Which of your photos are your favorites?

Art: I have several favorites. One is of an Ashland Ave. (Chicago) all-night beauty salon in a low-rent area. Looking through the window, you see a forest of bubble- headed mannequins. Just beyond them, under one of those old spaceship-helmet-type hair dryers, sits a 65-year-old lady. To me, the bubble-headed mannequins are what we want to look like; the aging lady is what we really look like.

In another, we’re looking at a window in which two bridal dummies are modeling their gowns. Passing them is a pregnant Hispanic woman about four or five months pregnant. While I was shooting this in kind of an alley, some glaziers set down a big glass window behind me. Reflected in the glass is an old lady – a crone, really – enjoying the sunshine. My title is “The Three, Possibly Four Ages of Woman.” Marcel Marceau had a copy of it in his Paris home. He said it reminded him of his tableaux, called “Youth, Maturity and Old Age.”

I especially like it because one of the world’s great collectors, Henry Rasmussen (then the editor-publisher of the prestigious Black and White Magazine, or B&W) bought it from me! (He gave me more pages – 14 – than any photographer had received in B&W until that time, about four years ago.)

A picture I made of Hugh Hefner sitting at his bedroom desk, surrounded by five languorously sprawling Bunnies – is one of my favorites. It is also one of the favorites of the National Portrait Gallery, which bought it to hang in Washington. My daughter Jane, on a speaker’s visit to DC, stumbled on the picture with some of her colleagues and was able to boast, “One of my dad’s …” She now has her own copy in her collection of my works hanging in her palatial LA home.

AC: Who was your most enjoyable subject?

Art: Liz Taylor was great: cooperative and into the event I was covering for Life – Smell-O-Vision, promulgated by her late husband (film producer Mike Todd). Life didn’t use the story, holding its nose despite Liz’s beauty and cooperation.

AC: Do you usually use one camera or more than one? Do you still use a Leica?

Art: I still have my Leicas and a little-known improvement on the Leica – a Konica Hexar that uses Leica lenses but also shoots four frames a second and is fairly silent. Incidentally, a rep of the Leica company has offered to lend me the $8,000 new Leica M9 to use on a project I’m doing with rocker Billy Corgan. I’ve been using high-end small digitals now including a Canon G11 and the newer Samsung EX1, which has a fast F1.8 lens. I also use a Nikon F90.

AC: Who are your own favorite photographers and why?

Art: I like the work of Cartier-Bresson for its eclectic view of the world, albeit without the great humor I find in wandering. I loved my old friend Alfred Eisenstaedt’s work – and he loved mine … He knew I had done more than 50 hidden-camera crime and Mafia stories for Time, Life, Fortune and Sports Illustrated, and said, “I can’t imagine going out to shoot a portrait without an appointment … and the camera under your jacket.”

I also liked the imaginative work of Life’s Philippe Halsman, with whom I worked on a book for Ford in 1953. Halsman, former Life editor Joe Thorndike and I were having Chinese one day in Dearborn, Mich. The subject of how Life would cover the Second Coming came up. (I was 30 at the time, Philippe in his 50s.) Joe said shrewdly, “Who would you send, Philippe?” Unhesitating, Halsman said, “Why, me, of course. I would get a portrait of Jesus that would last for the ages.” Joe shook his head. “I’d send young Art,” he said. “While you were setting up your tripod, Shay would get 36 pictures and a release.”

AC: What are your favorite photos by other photographers?

Art: I like Halsman’s picture of Dalí with cats flying through the air. I like Leonard McCombe’s Life shot for his cowboy essay: desolate prairie, only shade coming from a telephone pole, and a slim cowboy using this shade to get out of sun …

My photographer-writer son made a fantastic picture of an old lady sitting at a house sale, trying to sell an old blue phonograph. Her face and dress set off the instrument perfectly.

AC: What do you think of the manipulation of colors, shadows, for example, using Photoshop – that some photographers seem to do routinely AFTER they take a photo?

Art: Photoshop is great as a retouching tool. It has yet to prove itself as an artistic medium. I think it will …

AC: Do you prefer your own and others’ black-and-white work?

Art: Most of my collectors don’t realize I’ve shot almost as much color as black-and-white. My primary gallery thinks I’m so well-known as a black-and-white photographer, hanging color would confuse buyers. As it happens, earlier this year I had a successful color exhibition – my first at the Thomas Masters Gallery in Chicago. The first three pictures sold were to my black-and-white collectors!

I’ll also weigh in on the photo-paper-versus-digital-paper controversy: Some digital prints do more justice to black-and-white or color negatives than traditional wet printing. Digital printing keeps the price down, and digitals last 200 years.

AC: If someone wanted to collect photographic prints, what advice would you give?

Art: My advice to collectors: Buy the prints that you enjoy looking at more than cursorily on a quick round of a gallery. I love one collector who blames me for sending her back four times to see what I had in mind in a single picture …

To me the picture’s the thing. I feel new collectors should just buy pictures they like.

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Photos copyright Art Shay. Used with the photographer’s permission.

• Focus on Art Shay,” Aug. 24, 2010

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Collectibles for capitalists: Vintage stock certificates make great holiday, Valentine’s Day gifts

What do you get for the guy or gal who has everything? A conversation piece, of course.

There are a lot of dealers’ Web sites that I visit regularly, just to see the new stuff on offer. One that I never tire of perusing is Scripophily.com, the premier seller of vintage and even recent stock certificates and bond – “business paper” that has become nearly obsolete in this age of online trading. I love the steel engravings, especially the “vignettes” that form the centerpieces; I love the typography; I love the fountain-pen autographs on the hand-signed certificates; I love the fact that they absolutely reek of history: I can almost smell the cigar smoke of Gilded Age boardrooms, almost hear the leather armchairs creak under the weight of freewheeling tycoons and steely-eyed investors, earnest entrepreneurs and cheapjack con men …

But that’s just me: Lots of people buy a stock certificate for genealogical reasons – their ancestors may have owned or worked for the company – or as an expression of a brand preferences or another collect passions: Gun collectors, for example, love old shares in Colt, Remington or Winchester to hang in their dens; for movie buffs, there are certificates for motion picture studios and film labs old and new, from Paramount and Pathe to Panavision and Pixar; and model railroaders will get a blast from shares in The Lionel Corporation or full-scale engine manufacturer Baldwin Locomotive Works – not to mention any of a slew of historic lines. Some folks even see offbeat humor in hanging or giving a certificate for a notorious or scandal-ridden business: Worldcom, Enron, Bear Stearns and the like.

Scripophily.com’s president, former Northwest resident Bob Kerstein, a CPA since 1978, has been chief financial officer of companies like McCaw Cellular Corporation (now AT&T Wireless), Falcon Cable TV and American Mobile Satellite Corporation, director of financial reporting at Warner Brothers and chief information officer at Orca Bay Sports and Entertainment, owners of the Vancouver Canucks and the Vancouver Grizzlies (before the latter went to Memphis), so he knows his onions about big business. In fact, Kerstein doesn’t just sell old stock and bond certificates but autographs, antique documents, early currency and other interesting items; he also provides stock research services, so if you’re up in the attic and come across a bunch of shares in the bottom of Grandma’s old trunk, Bob can tell you if they’re still redeemable.

Here’s a quick selection I pulled from the Scripophily.com Web site (note the wide price range):

For the Civil War collector: a State of New York soldier bond (“Payment of Bounties to Volunteers”) dated 1865 and signed by State Comptroller (later governor) Lucius Robinson ($69.95); an 1861 Confederate States of America Bond $100 bond issued in Montgomery, Ala. (the capital of the Confederacy before it was moved to Richmond, Va.), with 14 coupons still attached ($250); and an 1865 commission for a second lieutenant in the New Jersey 33rd Volunteers, signed by Governor Joel Parker ($795).

For the gearhead: a certificate for 20 shares in the Indian Motorcycle Company from 1930, with the company’s famous logo of an Indian brave in profile ($595); a 1924 certificate for 10 shares in the Duesenberg Automobile & Motors Co. ($395); various Packard Motor Car Company certificates, dating from the 1930s to the 1950s ($24.95 to $49.95); and a 1948 certificate for 20 shares in the Tucker Corporation ($250).

For the Northwest collector: an 1890 certificate for 10 shares in the Grays Harbor Company (to finance the building of roads and the laying of rails, including the cost of bridges over the Wishkah and Hoquiam rivers), hand signed by the company’s president and secretary, and with a great vignette of a steamship ($395); a 1910 certificate for 20 shares in the Seattle–Tacoma Short Line with a great Mount Rainier vignette and also signed by the company’s president and secretary ($69.95); a 1907 $500 gold bond certificate for the Mount Hood Railroad Company, signed by trustee Matthew S. Browning of the Browning Arms Company and with a great steam locomotive/horse-drawn wagon vignette ($199.95).

For kids of all ages: a single share in DreamWorks Animation SKG ($79.95); a rare specimen gold bond certificate for the Hershey Chocolate Corporation dated 1920 ($395); a certificate for 100 shares in the A.C. Gilbert Company (maker of Erector Sets – pure boomer nostalgia!) from 1954 ($595); and a rare circa-1960 specimen certificate for Wurlitzer Company, maker of the famous jukeboxes ($295); one share in Midway Games, the pinball machine maker that brought you Pac Man and Mortal Kombat ($99.95).

Scripophily.com offers custom framing, too, for the perfect presentation. Browse the inventory at www. Scripophily.com.

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Images courtesy of Scripophily.com

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Ben Isitt: The evil genius behind the scenes at the Black Lake Haunted Asylum

“Those lab specimens … those body parts … Are they REAL?”

You may well be asking yourself that if you work up the courage to show up during “visiting hours” at the Black Lake Haunted Asylum at Freighthouse Square on one of its last four evenings this year: Thurs., Fri., Sat. and Sun., Oct. 28 through 31, from 6 to 10 p.m.

The creepy props and nightmarish scenery comes from the prolific imagination of designer/fabricator Ben Isitt (www.BensArtWorks.com), whose work experience runs the gamut from Hollywood movie sets to amusement park atmospherics, from commercial décor to parade floats, from fountains and other topiary sculpture to home entertainment spaces and – dare I say it? – kids’ rooms!

Not that this should surprise anyone: The versatile Mr. Isitt, age 43, originally from San Pedro, Calif., and now of Puyallup, is a professional artist and hardly deranged – although you might suspect otherwise on seeing him throwing off all “restraints,” so to speak, at the Haunted Asylum. But even there, in the dark basement corridors of Freighthouse Square, Ben surgically attaches humor to horror, schlock to shock, creating a tour experience that’s part Hieronymus Bosch and part P. T. Barnum … or maybe Ed Wood and Ed Gein?

You decide … Meanwhile, I asked Ben about his work: His answers reveal some of the influences behind his inventiveness …

AmeriCollector: Have you always been a full-time artist, or did you do something else for a living before that?

Ben: I’ve always been a full time artist.

AC: Did you study art formally in school, or are you self-taught?

Ben: I studied art from an early age and eventually attended Phoenix Institute of Technology in California, for commercial art and pursued prop fabrication through apprenticeship and through hands-on work.

AC: Where is your studio located?

Ben: I have a shop on my property at my home in Puyallup as well as a work studio in the basement of the Freighthouse Square.

AC: Do you have any hobbies not strictly related to your artwork?

Ben: Yes, I enjoy building unique flying model aircraft from time to time.

AC: You specialize in sculpture and 3-D props, which is a lot different from working on a flat surface. What materials do you prefer to work in, and in what size: life-size or larger-than-life?

Ben: I enjoy the difference in scales differently. I don’t really have a preference in size, but I enjoy working with six-pound urethane foam versus other products that are commonly used in prop fabrication.

AC: You do a range of work, from signage to statuary to parade floats – even costumes. Are there particular objects you especially enjoy creating, or themes that you like to work in?

Ben: I like the imagination and variety of working within the horror genre most because of the limitless ways to express one’s imagination. And I use the “Haunt” (Black Lake Haunted Asylum) as a practical application for showcasing creations and frightening people at the same time.

AC: The Black Lake Haunted Asylum follows a classic carnival tradition, but it goes far beyond the usual cheap funhouse effects. How did you get involved in this annual event?

Ben: Having worked for Six Flags for 10 years and building props and creations for their Fright Fest influenced me to pursue these endeavors for myself and also appease the need to be creative in something that was relative to sculpture and prop fabrication.

AC: How much new stuff do you create each year, and where do you get your ideas? Do you decide what to create by committee, or do you have free license to do what you want?

Ben: It’s hard to describe where these ideas come from. Each year, I try to incorporate something new and exciting but most of all unique. Often in haunts you see the same ideas happening in the same ways, with little difference, but I try to create things that no one has ever seen before.

I do have free license to create props for the haunt depending on the annual budget. Some years are better than others. This year, we added an organ-grinder/Gatling gun, complete with rabid zombie monkey perched on top. This takes a clichéd machine-gun effect and gives it an interesting new twist.

AC: The Haunted Asylum appeals to many people’s desire, going back to childhood, to be frightened within a safe context, such as seeing a horror movie. Were haunted houses, horror films, Halloween and other scary but fun experiences a formative influence for you?

Ben: Absolutely. Whether it’s old film or new, I always enjoy special effects no matter what capacity they are used and appreciate the ideas and the imagination behind them.

AC: What ARE your favorite horror films, anyway?

Ben: “The Thing,” all of the “Alien” movies … I enjoyed “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” and “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” and “Time Bandits.”

AC: The mental asylum concept seems to generate an especially strong response in people. How do you explain it?

Ben: I think because most human beings fear the loss of their own mind, the power of thought or control, people are uncomfortable with the theme; however, we’re not looking to promote the negative aspects of mental illness in itself, but rather point it in a direction of a fictional character, Dr. West, who through medical experiments creates his own monsters much like Frankenstein. This allows people to experience being afraid or uncomfortable in a safe environment. This is a haunt, after all: It’s all theatrics and not intended to offend but rather entertain based on a time period when such places existed but also add a terrifying twist to the theme.

AC: Who are your artistic influences?

Ben: My artistic influences vary, but if I were to name a favorite it would be artist Judson Huss and designer of the Aliens from the “Alien” film series, H. R. Giger.

AC: What is your “dream” project?

Ben: I would enjoy working on a large intricate sculpted relief or frieze of a dramatic scene like something from Dante’s “Inferno” or even “Alice in Wonderland,” but perhaps combined with a contemporary setting.

The Black Lake Haunted Asylum tour is conducted in groups of four to six guests, lasts 15 to 20 minutes and is not recommended for children under 13. Admission is $13 but tickets are limited: Get them online at  www.hauntedhousetacoma.com. Freighthouse Square is located at 2501 East “D” St., Tacoma. For directions, visit  www.freighthousesquare.com.

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Images courtesy of Ben Isitt, Ben’s Artworks, www.bensartworks.com

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Hold on to your frontal lobes: The Black Lake Haunted Asylum is back at Freighthouse Square!

Tacoma’s answer to Bedlam, Black Lake Haunted Asylum – a South Sound Halloween “institution” if ever there was one – has been re-created in the bleak basement bowels of Freighthouse Square again this year … But you better surrender all sharp objects and commit yourself quick: Your last chances to get the shock of your life are Thurs., Fri., Sat. and Sun., Oct. 28 through 31, from 6 to 10 p.m.

I haven’t been to this year’s “treatment” yet, but I know from last year that this isn’t your grandparents’ amusement park haunted house – unless Grandpa was Boris Karloff. For one thing, Black Lake Haunted Asylum comes with a “history”: As a consequence of gruesome experiments and procedures performed by its psychopathic chief of staff, Dr. Hubert West, the Black Lake Medical Asylum and Research Facility was the scene of horrific incidents of cruelty and violence culminating in a riot and fire that destroyed the main structure and several outbuildings. While bodies of upwards of 125 patients and staff were found in the smoldering ruins, and another 64 succumbed after being taken to area hospitals, Sheriff Ronald Smith estimated the death toll at more than 200 and possibly as high as 300. That figure does not include Black Lake Asylum’s most notorious inmate, an oddly fetching cannibal named Kristen Starkey; she had been the perfectly happy and well-adjusted daughter of the asylum caretaker before becoming the object of twisted Dr. West’s special attentions and medical ministrations, including electro-shock, with disastrous results. The fate or whereabouts of “Crazy Kristen” – who makes Hannibal Lecter look like Mister Rogers – remain unknown, but each year there are numerous sightings of her at the Freighthouse Square event, and she may actually be running for representative in the 26th Legislative District this November. (Be sure to use a blue or black pen, fill in the blanks completely and mail your ballot in early!)

That’s the story in a “nutshell,” so to speak; you can read the contemporary newspaper accounts on the asylum Web site. If you’re the jumpy sort, I recommend bringing a mentally stable friend to clutch – or at least a change of underwear – and enjoy this year’s tour, which features another slew of enthusiastic actor-participants, haunt makeup by The Voyeur Dead Girls (www.voyeurdead.com) and AMAZING custom props by professional designer/fabricator Ben Isitt (www.BensArtWorks.com), whose résumé includes work on the films “Jurassic Park” and “Army of Darkness” and on the “E.T” ride at Universal Studios.

The asylum tour is conducted in groups of four to six “patients,” lasts 15 to 20 minutes – less if you’re a fast runner – and is not recommended for children under 13. Admission is $13 but tickets are limited: Get them online at www.HauntedHouseTacoma.com. Freighthouse Square is located at 2501 East “D” St., Tacoma. For directions, visit www.freighthousesquare.com.

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Images courtesy Black Lake Haunted Asylum

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Olympia ‘Roundup Stamp Show’ on Sat., Oct. 30: New worlds for young collectors to explore!

The Internet is an amazing thing: a portal to a whole universe packed with virtual libraries and schools, shopping malls and banks, movie theaters and concert halls, government agencies and employment offices … even coffee shops and park benches where you can, by e-mail and through chat rooms, figuratively sit down and schmooze with someone living down the street or on a different continent – with neither of you having to step out of your actual front doors.

Small wonder that children of the 21st century growing up on the Web, equipped with cell phones and adept at text messaging, are less likely to experience the simple joy that kids only a generation ago did when the mailman brought a letter or postcard from far away, bearing a beautiful or unusual stamp.

Stamp collecting (or philately, the study of postal history, which includes not just stamps but postmarks, envelopes and other postal items) is a good, wholesome hobby that can broaden children’s knowledge of many subjects: history, geography, transportation, commerce, communications, art, popular culture – you name it. What’s more, parents, teachers and club organizers can easily build on this to develop kids’ social, organizational and composition skills – not to mention penmanship. (I’ll write about some of those projects in an upcoming story.) It’s also a low-tech way for parents, grandparents and others to share some quality time and, hopefully, a common interest with younger relatives.

You can explore the wide world of philately FREE by attending The Olympia Philatelic Society’s “Fall Roundup Stamp Show” on Sat., Oct. 30, from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Comfort Inn Conference Center, 1620 74th Ave. SW (just off I-5, Exit 101/Tumwater Blvd.), in Tumwater, Wash. There will be upwards of a dozen dealers, stamp exhibits, a U.S. Postal Service booth, refreshments, a kids’ room and free stamps for kids. Parking is free.

I haven’t been able to determine how many people collect stamps: A 1996 New York Times story by Marcia Vickers (“Delivery Isn’t Guaranteed, but Stamps Are Turning Profits,” viewable at www.nytimes.com) cites a contemporary USPS estimate that some 20 million Americans were stamp collectors, “defined as people who have saved at least one stamp.” (By that reckoning, I’m also a buffalo nickel collector and a refrigerator magnet collector, I guess. With accounting logic like that, no wonder the Postal Service is in trouble.) “About five million collect up to four stamps a year,” continues Ms. Vickers (again, writing in 1996). “And about 550,000 are serious collectors, people who … carefully research stamps and slowly build collections.”

Asked to name their hobby now, 15 years later, it’s hard to say just how many Americans would answer, “Philately!” No matter: Stamp collecting is the kind of hobby we at AmeriCollector love:

• It’s fun
• It’s educational.
• It can be enjoyed by people of all ages, backgrounds and nationalities.
• It spans many subject areas.
• It doesn’t have to take up much space.
• It can be done on any budget – for the price of ordinary postage stamps, if that’s all you can afford.

Meanwhile, if you and/or your child decide you want to get deeper into philately than just keeping Aunt Marge’s holiday postcards from Spain in a kitchen drawer, you can see the possibilities by going to a stamp show and noticing how dealers organize their items within various collecting areas.

I think this is a smart approach if you don’t yet know what you really want to collect. Whether it’s Washington Territorial postmarks, stamps of the independent Armenian Republic of 1918–20, U.S. airmail history or stamps with images of cats on them, my advice is to specialize and branch out: Resist the urge to buy a lot of unrelated stuff in the beginning, only to you have to eBay it off later on to afford what you REALLY want.

(For philately basics, visit the American Philatelic Society at www.stamps.org and the Smithsonian’s National Museum Postal Museum at www.postalmuseum.si.edu.)

Recently I chatted with some of members of the Olympia Philately Society (founded in 1955, incorporated as a nonprofit in 1976 and with about 48 members at present), and I was really impressed by how friendly and outgoing they were. I also asked OPS president Dennis Gelvin and treasurer Shar Wilkey some questions about the society, the Roundup Stamp Show and philately in general:

AmeriCollector: When they hear “philately,” many people think postage stamps clipped from letters. What does philately really encompass?

Dennis: “Philately” of course can be the stamps clipped from vacation postcards, although more collectors would save the entire card as a study of postal markings, rates and transportation.

Philately is almost an indefinable hobby, other than as a general study of official issues and methods of the postal system of any country.  A dictionary will of course have formal definitions, but we have nearly 50 members of the club, and to my knowledge no two of us have anywhere near an identical collection.

I have been collecting since 1967, and been interested in several different areas of specialization, I’m currently working on canceled envelopes and postcards (called covers) from Washington State Post Offices that no longer exist.

AC: How would you advise a newcomer to philately on how to start a collection?

Shar: I’ve collected seriously for 30 years, specializing in northern island countries because we lived on islands in Alaska when my husband was in the Coast Guard. Most collectors specialize once they realize that collecting worldwide is just overwhelming and impossible. Some, however, just collect to 1940 or 1950, or some other smaller segment of the world.

The thing to make clear is that a collection can be what you want: topical, one country, covers from the year you were born or the state where you grew up …I collect dragons on stamps and have been amazed to find that nearly every ethnic group has a dragon story in its folklore or history, many of them on stamps.

AC: We often hear of stamps like “Penny Blacks” and “Inverted Jennys” that sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Is philately an expensive hobby to get involved in?

Dennis: We do hear of the Inverted Jennies and other stamps selling for thousands, but the only reason is because they are rare, and do sell for lots of money. We don’t hear about the free stamps we can clip from envelopes found in the trash or from the vacation postcard. At any club meeting or at any show, there’ll be boxes of stamps for a nickel each, and folks will spend all day searching though them, finding stamps they don’t have in their collections – those don’t make the news.

A person can spend as little or as much as they want to on their collection. I’ll bet most of us started collecting for free: “Wow! What a neat stamp on this envelope someone threw away!”

AC: How can teachers introduce philately into their curricula?

Shar: My daughter is a second grade teacher and uses insect stamps to illustrate some of the bugs in her discussions. She says the kids love the stamps. I also did a presentation to a teacher friend’s class about collecting. Then we had a hands-on session with big piles of stamps for them to sort through. They had a page with subjects like transport, animals, buildings, man-made and nature and added the stamps to the correct blocks. The kids didn’t want to quit.

Our shows have a dedicated teacher who does the same in a separate area just for the kids and gives prizes for finished sheets. The club gets lots of donations for children, so the prizes are really nice. Older children get assignments and make posters using stamps to illustrate their subjects. Her area is always well attended and the families really get into the act. The U.S. Postal Service has a packet for $12 for teachers to use in classrooms.

AC: How much does it cost to join the Olympia Philatelic Society, how often do you meet and what does membership involve?

Shar: We meet on the second and fourth Mondays of each month at 7:30 p.m. at the Olympics West Retirement Inn, 929 Trosper Rd. SW, in Tumwater.  Our address is Olympia Philatelic Society (OPS), P.O. Box 1554, Olympia, WA 98507. An informational phone for the shows is (360) 455-0082. Club dues are $10 a year, due in December or January; for this, a member receives a monthly newsletter and a membership list with members’ collecting interests and contact information.

Dennis: Membership involves whatever you want it to: We have members we seldom see, and a core of regulars who seem to always be there, and yet others who appear every once in a while. The nice thing about it is that nothing is obligatory; it’s just a nice, friendly diversion from the stress of a job and often life in general.

AC: How often do you hold shows?

Dennis: We hold our Roundup Stamp Show twice a year, in April and October. There are usually 9 to 12 dealers, who have a varied stock: There’ll be something for everyone.

The neighborhood stamp store is nearly a thing of the past: The weekend shows are now the in-person market.

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