In Which I Attend a Matchbook Collectors’ Event
Hanging out with a bunch of phillumenists turned out to be surprising on several levels. Plus more apostrophic signage!
Note: This post is not paywalled. Enjoy! — Paul
On Sunday evening I went to the Manhattan cocktail bar Pearl Box, where the matchbook-centric website Oh, What a Match! was hosting a meet-and-swap gathering of phillumenists (read: matchbook collectors). Although I’m not a phillumenist myself, I’m always interested in collections and the collectors who collect them, so I was curious to see what this scene was all about. I brought along the 1956 matchbook catalog that I recently wrote about, which I figured would make for some good show-and-tell.
Most of the other attendees had matchbooks and matchboxes spread out and available for swapping on the tables in front of them, as shown in the photo above. Here are some additional pics, just to give you a sense of the proceedings (click on the thumbnails to see larger versions):
A few notes:
I was surprised to see that nobody was collecting or swapping vintage matchbooks — just current or contemporary stuff. In that regard, this collecting culture was very alien to me, because I’m all about vintage items. But that’s just me. There’s nothing wrong with collecting current stuff!
I talked to several of the phillumenists. Some said they adhered to certain protocols, like collecting matchbooks only from places they’d actually visited in person (which is one fun aspect of collecting current items instead of vintage). Others were more interested in the matchbooks’ aesthetics, regardless of any personal connection to the establishment. All were very enthusiastic.
It was a young crowd, with most of the attendees in their 20s or early 30s. My friend Adriene and I, both in our early 60s, were easily the oldest people there (including the staff).
The most intriguing thing, at least to me, was that the crowd also skewed female — about 70-30, I’d say, maybe even 80-20. Collector-geek scenes are usually very male-oriented, so it was kind of refreshing to encounter a collecting community that doesn’t fit that mold.
All the tables were taken by the time Adriene and I arrived, so I sat in between two tables and opened up the 1956 catalog, which I hoped would be a good conversation starter.
So how did that go? Honestly, not so well. There were two people who were very interested in the catalog right when I sat down, but I appeared to be invisible to nearly everyone else. A few people made brief eye contact with me as they walked by, so I said, “This is a 1950s matchbook catalog…” and then I could see their eyes glazing over and they moved on. They just didn’t care.
And that’s fine. Like I said, these people weren’t into vintage stuff, so I can understand why a 1950s catalog didn’t interest them. Moreover, I’m not a real phillumenist and I didn’t have anything to swap, so I was kinda crashing their party. It was mostly an interesting fly-on-the-wall social experiment.
Since I didn’t have anything to trade, I didn’t get anything from the other attendees, but I nonetheless left with some matches. First, the bar had a really interesting giveaway matchbox designed like a pack of cigarettes:
That’s pretty cool! Maybe the cigarette-esque box is a common design format these days (can anyone confirm?), but I’d never seen it before.
In addition, the website that organized the event was giving away noir-ish feature matchbooks (as you may recall from this recent post, “feature” refers to a design being printed on the actual matchsticks, not just on the cover):
Incidentally, one of the few men on hand was a reporter from Bloomberg Businessweek, who told me he was there because he’s working on an article about the renewed enthusiasm for freebie matchbooks at restaurants and bars. It’s not every day that Businessweek and Inconspicuous Consumption both have a reporter covering the same event, but that just goes to show how phillumeny is enjoying a cultural moment these days.
Apostrophes, Continued
Shortly after I published Tuesday’s deep dive about apostrophe positioning on vertically lettered signs, I became aware of a particularly interesting example: Ralph’s Club, located in Tracy, California. As you can see in the photos above, the sign includes a centered apostrophe, but it’s turned sideways, so it looks more like a hyphen! I’ve never seen anything quite like that before.
Those photos are are both from the early 2010s. The sign was refurbished in 2023. The bad news is that they used LEDs instead of true neon (grrrr), plus they monkeyed with some of the letterforms (the new “A” is particularly awful). But the good news is that they retained the odd apostrophe:
I’ll tell you what: If you wanted to come up with a good organizing theme for a cross-country road trip, you could do a lot worse than planning your route around vertical, apostrophe-inclusive signs. Hmmmm.
Inconspicuous News Roundup
Reader Llarry Amrose recently visited Egeskov Castle in Denmark, which has an cool exhibit of vintage bicycle bells (shown above).
Whoa, check out these magnification pics of sand from various locations around the world. So many variations! (From Jason Hillyer)
Here’s a faaaascinating article on a really interesting topic: Back in the pre-Linotype days, when compositors set metal type by hand, there were typesetting races, with the fastest, most dextrous compositors competing against each other. Who knew?
These animated letters are amazing.
On the topic of obsessive recordkeeping: There’s a fan of the Polish soccer club Raków Częstochowa who for the past several decades has kept notebooks in which he meticulously documents the game-by-game starting lineup and kits for Raków and their opponents. You can see a typical notebook page below; additional pics and info here (from Ed Zelaski).
Paul Lukas has been obsessing over the inconspicuous for most of his life, and has been writing about those obsessions for more than 30 years. You can contact him here.
I know exactly the feeling, being in a room full of passionate folks but off by 5 degrees. The idea of matchbook collecting screams vintage to me as well. It's such an interesting experience. That Pearlbox matchbox looks charming and lovely.
You can't accumulate a vintage collection without preserving the contemporary ones. Given that the crowd skewed to the younger demo I'd guess they have more passion for collecting than spare funds to dive into the vintage market.
The resurgence of custom matchbook design is fascinating. I would have guessed that the vilification of cigarette smoking would have put a dagger through its heart. They're a little more expensive than a business card but infinitely more memorable IMO.