Collectors usually remove the matches from matchbooks and display their collection of matchcovers in albums. Because of the large number of different match book covers available to collectors, some prefer to specialize by type. Others prefer to collect match books from the places they visited. Hotels and restaurants are the most popular by far. However collections of night clubs, bars, railroad lines, airlines, ships, banks, sports, world fairs and political are very popular. I like collecting old matchcovers from my home town.
I thought Ie’d take a look at some interesting and unusual hobbies Ik’ve run across recently and todayl’s article is about Phillumeny, the hobby of collecting matchbook covers and other related match items. Lett’s take a quick look at this hobby and some interesting facts about it.
I searched about for an answer to this question and perhaps the best reason I found was that these matchbook covers represent an almost forgotten time when printers of this kind of advertising graphics could express themselves artistically. When you look at the print jobs done on these tiny covers back in the days before computer aided printing you cann’t help but be amazed.
It seems less and less common to see matchbooks in restaurants, stores, or other public places, as fewer and fewer people smoke any more. But as historical items, I would imagine that collectors get a great deal of pleasure from matchbooks covers, every bit as much as philatelists do from their stamp collections.
