Monthly Archives: June 2010

Magazines and Matchbooks

26 June 2010

Jenny and I went out antiqueing today to see if we could come across any must-haves for the room.  We weren’t looking for anything in particular though we made sure to check every store for old radios.

At one store, I found some National Geographic magazines from December, 1942 and December, 1944 for $1 each so I got those.  Then I saw an issue of Collier’s from December, 1944; I’ve never heard of Collier’s, but it had a lot of good ads and WWII pictures so I picked it up for $5.

At another store, I found a really good collection of matchbooks organized by state (weird).  Seeing as I don’t know how to tell the difference between a 1940’s matchbook and a 1980’s one, I asked for help.  The lady who worked there said that the striking surface of matchbooks was moved from the front to the back in the mid-50’s because people realized that striking on the front with the matchbook open could throw a spark into the other matches.  She also mentioned something about telephone prefixes not being used in the 40’s so if I saw a matchbook with an odd phone number on it, it was a good bet (I did see one that only had 4 digits).

I got matchbooks branded with Tums, General Motors, and TWA; though I can’t be sure the TWA one is from the forties, I had to get it, partly because my first plane flight (to Disney World) was on TWA.  The matchbooks were about $2.81 after tax.

Total spent today: ~$10.22

A House

26 June 2010

My fiancée, Jenny, and I closed on our first house on April 14, 2010, but long before we even started looking, I told her I wanted a room where I could listen to my collection of old time radio shows and that it had to have an old radio that you would find in a typical living room during the 1940’s.  Not only that, but it should contain only things that existed in the forties.  She thought it was a good idea at the time…

While we were looking for our house, she got pretty annoyed at my rigid requirements including that there needed to be a room, preferrably with a fireplace, that could be closed off from the rest of the house.  Afterall, I didn’t want to be able to see any computers or other signs of modern life from the forties room.  It took awhile, but we finally found the house that we both liked.

We moved in and Jenny insisted that we put her parents’ old china cabinet into the forties room.  I didn’t like the sound of  that as I had planned on hand-picking every item that goes into the room, but after taking a look at it, it works out pretty well.  I’m not sure what decade the china cabinet comes from, but it’s definitely pre-forties.

Here are the initial pictures: