Sometimes I feel like Oscar — not because I’m grouchy, but because I love trash.
Oh, I love trash!
Anything dirty or dingy or dusty
Anything ragged or rotten or rusty
Yes, I love trash
Antique Card with Lobster
Well, maybe not the truly rotten stuff — but dusty & ragged are the stuff of an excellent day’s hunting for an ephemera collector. And while I certainly don’t want smelly & cold fish, I do want the old newspapers — and magazines, postcards, delightful scrapbooks full of letters & greeting cards, booklets, receipts, etc.
Trouble is, last week’s huge buy-out of an ephemera dealer notwithstanding, it’s getting harder and harder to find ephemera.
It’s not that I mind the hunt, but I’m wondering what’s happening to all the old paper…
Where has all the ephemera gone?
Long time passing.
I’m told that less and less of it makes its way into estate sales, thrift shops and dealers’ hands. Why? It’s not because people have less paper or are more organized — computers may house more documents, but the printer fills our houses, and we all still have those desks and drawers stuffed with paper. And that would only cover the last few decades anyway. Not to be too crass, but as the old folks pass, what has happened to their old paper?
My guess is that it’s a combination of laziness & privacy.
I know that doesn’t sound nice; but it’s an educated guess.
I’ve been at (& helped at) enough estate sales to hear the tales direct from family member’s mouths about how they lugged so much old paper to the trash — and I’ve even seen folks take Hefty bags full of ephemera to dumpsters and curb-side containers too.
Why?
Because family members do not wish to take the time to go through those desk drawers, file cabinets, and cardboard boxes in basements and attics. They throw it all away. Out of fear — not just security issues pertaining to identity theft, but fearing just what family skeletons might be discovered along with those old Halloween cards & decorations. Like the proverbial baby & his bathwater, the good ephemera is tossed-out along with the “maybe this is too private” stuff.
Back of Lobster card - click to read what it says!
Maybe if folks recognized the value of old paper — if paper in the desk drawer was seen as having the same potential as the painting in the attic a la Antiques Roadshow — then people would consider sifting through the piles of paper left behind. Not that most old paper has the big price tag that any painting does… But still, if every now and then “old paper” made the news…
But the truth is, we’ve all heard the stories of how the paper trail was the provenance which doubled the item’s monetary value; yet the paper is still thrown away. And what of all the ephemera which, even without another item, is the tantalizing documentation for some other great story waiting to be revealed?
Like this antique card with a lobster on it… The back (I think) reads:
this card you shall give
Herman Frank
that fr(?) little boyagnes – 6 years -
he was funny
Old paper is fragile, temporary; but it holds the same tangible thread to humanity & individual human lives as photographs do. Thanks to this old card & those who save it, Agnes & Herman live on.
If more people really knew the thrill it presented the collector, the researcher, the writer, the historian, the hopeless romantic, then maybe more people would make the effort to save the ephemera.
Where has all the ephemera gone?
Long time passing.
Where has all the ephemera gone?
Long time ago.
Where has all the ephemera gone?
The folks have tossed them ev’ry one.
Oh, when will you ever learn?
Oh, when will you ever learn?
