Some things are created to be discarded. Movie tickets, menus, and receipts all serve a single purpose, and once that purpose has been fulfilled, there isn’t much more those items can do. But for whatever reason – sentiment, bookkeeping, or by pure accident, there are times where those items get kept, and stored away.
That’s when they become ephemera, or objects that were meant to be thrown away, but were kept. Letters, postcards, calendars, theater programs weren’t meant to be important. But because someone kept and stored pieces of paper and trinkets, sometimes for centuries, they gained value. Sometimes, that value is large enough to make into a hustle, or even sustain a living.
Hosted by the Ephemera Society of America, the largest ephemera fair in the United States took place in Old Greenwich, Conn. this month. For one weekend, a hotel convention hall transformed into a bustling maze of booths boasting stars’ signatures, 1800s playthings, and century-old shoe catalogs so well preserved they could have been printed this year. Collectors, dealers, and interested visitors bought and sold items with price tags between a few bucks and thousands of dollars.
Interest to income
Gabe Boyers, owner of Schubertiade Music & Arts collections, was set up in a corner booth at the fair.
“We have things like a song sheet inscribed from Aretha Franklin to Tony Bennett after they collaborated on one of his duets albums,” he said, glancing across sheets of paper stored in protective plastic covers. “Fun stuff like that.”
Similar to many others at the fair, Boyers said his collection grew from his own interests. As a professional violinist based in New York City, he also collected music-related memorabilia for his own enjoyment. As he collected and sold to support more collecting, he realized he enjoyed the process.
“I started to find that I actually liked the hunt, and I liked curating things,” he said. “That's sort of an overused word, but to me, it means finding hidden gems and figuring out… why they're special, and why they should be more expensive. And maybe if someone pays enough money, it won't be lost to history.”
At the encouragement of a friend, Boyers put together his first catalog of collected items in 2006. Both his collection and the interest in it grew from there. Now, what started as a hobby for personal enjoyment has become his main source of income. And, he says he’s still passionate about the hunt.
“Well, like anything, the business is now quite big. We have [an] almost 3,000-square-foot open gallery in New York City,” said Boyers. “My happiest days are when I can somehow clear the decks and not answer emails… When I can sit and I can take out a box of stuff and figure out what it is and investigate it and get excited about learning the history of a particular area that I didn't already know.”
Collecting as a lifestyle
Others at the fair stumbled into collecting when they needed something worlds away from their day job. Susan Lane, whose booth is titled, “Passionate about Postcards,” said collecting became a welcome hobby when she needed something different.
“My background is as an audiologist with hearing testing,” she said. “I worked with individuals with challenging problems, and I had a son who had a challenge at the time. I had to move from my day job to my family job when my son needed me.”
That's when Lane found the postcard community. She had collected a few from past trips, and decided to look into them. She found out that others collected postcards from around the world, and even held meetings and shows to sell pieces and discuss history. Over the course of decades, Lane found thousands of postcards. And while her collection hasn’t resulted in creating a full-time income, it has given her an incredible community of friends.
““Follow your bliss," they said, years ago,” she smiled. “Well, I am. I love the people that come into the booth. And these are all cards that I love. So I hope to share them with other people.”
Across the hall, near the entrance, Robert Dalton Harris sat next to his expansive collection, his booth titled “aGatherin'.” An award-winning stamp collector, or philatelist, Harris said he’s been a collector since he was four years old, finding spiders that looked especially interesting and rocks that turned out to be pieces of Native American history. But it wasn’t until he faced moral dilemmas in his professional work that he turned to collecting professionally.
“I was a PhD physicist working in the special weapons laboratory in the Air Force,” he explained. “I was so disappointed by what my professional values were being put to that I resigned. I resigned to pick up all the collections that I had made since I was four years old and let them proliferate.”
Harris said he turned his interests in discovery that he had felt as a scientist into efforts to rediscover objects that were soon to be lost to time. He had always been a collector, but he learned how to put a value to objects he found fascinating.
“I let whatever fell into my hands fall, however it smelled and whatever hooks were in it. Then, I try to find somebody who thought I'd added value just by pointing that out, [and] make a living,” he said. “That's what we've been doing for 52 years.”
New faces in an old game
Some ephemerists made their entrance into the collecting and dealing world at this very fair. Pico Banerjee, a recent college graduate living in Maine, had recently been laid off from his job working for a different dealer. But had been building own collection since the summer, and took his new-found freedom in employment as a sign to go off on his own.
“I figure, I'm 24,” he said with a chuckle. “There's only one way to figure out how to be a small business owner and make money doing it. That's by doing the thing.”
According to Banerjee, he started Peek-a-Book Rare Books and Ephemera because he thinks he’s found a niche in the community that’s underexplored. He worked at rare bookstores growing up, and saw something missing in his old boss’ collection.
“I noticed that he [had] nothing about Indian Americans,” said Banerjee. “So I figured, why not collect South Asian stuff? I've never seen any South Asian American historical document until I started picking it up and offering it to other dealers… Generally speaking, I think other people don't collect it because it's hard to learn about and hard to collect.”
As a South Asian-American himself, Banerjee said he wants to help add new perspectives to the ephemera community.
At this point, Banerjee is by no means sure of his financial future. There’s a total possibility he has to pick up some gigs on the side – maybe a few writing jobs here and there. But, as he and so many other dealers at the fair indicated, now is as good a time as any to try something new.
