Last night's class at The Springs Preserve was on collecting. Las Vegas is a treasure chest for collectibles. However, most of the collectibles are not recognized by official entities such as museums. Most of them are only recognized by other collectors of the same items. Some of the most popular collectibles in Las Vegas are chips, matchbooks, license plates, post cards, and ephemera from hotels.

The first guy on the panel was raised in Las Vegas and was a TV reporter for some time. He thought he knew Las Vegas history pretty well and decided to write a book about it. He knew the railroad era, the dam era, the war effort, the mob, and the Steve Wynn era. Unfortunately, that left out about 50 years of a 100 year old town. So he knew he had some home work to do, so he decided to start with 1900-1950, and found he was still missing about half of the years, so he tried 1900-1920 and found the same results. His current goal is to document 1901-1904. Once he focused on that era, he couldn't find much that wasn't already published, so someone suggested he start reading postcards. That's how he started collecting post cards, letters, train passes, stamps, receipts, etc. He has a slight moral issue reading other peoples mail. OTOH, he feels that he can use it to the good of American History.

The second man on the panel worked here for Bonanza Airlines and saved airline junk and hotel leftovers found in the seat pockets. He was pretty much a pack rat. One day, he saw a nice collection of chips, and decided he wanted to do that. He wasn't rich enough to get very many chips but his collection slowly grew. One day while he was looking at them, he came across one that he didn't recognize. A friend told him about that motel and confessed the only reason he knew is because he had a matchbook from that motel. Then the light bulb went off and he started a new collection. A chip only has value through supply and demand of other collectors. A matchbook tells a story, such as 400 rooms, air conditioning, heated pool, color TV, etc.

The last guy started as a pack rat and quickly learned to organize his collection. He has it all. Stamps, post cards, license plates, chips, etc. He has a huge matchbook collection. He has some of the old hotel magazines from the past. He noted that many of the bars that advertised in these magazines would have the names of the bartenders in the ads. Such as come in and say hi to Sam on the day shift, Bill and John on swing shift, and David on the night shift. This guy recently bought an old TWA post card for his collection off of eBay. The seller was one of those "estate liquidators" that didn't even bother researching the post card. The post card was from Howard Hughes trying to get in touch with a designer.

It was a great evening and a wealth of knowledge that you can't get anywhere else. Next month, entertainment in Las Vegas.

Thanks, JMT - very interesting stuff. I need to visit the Springs Reserve on one of my trips!

I have saved "stuff" over the years. It was never organized or properly preserved. My current goal is pictures. I need to set up a spreadsheet of my to do list. I have a basic idea of what I want. I want the catagories to be resorts, signs, architecture, neon, motels, parks, churches, scenery.

Then each catagories will have a to do list. For instance on a major resort I would want exterior day, exterior night, sign, room, views from said property, pool, door handles, main entrance, parking structure, etc.

Even if/when I get it laid out, I need to set up a photo program to organize it like my lay out.

Nowadays I'm just taking pictures and putting them into general themes.

It's a fun challenge.