Stephen Landry
News Staff Writer
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| News Staff Photo by STEPHEN LANDRY Virginia Strahan poses next to her collection of vintage Beatles memorabilia. |
The event, sponsored by the Narragansett Historical Society, was designed to give local residents who have spent the past several weeks snowed in at home a chance to dust off their personal collections and show them off.
The collections on display this weekend at Kamaloht included antique car hood ornaments, sewing tools, military items and ornamental elephants.
About twenty local residents set up display booths at the event.
Society president Brian Tanguay said the idea for the show was inspired by a fundraising event he attended at a school in a small town in northern Vermont.
“The community got together and asked all the residents to bring whatever they collected, and I went and had a ball,” Mr. Tanguay explained.
“It was a great afternoon and we got to talk to people about their collections, and they knew everything about it because that was their passion.”
The idea for a similar local event was presented to the society, and the immediate reaction was positive, according to Mr. Tanguay.
“A lot of people were very excited to finally get (their collections) outside and show people, as opposed to hiding them in the closet,” Mr. Tanguay said.
Virginia Strahan of Baldwinville brought her extensive collection of vintage Beatles memorabilia to the event.
On display were albums of Beatlemania-era clippings from local newspapers, concert ticket stubs and an authentic swatch of bedsheet taken from a hotel room during the Fab Four’s stay in Boston.
Ms. Strahan said she enjoyed collecting all things Beatles because the band represented the generation she grew up with.
“I can remember watching them on Ed Sullivan for the first time when I was in the ninth grade and I ended up screaming,” Ms. Strahan explained.
“Something just came over me.” Bill Buckler of Hubbardston was on hand to display just a small part of his vast collection of 1950s and 1960s Topps baseball cards.
“Be careful with the spelling of my last name,” laughed Mr. Buckler, who said he prefers to collect cards which were issued before the 1980s, when he said the industry began to dilute the value of baseball cards by printing too many of them.
Mr. Buckler said he also is mainly interested in collecting complete sets of cards for any given year, pointing to his album of 1955 Topps cards, which is missing just one player to be complete — Roberto Clemente.
He said vintage Clemente cards can sell for between $600 and $2000 these days.
“That’s the one I need to complete this set, and that’s what I’m going to go look for this spring when I go to the card shows.
It’s my mission,” Mr. Buckler explained.
Other collections on display included model toy engines, miniature sewing machines, pencil sharpeners, antique purses, wooden airplanes and blue glass.
Mr. Tanguay said the society hoped to make the local collectors show an annual event.
“People are already thinking about what we can do next year,” he said.
“But we may need to get a bigger place.”
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