Road Maps and Joyful Noises

Hallelujah! I finally sold my last batch of gas station road maps. My husband had ten collector’s albums full of maps from various oil and gas brands, close to a 1,000 maps---a different brand in each of nine books and I’ve been listing one album a week. I didn't want to list them all at once because I figured map collectors would bid higher if they could replenish their bank accounts in between albums, not to mention they were too heavy to haul them all to the post office in the same time frame. All of the maps were dated between the 1920s to the 1960s and if I had sold each one individually I could have made a lot more money, but to photograph each map and write up its listing would have put me in Road Map Prison forever and I don’t like maps well enough to form a personal relationship with them. Nope, I’m happy to have two empty bookcase shelves in my library. Have I cheered, “Hallelujah” enough times to express my happiness? The tenth album that I just sold was the best in my opinion because it was an album of mixed, oddball and obsolete brands but it only sold for $245.00 which was disappointing but, hallelujah they’re gone! 

I say I didn’t have a personal relationship with maps but I really did. My husband bought and sold them for ten years before his stroke and guess who got to clean them, put them in plastic sleeves, price them, enter them in our inventory software and restock our mall booths when needed and guess who packed them in our motor home when we went to gas and oil memorabilia swap meets and conventions. That would be me who did all that if you didn't pick up on my clues. He was the Shopper and Salesman in Chief for our booths and I was the worker bee.

Cleaning maps or any antique paper, by the way, is done with a piece of white bread with the crusts cut off. Gently rub the bread across the item. The bread crumples but you’d be surprised at how much it brightens up grimy paper. If your paper or book has a musty smell put it in loose a fitting plastic bag and put it in the freezer for a couple of days. That kills the mold that’s causing the odor. But after you take it out of the freezer you’ll need to put the item in an airtight box with charcoal bricks or baking soda for 48-72 hours to absorb the moldy smell. Too many people skip or don’t know about putting moldy smelling paper goods and books in the freezer first so the odor eventually comes back. There was a time when I was in love with turn of century books and my freezer had more books inside than food.

Gas station road map collecting isn’t just about seeing how many you can accumulate. Some guys collect by brand names or by brands within certain state. (Most of us today couldn’t name more than 6-8 brands of gas, but there were dozens back in the boom days before the smaller ones got bought up and consolidated.) A few people collect maps done by famous illustrators, others who own antique and classic cars want period maps that match the ages of their cars. Still others collect maps related to the World Fairs---my favorite---or Route 66 maps during its heydays which happens to coincide with the heydays of architectural design of gas stations and roadside amusements. The man who bought the above mentioned last album said he’d been looking for one of the maps in that book for 35 years and he was willing to buy them all to get it. He’ll sell off all the rest and he’ll probably make good money doing it. He was one happy man! I could hear the "hallelujahs" when I opened his e-mail.

But the most satisfying map I’ve sold on e-Bay wasn’t a map like most of us would recognize. It was a 1,050 page book printed in 1916 that covered the entire United States and it read like Google Maps text descriptions of how to get from here to there. (See the page photographed at the top). There was no such thing as standardized road and highway signs back in those days so maps printed in the era when automobile trips were just becoming a ‘thing’ are fun to read. “Turn at the church” or saloon or stone wall were common directions as were warnings to down shift on certain hills or “if it’s raining don’t attempt this road.” 

In good condition I’ve seen these automobile map books go for $50 to $200, but my copy was in very poor condition. The cover was not attached and the binding was loose. I listed it with close-up pictures of the damage and as needing a new home to save it from going into a recycling bin. A guy working on a historical novel won the bidding for a whole five bucks plus shipping. "Hallelujah!" I was elated and I chalk this transaction up as another success story from Jean’s Antique Adoption Center (as opposed to Jean's e-Bay Central sales). It would have hurt to throw that book out. But if I was a nice person I could have told the new book daddy, who e-mailed ahead of bidding to ask if it had silverfish damage----which it didn't---that he could read the book online. It’s historically significant enough that a university has the entire book posted. ©