Growing Up Plating

This month I was published in PLATES, the magazine of the Automobile License Plate Collectors Association. It is my 5th article for the publication. I started my collection in the mid-80s, at about age 9. I got into them because I just liked them, and they were part of a broader interest in the different states of the US.

Back then I did not keep any records. When I got a plate, I proudly attached it to my bedroom wall. I had a few hundred by 1988. I joined ALPCA in '86, and ended my membership in '92, as I was ending high school. The collection went dormant until 2006, when I joined back in with gusto and quickly added onto my collection.

From those early days, I thankfully did keep letters from other collectors and correspondence with those who I bought plates from via the classified ads in the newsletter (not yet called PLATES, and all black and white, in contrast to the glossy, full color majesty of today). This was an era before electronic correspondence, of course, so established collectors actually contacted new collectors by snail mail. I had people from all over the country write to me, and even some from overseas. Many of them were interested to find out my young age; then (as is now), collectors who are children are quite rare. Some had amusing stories, and some passed on some free plates to me to help me jump start my collection. I never forgot this kindness.

For the article "A Boy in ALPCA," subsequently titled "Paying It Forward" by the editor, I pulled together this  
correspondence and a few pictures. The biggest picture used is myself on my 10th birthday, blowing out the candles on my license plate birthday cake (the sun graphic design, still one of my all-time favorites). My mother made the cake. Another picture has me and my brother Matt in front of the Washington Monument in '87, with me wearing an ALPCA t-shirt, and my brother an entertaining grin on his face.

This summer in Charleston, West Virginia, I met 2 collectors on the Riverboat Cruise whose letters from long ago are featured in the article. One is a gentleman from Vermont who wrote me a refund check for $1 which I never cashed. The other man is from Iowa; we completed some kind of trade which landed me an Iowa plate from my birth year. It was an honor to meet both of them.

If not for the great hospitality shown to me in the early days by such collectors, I might never have pursued the hobby further. For that I am very grateful, and the article is a tender tribute to them and to family or anyone else who helped me get started.