Saturday...
Yours
truly came from West Virginia on the Triumph Tiger. The trip up was
easy - a bit chilly but otherwise excellent and virtually rain free despite
the forecast. Manny Jacob provided generous hospitality for David
Wilson of North Bay and myself at his apartment in Kitchener, about 20
miles west of Acton. I arrived Saturday afternoon, with David following
soon thereafter. We had no problem talking, and talking, and talking
about plates. The cornerstone of our conversation was David's magnificent
photo albums of virtually every type of current Ontario plate imaginable,
plus his extensive photos of his recent trip to Europe (Ireland, England,
France and Spain). He is what we call "plate photographer extraordinaire".
My original plans were to price my inventory of "junk" being held in Manny's
apartment, but clearly David's photo albums trumped that idea. I
lost energy after pricing about 4 or 5 junky plates before I said "screw
it, if anyone is interested in anything in this box, I will give them a
good price". And left it at that. Following a nice dinner at
Oscar's, then a tour of downtown Kitchener where we attempted to chase
down a Coach Canada bus in vain with the rare Ontario BP plate at the bus
terminal, before we arrived back at Manny's for yet more conversation before
hitting the sack. We had a long day ahead of ourselves, as we wanted
to be at the arena in Acton bright and early.
Sunday...
The
big day. We got up at 5:00am, and I prepared for us a hearty breakfast
of bacon, eggs, orange juice and cereal. By 6:30 we were ready to
hit the road. When we got to Acton around 7:15, amazingly enough
we were not the first there. Bill Verbakel, with a van packed to
the hilt with plates, and Sam Samis were there, as well as a non-collector
who read about the meet in Old Autos and had some plates to sell.
It was rather chilly to say the least, however the excitement of the pending
day no doubt kept me warm. By 7:45 many other collectors showed up,
and we were ready to open the hall to let everybody march in. Bill Verbakel
had so much stuff in boxes, that we thought it would be best if he stayed
out front. Everybody would get to see his stuff anyway, and certainly
the weather was right. He agreed, since he primarily came to sell
anyway. Thankfully we didn't have to load all his boxes onto carts
to be wheeled into the meet. Of course if I had my
truck with me, I could have lightened Bill's load considerably.
Maybe next year. Maybe I'm a little too hard on Bill.
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| Not many collectors went through those blue boxes on the ground. All Ontario plates. | He had lots of interesting cycles and smalls mounted on display boards. |
By 8:00am, the registration table was set up and people were signing in, paying the admission fee and choosing a table. The empty tables soon were full of plates. Well, let's take the tour of who was there:
Our hosts - Dave Steckley, Paul Cafarella, Gary Edwards
and Manny Jacob
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| Bob Cornelius' Table. | Don Goodfellow goes thru a box on Gary Edwards' table. | John Upton takes a look at an interesting South American
plate on Doug Thiell's table.
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| Jon proclaiming how good Sam Samis' plates are.
Sam has trouble getting around these days so it's good that he managed
to show up.
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Paul has a conversation with Will Loftus at his table while Dave Steckley has a look through a box below. | Paul and Dave have a conversation at Norm's Table. Norm is a bonafide OPP officer - this meet is in safe hands. |
He sort of just smiled and winked at me when I asked for some prices on his rarest plates. |
Richard MacDonald (aka "Iceberg2" on eBay) had some
incredible NWT plates, but was fishing for high offers. Many collectors
do not like that game.
Richard got some of these incredible plates by working at the NWT DMV in the 70s. |
An incredibly rare NWT 1948 #2 plate, as you can see not in very good condition, but very valuable nonetheless. Iceberg2 was seeing who might offer the most - but he ended up taking it home - better luck on eBay I guess. |
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| Paul: Yukon plates. Incredible Miner run.
Manny: Current Ontario types |
Manny and Jim having a good laugh about something. | Robert & Myrna Hewitson in front of Robert's incredible panels - if awards were handed out here, he would probably get top prize. |
And of course the meet would not be complete without a group photo:
We had a good lunch provded by a church group brunch in the hall right in the arena. I had a good conversation with Terry Ellsworth, a collector from Picton, Ontario. We all did good. I think I managed to sell as much as I bought which I'm always happy to do. Manny bought some really good plates from Gary Edwards, lightening the wallet considerably but they were good plates, remember.
By the late afternoon, the meet was winding down, with most collectors gone by 3:00pm. Manny and I were the last to leave, and we were invited over to Paul's house for dinner with his family that evening. The turkey meatloaf and wine were fantastic (thanks to Paul's wife Karen). We certainly enjoyed talking about Paul's incredible collection which is totally junk free I might add. However Paul did set himself up once, when he discussed the boxes and boxes of plates that Ernie Wilson had. Then I bought up my truck in conversation and everybody laughed. I just realized I must have been asleep at the camera because I did not have any pictures of his fantastic plates tastefully displayed in the basement and stairwell. Okay, maybe I will next year. We had a great evening, and Manny, David and I headed back to Manny's apartment for more talk on plates.
Monday...
Well, Monday morning, it
was time to head back home. Well, not without a stop at the Giant
Tiger next to Manny's apartment, and of course I needed a picture of that
with myself and my Tiger bike in front! I hated to leave so soon
of course, time sure goes by quick when you have a good time. I will
definitely be back next year.
Page created May 5, 2003