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My dad was a weekend warrior dealing in antique furniture. This consisted of hitting every place that he might buy a piece,to refurbish and turn a profit. What we called junk stores are now antique shops. Married at a ripe age of 17,it seemed only natural to fill the house with antiques. So the collecting bug was somewhat inherited.
Fast forward to racecars- driving, building ,setting them up love every aspect of the sport. Well you can't be around that without petro.So long story short,I guess that how I evoled in to petro.


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I've always had a strong interest in history and display layouts.I think it comes from growing up here in NM where my folks always took us to and taught us about NM history from the 1500's (??) right on up through the Santa Fe history,the Santa Fe trail,the civil was and right on into RT 66.

The product layout part comes from running a lumberyard for 20 some-odd years where I had to work out appealing and effective product layout in an effort to increase sales.Things like put complimentary dimensions close to each other and,above all,keep the place clean.

When I got into collecting gas/oil/shop stuff to go along with my old trucks it was a natural for me to go after history and the visual impact of display layouts.Another collector once asked me "what do you collect?".My answer was "I collect displays".By that I mean coordinated brand displays with a STRONG NM tie-in and a STRONG shop component to go along with the old trucks.

What I enjoy the most is when a visitor to my place becomes interested in the same things I am;an appreciation of and an interest in preserving history and the enjoyment coming from looking at eye catching display layouts.

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At the tender age of 16 in 1979,after getting my first car,a 1972 Chevelle SS,I ran into a gas pump one winter day in my lil hometown station while pulling in for a fill up.Dennys Mobil..
Yup the winter of '79 was one of the biggest snow falls on record for the Chicagoland area.
I came into the station too fast & slid right into the Wayne 505 pump up on it's cement island.Almost took out the oil can display in between too.
The attendant came out & swore for an hour.They decided to remove the pump,as it was all dented & put in a new digital computer pump.Insurance paid for it.
6 mos.later I asked the owner where that pump went?..he said it's sitting out back in limbo.
After 2 days of discussions,I came home with the pump,owners manual,nozzle guts & all for $50.
My Dad thought it was the oddest thing to do.Told me I probably had a concussion form the accident..LOL.
I found a replacement door & side panel that I dented 6mos. prior.
I liked the way that pump looked & operated and made a nice pallet for it in the corner of the garage..my Dad thought I was a nut.
Sat in our garage for another 10 years,while I added other gas station items around it,as well as worked on my car.
One day in 1988 my Mom had a garage sale & someone saw the pump in our garage & asked how much,with it's S/S doors shining and all lit up.It wasn't for sale,I wasn't living there anymore but dad yelled out..$100!
Asked if we'd take $50 for it,my dad said he would and w/o asking me,(I WOULDN"T!),off it went.
I was stunned to see that corner empty one day.Dad said thieves must have gotten it,Mom laughed and told me the truth.
I'm still collecting Gas & Oil & hold a grudge against my Dad about that sale I never OK'd and told him he gave it away.

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I'm a history buff and love researching the history of San Jose and the San Francisco bay area. What once was farms and orchards are now high tech and concrete. So, we lost a lot of our past.

When I was young, my friends and I would ride along with our dads to the land fills and junk yards back in the day when you could run around the working earth moving equipment without someone in an orange vest and hard hat yelling at you. We would find bike parts and build "new ones". Every now and then, we would bring home other items that were cool. Mom didn't think so and threw that stuff out when she got the chance. My buddy's dad used to work for the city roads department. We got ahold of some street signs and detour arrows. Well, when we started playing road construction crew, drivers didn't think it was as fun as we did and those items got taken away, too.

Moving forward, I started with keeping advertising pieces and signs that were taken down during construction projects. The petroliana stuff really didn't kick in until I found a Bennett 646. Now, I feel like a gas and oil zombie. But, I feel the real excitement is in the hunt. I really don't sell much but I love finding things. My wife says it's like a gambling habit. She keeps me in check, though.

I really didn't realize how big this hobby was until I really started paying attention. Fun stuff. I've met some great people and am now seeing things I never thought existed. I've also discovered how much has gone away in the name of progress.

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I have been into cars since I was 12 years old, and use to work at my uncles Shell gas station during the weekends, spring break, summer & Christmas holidays.

It never occurred to me that people collected gas & oil items. In 2004, I bought an auction house and took note of how passionate some people were about advertising and gas & oil items. Not to mention the prices these items pulled.

In 2006, I sold the auction house and started collecting. I bought a double Gilbarco 96B off of e-Bay. When I picked it up, I bought a bunch more items from the seller in WA. I asked him if knew of any other gas pumps for sale. He said he knew a guy with over 120 gas pumps; but that the guy would never sell them. I asked him to introduce me to the individual.

I became good friends with the person with all the pumps. One day, he told me that he had all these pumps. I told him I knew and he stated I was the only guy that never asked to buy any. I said, that I knew they were not for sale. He had, had them in storage for over twenty years in a barn that he was renting. He had gone through a divorce and kept them and had paid a small fortune in rent over the years. He offered to sell them all to me and I bought them all. Probably, overpaid for them...But, I have no regrets.


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Back in the seventh grade my mom bought me a "wind breaker" with a Ford Mustang patch over a racing stripe. I thought having a patch on my jacket was the coolest thing ever. We dealt with a Gulf station that had the "put it on my tab" when you were low on money and we kids did a huge amount of buying candy, soda, and always needing tube repair kits and using the Eco air meter to fill tires. The owner gave me a Gulf patch to go below the Mustang and a big patch for the back of my jacket. Next thing I knew the jacket was covered with patches front and back.

About 14 years ago I found a Gulf five quart can in an antique mall. I don't remember ever seeing a five quart can before, and between the memories of the Gulf station back home and my newly aquired can, I was hooked. Brady

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I worked as a "Host" (bouncer) in a nightclub in Columbus, GA. in 1977 while I was finishing my 6th year of college. There was an old jukebox in the ticket booth. Later I thought that it would be cool to have an old jukebox, but I didn't know where to begin looking. I went to a book store in the mall and copied a list of resources in the back of the book. I then stared going to antique shows, auctions, flea markets etc. and began my education. It wasn't long before I began acquiring jukeboxes, vending machines, gas pumps, signs, etc.It has been a exciting and worthwhile journey and I have met some really great people and it isn't over yet...I hope.Dave


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At 8 years old in 1966 I went to work with my dad to relocate his heating air store from one builing to another.I helped them move the toms candy jar and saw the fishtail coca cola calender pad holder on the wall asked if I could move it they said sure,pulled the nail out and took it over to the new building and nailed it back up by the machine.Back in 1971 at 13 years old my dad was a partime pastor of a church in centre alabama and he would go by the church on summer afternoons and I would go out back of the church and fish in the lake(lake Weiss ) one day I saw a spot down the creek where the water went down and there was alot of cans and bottles that were very old .I picked up as many bottles and cans I could and started collecting from there.I started college in 1976 went two years on a baseball scollarship took a summer time job in 1978 as a plumber joined the union went 3 years to plumbing school. 1995 when my dad died I went back to his store and took down the calender pad I had nailed up 27 years before and found the 2 toms jar took them home and put them into my collection. after 34 years in plumbing I am still working out of local 72 in Atlanta GA

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Most of my early years were spent as a "gas station rat". When I was 10 I use to hang out at a local Sinclair station after school. After a while they offered me a job cleaning rest rooms, restocking oil shelves and filling pop machines each day after school. Graduated to washing cars on Saturday at a local Phillips station - cost $2.50 to hand wash the car, scrub the white walls, chammy, vacuum inside and clean the windows. Begin working at my future wifes uncles gas station when I was 13 and stayed until high school graduation. Old enough to remember the gas wars. We had four stations - one on each corner (now hard to believe) A Texaco, Phillips, Deep Rock and DX. It would get crazy - as soon as one lowered gas by a penny another would drop theirs down 2 and so on. I can still see to this day the cardboard sign at the DX station across the street advertising gas at 14 cents a gallon! Military and career took me far away from those days but little did I know that the smell of gasoline and oil running down your arm each time you would change an oil filter would leave it's mark on me for life. Started collecting 5 yrs ago after I retired. Gas pumps, signs, oil cans and lubesters now consume my time. First task each morning is to go out to the "barn" and look it all over - as a good friend once told me, "kinda makes your heart sing" just looking at this stuff.


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In 2008 I finally built my garage/workshop that I'd always wanted. I began looking for unique items to hang on the walls, anything that was old & cool. Then one day soon after I was at the local auction and there was an old gas pump. I knew nothing about it, except that it said Mobilgas Special. It was old & rusty, but solid, and I just had to have it for the garage. I paid $600 for it. Within a week I heard thru the grapevine that I had paid way to much for this pump, but I shrugged it off and began taking the pump apart. Not knowing anything about restoring a pump, I just did what I thought was best. Sandblasted the entire thing, did bodywork, and painted. It actually turned out real nice. It wasn't until some time after the pump was completed that I learned this M&S 80 pump was what they call a script top, and very desirable. I've been hooked ever since.


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About 12 years ago I bought a 1965 galaxie 500 that cauht my eye for my daily driver. Always enjoyed the attention it got and the smiles it brouhgt to peoples faces. 5 years ago I relocated to Nebraska and needed a place to put my machine shop. As luck would have it a lady was selling her Chevrolet dealership and retireing. I bought the building and decided I needed another old car to display in the showroom. 9 cars later I thought it would be cool to put a gas pump next to the car. It also brouhgt a lot of smiles to peoples faces and they would stop and want to talk about the cars, pump, and the old days. Given that I had the room and that the building is 60 years old it seemed like a natural to keep adding more. The rest is history as they say!

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In 1968 my family bought a 100 acre farm which had been a dairy farm since the early 1900's. It had a big old barn and silos with the cow stantions still in it. We discovered the old bottle dump and would excavate the glass bottles from the dirt and line them up on shelves in an old milk room. We had books that showed the value of each bottle. I had a Honda mini bike and rode a trail that followed the old road out to the back fields. There were three 5-6 acre fields and one large 20 acre field all separated by tracts of woods. One field had an old chevy dump truck that hunters have shot full of holes and it was full of bees. We had a swamp area, pine forest and hard wood areas. We would ride our mini bikes out to this old collapsed building in the woods. There was an old truck with its steering wheel sticking up through the roof and you were surrounded by the smell of old oil and gas. I love that smell of old oil to this day. i would set home made traps and make my rounds to check my traps. I had a pony and four pigs when I was 11. We had the best tree forts and would go out in the woods for hours and our parents had no idea where we were.

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My entire family has collected something for years, so it was only natural I had to start somewhere, sometime.My greatest passion is Illinois license plates, which I started collecting in 1953, when I was in high school.I stuck with that till the early 1990s, and spotted a large Phillips 66 sign behind an old bulk plant not far from my home town that was going to be torn down. The owner would not sell me that sign, but he did sell me several others he did not want. That purchase started the petro collecting, which figure, since cars have license plates, and also need gasoline to run them. I guess I started early and likely will continue till I cannot go anymore. I might add thatI have met a lot of great folks while enjoying this hobby. Good thread Jack.


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Dave asked what happened to the Harley. I need to go back a little to explain what happened to it.

At age 14 I decided I wanted to be the first person in the Sim family to graduate from college. I graduated from high school exactly 60 years ago this June, but the family didn't have the money for my college. A month and a half after I graduated the fighting stopped in Korea. Realizing the only way I would ever go to college was to join the military, so I joined the Army.

I spent 3 1/2 years in the Army, getting out in July, 1958, with the idea I would use the GI bill and start college in September. But... I did something while I was in the Army that had some effect on my doing anything, I had gotten married and had a daughter. When I got out of the Army, I went to work as a Salesman for Gerber Baby Food, putting my family first.

A little over 12 months later, I decided, against my wife's feeling, my parents telling me I was crazy, etc. that I had just spent 3 1/2 years in the Army with one purpose in mind, that to go to college. So, I quit work, and applied to Penn State (at their center in Philly) to attend day school. I also applied for an apprentiship in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard (where my father worked), was accepted. I would work in the yard from 4-12, get home by 12:30, study to 3:30 in the morning, go to sleep and get up to be in class by 8 or 9 in the morning. I lived on 3-4 hours a sleep for almost 2 years.

Skipping ahead, after 2 years at Penn State, I transferred to a small college in southeast Missouri, appropately named Southeast Missouri State University. I graduated from college 50 years ago this June, exactly 10 years after I graduated from high school.

While living just west of Philly and being interested in old cars I got to know a lot of antique car owners. Not many people know this but the AACA was started by a bunch of guys who lived just west of Philly, back in 1935. One of the founders was George Hughes Sr. He was so well know in the AACAS, the high wheeler race held on Saturday afternoon in the stadium at the fall Hershey is named after him. He had passed away prior to meeting all these guys, but I did become friends with his son G. H Jr. When the Sr. passed away he left his son 13 cars that were 1910 and earlier. Jr. also had this knack about finding some very nice old cars.

Now the Harley. I went to this woman's basement, looked at the bike, it was all there, but it was rough. She also had a gramaphone for sale. I decided I would give her $20.00 for the graphone and $30.00 for the Harley, I asked her what she wanted for the two items and she said $30.00 for the gramaphone and $20.00 for the Harley.

Knowing G. H Jr. had a 1930 Studebaker Roadster, and he wanted the Harley, we traded. He had wanted $100 for the Studebaker so I basically sold the Harley for $100.00.

In reality, I shouldn't have been buying anything, I was in college, didn't have the money to restore anything, and the second child was on her way. This lead me in to picking.

Will pick up this story in a few days.

Jack

Last edited by Jack Sim; Thu Mar 28 2013 11:52 PM.

Author, 1st & 2nd editions of Gas Pump ID book, 3rd edition is now available at www.gaspumpbible.com
Air Meter ID book also available
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Hi Everyone! Sounds like fun! My Dad told me about the pumps he remembered in the 30's.I started collecting in 1975.I bought a Wayne 492 for 10.00 in 1976.through the next several years I bought other pumps off farms,never paying more than 100.00$ for one. Now as I approach retirement it's time to start restoration! THANKS! Jim

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