Cars are wonderful things to collect, but they consume more money, time and space than many of us have to spend on a hobby. But that doesn’t mean we can’t collect car-related objects.
In my case, though it was for professional rather than hobbyist reasons, I’ve collected books about cars and the people and companies that design and produce them. I didn’t realize quite how many of those books I’d collected until last year when I moved from Arizona to Nevada and had to pack those books (a couple thousand books) into boxes.
The move involved downsizing my living quarters, and I trailered many boxes of books to McPherson, Kansas, to donate them to the library at McPherson College, where you can get a degree in automotive restoration. Later this year I’ll be hauling another trailer load to the school as I try to retain only the books I need for reference for my writing.
In packing for the move, I also realized that through the years I had collected many more toy and model cars than I needed (much to the delight of one of my grandsons) and also some automotive art and quite a few items of Michelin Bibendum “tireobilia.”
All of the above to get to this: There’s now a bimonthly designed for those of us who collect car-related stuff. AutoMobilia Resource Magazine debuted in August 2018 during Monterey Car Week.
The magazine, and the AutoMobiliaResource.com website, are produced in Cape Coral, Florida, by publisher Sharon Spurlin and editor Marshall Buck and cover almost everything, well, except car collecting, from A to Z, specifically from Art to Watches, and in between are such items as books, diecast toys, gas globes, hood ornaments, license plates, oil cans, owners manuals, pedal cars, posters, racing memorabilia, signs (neon and porcelain), trophies and more.
Spurlin provided copies of issues 3 and 4 for this review. Each spans 48 pages, with cover art and commentary by Michael Furman. There are columns about collecting model cars, petroliana, books, vintage photography, automotive literature, automotive art, posters, stamps, postcards and signs, a news section, a calendar of shows and sales, auction reports and feature stories, and more.
An annual subscription is $36, but I need to report that this magazine likely is going to cost you much more. Why? Because you’re going to discover new things to collect that you really cannot live without.
I think there might be room for two or three vintage gas globes, or perhaps half a dozen vintage oil cans, atop each of my bookcases.
Is this the awaited rebirth of Mobilia Magazine, before it changed scope and and passed on?