Exhibit : Treasure Hunting from A to Z
Hello, my name is Peter Pålsson and I collect matchbox labels and boxes from Sweden. Today I am just over 50 years old and my interest in match labels started already in junior high school almost 40 years ago.
One day when I visited a small antique shop to possibly find some coins for my newly started coin collection I instead found lots of colourful labels with animals, cars, flowers and more that turned out to be matchbox labels, the first labels I had seen up to that point. As a young student, my wallet was thin so I only bought a few that time but as soon as I had some money left over I visited the shop and in the end all the labels were mine.
For several years, the labels were left lying around (around 200 which I thought was an incredibly large collection) until by chance I came into contact with a collector in my own hometown Trollhättan. He showed me his collection and told me how big the Swedish match industry had been, and on that day I became a Phillumenist. In Croydon a few years later, I got to meet several collectors with whom I am today good friends, and I had the opportunity to buy labels that I had only seen in Arne Tejder’s catalog.
The oldest box in my collection was made in Malmö around 1840.
In Sweden there is no pure match association but only the Nordstjärnan where you can collect everything, for me it felt a bit wrong, so in order for new and old Phillumenists around the world to be able to show off, ask questions, give answers or just see nice objects, I created a group on Facebook which I called Svenska Phillumenister and today it not only has an incredible amount of knowledge through its members but has also expanded to collectors of all of Scandinavia.
You can see lots of photos of my collection on my Instagram page @phillumeny.made.in.sweden
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