oldphemera

[oldphemera]

Front and back covers of Mead Composition 100 sheet wide-ruled notebooks, from 1994 (left) and 2025 (right), 20 years apart. Fronts are in the top image, backs are in the lower.

Notable for both their similarities and their differences, the 1994's white front label very much appears to have been cut out by hand and pasted onto a background for photography and printing as would've still been common - if not typical - at the time, whereas the 2025 is naturally and clearly all-digital.

This particularly shows up in the back where the greater flexibility of digital allows for text to be placed on the faux-wrinkle-coat texture via strategic placement of black fill areas behind the otherwise-too-small text. All that text ended up in the large white medallion on the front of the 1994 edition, where legibility would've been assured.

Another small difference is that the tape binding on 1994 is smooth, whereas the 2025 has a distinct fabric texture to it, also visible in the scans when enlarged.

[oldphemera]

Found this matchbook with this ad. The design is VERY old - note the USSR teddy bear stamp - even if Father Frost is in red instead of the more typical blue for some reason, that's Soviet. But it's been updated much more recently, and the company advertising 500 junk stamps to "get your collection started" is still very much around and they don't charge that much more than they did whenever this matchbook was printed.

I think with the long decline in smoking that the long arc of free matchbooks everywhere (and ads on those matchbooks to pay for them) has also declined away to nothing. But maybe that's just me. Are people still giving away matchbooks, somewhere?

[oldphemera]

two pages of old stove and range clock drawings

I found an old manual for a... 1970s? Early 1980s? gas range and the drawings of all the clock options are pretty charming. Enjoy!

TYPE A and TYPE B!

But wait! there's more! If you have the money. Check out these mechanical digital clock drawings!

so many little knobs

SO MANY

I think by "eye level models" they mean "wall ovens." Not sure tho'. Very 2001: A Space Odyssey regardless tho'.

("HAL, please open the oven bay door."

"I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave."

"Why not, HAL?"

"The cake isn't ready yet, Dave.")

[oldphemera]

PARCO Faucet Washers! Various sizes, all BEVELED and PACKED IN THE U.S.A. BY UNION LABOR.

I'm pretty sure the actual age order, oldest to youngest, is peacock blue with price, peacock blue with price covered over by a sticker at the factory (the sticker is under the plastic), then the orange pair with the tree cut off because they reversed the size and price sticker position layout.

The design time is certainly late 1950s to early 1960s - the diamond windows in that ranch house with the open roof above the porch screams 1962 to me, but could well be earlier seeing as it's California. (The double-width garage, same notation.)

I like the little caricatures too.

PARCO made it until 2016, when they did not in fact go out of business but got bought out! So they're now a division of a large company. At some point they moved from Bell, California to Ontario, California, but it's not exactly a big move, it's all part of the massive LA metroplex. I don't know where they were in Bell, but there's a big industrial area with some old (and disused) railroad tracks going through it, though, so I imagine that's where. There are a couple of industrial buildings on Randolph that look just about old enough. And I think there were more, but they got torn down and replaced with newer in the last couple of decades.

Anyway. I like the house, I like the PACKED BY UNION LABOUR. Gods only know how badly those faucet washers have degraded, though. That's some nasty plastic. xD

[oldphemera]

Found in an old storage area:

ELEPHANT brand Steel Wool 8 pads, 0000 finest

(these are not my preferred pad, but hey, you do you xD) I like the little elephant mascot, it's cute! Amazingly, this brand is still around, too. I don't know how old this particular package is, but I imagine it's from the 60s or 70s - or at least was designed then. I'm not sure what's up with the giant I, either, unless it's supposed to invoke... an I-beam? Those are also steel, so maybe that's it.

Why an elephant? I don't know, why not? Shut up. xD

I also like the completely useless HOW TO USE section which doesn't really tell you much of anything about HOW TO USE. Tho' it does at least tell you how not to use in an important way at the end. So that's something.

[oldphemera]

Okay, so lots of us have little spring-loaded clips to hold bags closed, and they come in a bunch of different styles and shapes and are basically in every grocery, right? Half of the ones in the cabinet came from college and we probably picked them up in shared housing when roommates moved out.

This one is from 1991 and has patent numbers. I noticed because it broke and I whipped up a new one real quick in TinkerCAD and 3D-printed a replacement partly because I could and partly because the spring and grippy bits (both removed in the photos) were in fine shape.

Guardsman Products, Inc. of Grand Rapids, Michigan was founded in 1963, and seem to be gone, though there were enough reorganisations and re-foundings to be unsure about whether it was 1993, 1995, or 1998. They appear to have several different type of clip products including Chip Clip, such as Cereal Clip, in case you weren't aware you could use the same clip for more than just chips.

The first patent (ending in 791) was applied for by Francis R. Groth on May 26th, 1981. The idea that this idea had an associated patent just kind of astounds me. It builds upon the lower patent (ending in 600), an earlier patent from 1980, which includes an image which looks a lot like a clothespin with two chopsticks attached. Both are long expired, but still assigned to Guardsman Products.

It's a little weird to me that something that strikes me as this obvious was novel enough to earn not one but two patents, but... looks like it was. Everything starts somewhere, I guess, and in 1980, the whole idea was apparently pretty darned new.

[oldphemera]

Check out this absolutely gorgeous atomic age letter opener I found. The back side is a ruler marked in US inches without decoration, but the front is what's glorious.

SCIENCE for the WORLD of TOMORROW - and today!

[oldphemera]

This isn't as old as the usual Oldphemera entry, but it's aged so badly that I'm calling it fair. What is this? This is an unused front automotive license plate year sticker from Washington State in the year 2000.

Yes, really. Put out by the Washington State DOL. It's tiny, like any other year sticker, but... well. They were excited. They don't get to change the first digit of the year very often, so really, who can blame them?

I suppose we should just be glad it didn't say "The Future is WOW" or something like that. (¬ᴗ¬)

[oldphemera]

I remember this place! It was in one of the lower levels, like, two down from the top I think? And I don't remember them very well. Mostly I remember they had beads (apparently in quantity "1 Hank" but one presumes other quantities) and maybe buttons? And edible gold foil, which was AMAZING to think about at the time. Sadly, I can't find much about them online - but I know they were there, once upon a time.

[oldphemera]

Wow, we have a guest submission! That's new and neat!

This photo is from Scott Thomas, who found this old 45-volt photographic flash battery. This would've probably been from the late 1950s, and somehow, has never leaked! He tells me:

It's history-completely dead, but never leaked. Old camera batteries could range from 1.5 to 225 volts. Press cameras like you see in old movies had a huge high voltage battery to fire those big flashbulbs. The guy and girl who took photos for the Asbury College newspaper in the early '80s had one, and would often dress up as '40s style reporters when out photographing things for the paper. Added a bit of fun to it.

Here's another picture, found elsewhere, where the text has not blurred from age quite as much.

Thanks for the submission, Scott!

[oldphemera]

This fucking trashfire of a mobile app! What the fuck, @staff? Why the fuck does it show me my personal blog then decide that all reblogs from my dash should secretly go to one of my side blogs? Why does it flip me back to my side blog for messaging no matter how many times I set it back to my primary? WHY IS MOBILE SUCH AN UBELIEVABLE TRASH FIRE?!

i hate the phone client so much

I post one goddamn thing to Oldphemera and now the phone client is convinced oldphemera is my primary blog and everything - everything goes to it. Including text messages and reblogs from my primary blog’s feed.

Sorry about that. Maybe I’ll delete and reinstall the client idek.

[oldphemera]

I rather love the mid-century design here. Also, the oil pastel sticks? Still soft. I guess it just never hardens.

[oldphemera]

i hate the phone client so much

I post one goddamn thing to Oldphemera and now the phone client is convinced oldphemera is my primary blog and everything - everything goes to it. Including text messages and reblogs from my primary blog's feed.

Sorry about that. Maybe I'll delete and reinstall the client idek.

[oldphemera]

Just removed from a broken toy. Most likely installed 20 years ago given the usual lead times on these install dates. Nice job, batteries! (The toy's electronics were still working and these batteries were still powering them.)

[oldphemera]

What is it? A paper towel roll? Butcher paper? No! It's TELETYPE paper from the 1980s, in a radio station's closet for a really long time. This is how they got news from the Associated Press. I don't know but it was probably dot matrix, too. It's kind of weirdly soft paper, despite being pretty thin, and is stronger than you might expect, even now. It's also a bit more yellowed/brown than is showing in these photos, though the last photo is pretty close. AND NOW, THE NEWS.

[oldphemera]

This is grabbed from a youtube video, so I can't say I found it myself, really, but it's awfully neat - it's a capacitor, a huge brick of one, from the early 1930s. The modern equivalent, even for 600 volts, would be like a fifth or less the size.

I'm posting it mostly for the label, of course, because how can you not? Deco fonts! Lighting bolts! OK in some inspector's faint red pencil from 85 years ago! I adore it.

[oldphemera]

Thread from the 19...70s? Maybe?