Verona, Va. meet, April 8, 2006

Time can fly when you're having fun (and sometimes, when you're having no fun at all!). As such, I attended not one, but two additional license plate collectors' meets in the last month, since I last bothered updating this website. How did they go? Read on and find out.

The Annandale "Spring Thaw" had adequately whet my teeth on knowing what hobbyist collectors' meets were like, and I had enjoyed my time there. A month later I had again fallen into the mood to do something interesting, so when I had an opportunity to attend another annually-held plate meet in Virginia, I said "yes." Transportation was again provided by fellow collector Joe Sallmen, whose Buick was weighed down with at least as many hundreds of pounds of stamped steel and aluminum as it had been before. He had been to this event before, and in fact wrote his own account of it several years ago if you're interested.

Verona, Virginia (not to be confused with the many other fine Veronas throughout the world) is a city in the Shenandoah river valley. The trip there was a bit convoluted...at various points we were traversing back roads; interrupted by minor and not-so-minor automotive problems, a general nonunderstanding of where exactly we were going in the short term, and weather that fluctuated from unbearably hot to cold and wet without obvious pattern or reason.

Yet we eventually did get there. After interacting with some collectors at a restaurant (to which we arrived roughly an hour behind schedule), we sought lodging and stayed overnight.

The event itself, like at Annandale, was held in the multipurpose room of a local church. Quite a number of people arrived, some of which I recognized from the Annandale meet and others of which I did not (and, given how horrible I am at names, probably never will). The weather outside was persistently raining by this point, so it was good to be inside.

I couldn't help but notice that most of the collectors in attendance were older men who, presumably, are in a better position to enjoy hobbies such as this in retirement. By no means was this universal, however--some arrived with their wives or families, and there were even a handful of people younger than I was. One of the more colorful characters was an individual who had a good variety of recent West Virginia license plates available (albeit in variable condition), presumably secured from discarded cars in a junkyard. I found a 2005-stickered example containing both my initials and a palindrome in the serial. I took particular note of the various number and letter combinations that formed the first half of the serial, such as a plate on display beginning with "3EA." I'd personally love to find one starting with "3EB," but no such luck this day. ;-)

Of course, I found a lot of other things I found suitable for my collection as well. The August 1985-expiring Iowa and South Carolina plates are for my "birthyear run." The West Virginia example from 1976 is one of the earliest map-style plates made. Finally, I certainly couldn't resist the Massachusetts vanity combination, considering what another longtime hobby of mine has been.

Unfortunately, another thing I found a lot of was junk. The quality of available plates, overall, seemed a notch below what I experienced at Annandale. There were way too many things that were too rusty, gouged, and/or repetitive for my liking. (Believe me, if you browsed through case after case after case of blue on white Virginia license plates in variable condition, you'd say the same thing!) This was especially pronounced at the donation auction, where this chaff seemed to dominate. Even I fell prey to the syndrome at times, duping myself into buying this, which coincidentally I got rid of at the Gahanna meet two weeks later.

Speaking of which, the donation auction was held (as expected) near the end of the meet. Even though this auction wasn't as entertaining as the last and the plates being auctioned off weren't as desirable, I managed to snag some of my favorite finds at the meet: A distinctive Virginia "Public Use" plate for state-owned vehicles (circa 1970s), and an older green license plate for U.S. Forces in Germany! Not bad to top off a day's haul.

The trip back was slightly more pleasurable than the one coming there: We traveled over the mountains by way of towns like Elkins, and stopped at Seneca Rocks along the way. Unfortunately, my wallet was a bit lighter when the day was done (in part because I bought a copy of Joe Sallmen's book), but I feel that the experience of travel alone was more than worth the expense incurred.

My adventures stopped there for now, but they would resume again two weeks later when I convinced myself to go to Gahanna, Ohio . . .

The Network License Plates The Idle Pen

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©2006 Andrew Turnbull.
Last update April 23, 2006.