Free EphemeraEphemera are paper items that were originally meant to be discarded after use, but somehow survived and have since become collectibles. I was born a collector. When I was a little kid I picked up bird feathers, rocks - you named it. At Christmas time, I cut all of the pictures that I could find of Santa Clause from magazines and newspapers and pasted them in spiral bound notebooks. I was an ephemera collector at the age of five or six. Many collectors search for ephemera that compliments an interest or hobby. A baseball memorabilia collector would probably like a Ted Williams Moxie cardboard display. A Beatles collector is going to want a Hard Day's Night poster. Ephemera is monetarily worthless until somebody other than the owner says it's not. That's why a Moxie display or a Hard Day's Night poster is valuable today. Before a general consensus had been reached that they were valuable, most of it was thrown away, so demand exceeds supply. People today tend to hold on to the ephemera that has proven in the past to pay well. For that reason, most modern sports and entertainment advertising are never going to be worth very much. Too many people horde large stashes of it. It doesn't have to cost one much to build a historically significant collection. I have a collection of about 500 business cards from my hometown that I gathered in the 1980s. I wasn't trying to build a collection, but I enjoy looking at them now. I see names that I recognize and businesses that are no longer operating. I wouldn't doubt that I own the only existing copy of some of the cards. Maybe some of them are all that is left from a local landmark.  In the late 1970's, I was in the U.S. Army stationed in Germany. We always knew when a rock group was coming to town because everything that could hold a poster was plastered with them. Copies of the same posters were sold at the concerts. If we didn't take one off a pole or buy one at the venue, we were out of luck. I always made sure that I had one poster from each show, taking them off the poles if I could.Some of the concert promoters left flyers and stickers at record shops. They were free for the taking, and I always took a few and stashed them away. By the time I completed my 31 months over there, I had a nice collection. I kept them for over 20 years, only selling them because we needed the room after downsizing. I sold the posters on eBay for as much as $75 a piece. The stickers and flyers brought a sizable return also. A tiny Rolling Stones sticker sold for $30. I still have all of my concert tickets. Sometimes I wish I still had my posters. Most autograph collectors are ephemera collectors to some degree. An autograph on a piece of ephemera that you don't see everyday sets it apart from other autographs of the same celebrity. Another option is framing an item that a celebrity normally signs, like an 8 x 10 photo, with a piece of ephemera like a business card, brochure, or magazine ad. The latter is something that many autograph dealers do, especially those who sell from a bricks and mortar retail establishment. The reason is simple; something like an inexpensive, routine signed photo without any eye appeal can be turned into a dramatic display with two of three of pieces of cheap ephemera and a nice frame. A few binders that sit easily on a bookshelf or in a closet can hold hundreds of pieces of free ephemera. When the autograph collector comes across a new celebrity address or reads of a celebrity signing, it is easy to remove the piece from an album, get it signed and then place the item in the autograph collection.
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