Gerald Hickman's Blog - Posts Tagged "angling-in-maine"
Folk Art, Crafts, or Nostalgia?
A distant relative in Maine got me started when I saw his collection. Eric had saved fishing lures from his work and friend's gifts. He often took walks along the stream near his home and found plugs and spinners lost to the streamside bushes by local anglers.
My offer to sell some of these lures online earned Eric and myself a few bucks. A couple of Eric's plugs were from very early in the last century. One was made by the Atlantic Lure Co. of New Jersey in about 1905 and another was red with a white belly and even had a belly weight imbedded in its ventral surface to be fished under water. If the lure was made of wood and had no belly weights it was a floating surface lure.
But the upshot was that while selling a few fishing items for Eric, I found another hobby in the collecting of specific types of plugs/baits/lures. I find that I tend to spend more than I make selling fishing lures.
My main challenge is to collect Heddon fishing products and currently have just under one hundred specimens from that company which has been making and selling angling gear since the late 1890's. There are a few large, long-lived companies that over the years have been successful and are referred to as the Big Three in fishing lures. These three, in my opinion, are Heddon, Creek Chub and Shakespeare.
The question is: do these companies and their products represent nostalgic items, folk art or early American Crafts. They have all been referred to as such. And the Upshot must be that whatever they represent is determined by the interest of the collector. Who knew that these work a day purchases would be so valuable as antiques in our times?
My offer to sell some of these lures online earned Eric and myself a few bucks. A couple of Eric's plugs were from very early in the last century. One was made by the Atlantic Lure Co. of New Jersey in about 1905 and another was red with a white belly and even had a belly weight imbedded in its ventral surface to be fished under water. If the lure was made of wood and had no belly weights it was a floating surface lure.
But the upshot was that while selling a few fishing items for Eric, I found another hobby in the collecting of specific types of plugs/baits/lures. I find that I tend to spend more than I make selling fishing lures.
My main challenge is to collect Heddon fishing products and currently have just under one hundred specimens from that company which has been making and selling angling gear since the late 1890's. There are a few large, long-lived companies that over the years have been successful and are referred to as the Big Three in fishing lures. These three, in my opinion, are Heddon, Creek Chub and Shakespeare.
The question is: do these companies and their products represent nostalgic items, folk art or early American Crafts. They have all been referred to as such. And the Upshot must be that whatever they represent is determined by the interest of the collector. Who knew that these work a day purchases would be so valuable as antiques in our times?
