In Automobilia, a Yearning for the Days of Youth

By CLIFF ROTHMAN

Published: Wednesday, May 17, 2000

LEILA DUNBAR remembers the family outing to search for old tin automotive signs at the antiques fair in Brimfield, Mass. It was 1973, and she was 12. ''We slept in a borrowed van, right on the side of Route 20, the tractor-trailers rolling by and causing the van to sway all night,'' she said.

They would spend the two-day fair scouring the field for the handful of road signs for sale, like those for Champion Spark Plugs or Mother's Root Beer. Her dad, she remembers, paid maybe 50 cents for the 1-by-2-foot artifacts from the 1930's and 40's.

Brimfield now comprises 15 to 20 shows over eight days, with vast sections devoted strictly to automobilia, as the artifacts have come to be known. And those tin signs? They are about $175 to $200 each. Read more...