About the Matchbox Man
Hi, my name is Richard Hurrell. I started collecting matchbox labels back in 1953.
All my school friends collected stamps or cheese labels and I was asked what
I collected, which at the time was nothing. I went home that day and on
the sideboard there was a matchbox from India that my father had found
under the floorboards of the great hall at Clevedon Court, the local manor
house. This box was "The Three Monkeys". In the garden I
found another box and from then on I was on the look out for more. I soon
had about 2 dozen and I was hooked. I soon found out there were books on
matchbox collecting and started on the long and interesting journey of building
my collection. With the help of my school friends and some of the teachers
it began to grow.
Over the years I have built my collection up so that I now have in excess of 90,000 items. I have a considerable number of pre-World War II Japanese labels, including 2 uncut sheets of The 55 Stages of The Tokaido Road and a rare Japanese "Christ" label, a large number from the former Eastern Block countries and many more from around the world.
Some personal highlights of my collection include a rare label made for Sir Winston Churchill, and 2 skillets from China which were brought back from the then Prime Minister John Major's trip to that country, when he became the first British leader to visit Communist China.
I
have been a member of the British Matchbox Label & Booklet Society for a
good number of years now (5537).