Advertising collection a history time capsule

Rick Sinner’s collection of advertising is an incredible time capsule of Boulder business history.

Being an amateur collector of ’50s pottery and various “collectibles” myself (some friends describe it as slightly fanatical), Sinner’s devotion to collecting and the in-depth research he puts in to verify business names and owners is remarkable.

I’ve wanted to visit Sinner’s home since we met while planning for Boulder’s Sesquicentennial, when he provided the 150 committee with a well-researched list of Boulder companies still in business and at least 50 years old.

That list was impressive, but after a few hours looking at his collection – some 4,000 items indexed and identified, with another 1,000 or so awaiting his database, I feel like I just toured the Boulder Smithsonian.

In a basement collection room, items are painstakingly displayed in glass-enclosed cases, with an eye to detail of a museum curator. Old whisky, beer and drug bottles line the shelves, adjoining calendars, stoneware jugs that held liquor, vinegar, molasses and water, buttons, signs, medals, spoons, matchbook covers, shoehorns, trays, fraternal lodge ribbons and photos.

Antique advertising plates hang on one wall, with scenes of Boulder County’s original Victorian courthouse, built in 1882, and early CU buildings. Most were hand-painted in Austria and Germany as advertising giveaways, usually with the business name on the back.

“I don’t collect anything that doesn’t have a business name on it,” Sinner says, although I think he does. A date, of course, is really good. A find sends him to Carnegie Library on Pine Street where he sorts through city directories and newspaper archives on microfiche.

Picking up item after item, he reads off business names, and I jot down notes as fast as I can. “You’ll never get them all,” he jokes. He’s right.

He’s framed beautiful Victorian-style art illustrations and hung them around his home. A calendar from Maxwell and Greenman’s University Book and Drug Store at Broadway (then 12th Street) and Pearl. A calendar with a Remington Western scene from Boulder Lumber Co.  Two huge calendars are from the Berkhimer Insurance Agency, each with art of Will Rogers and the simple slogan “Dependable.” A calendar for the Alba Dairy, 2718 Pine St., has art by Charlotte Becker, an illustrator who painted for calendars, children’s books and magazines.

Sinner likes his Christmas Santa operating a hot-air balloon on a calendar for The Department Store, 1223 Pearl St.

I ask to see something he’s really loves, and he takes down a colorful “corner sign,” which would attach to the corner of a building, for Boulder’s Crystal Springs Brewing & Ice Co.  It’s totally cool.

Sinner, 58, is retired after teaching pottery and photography for 31 years at Boulder High, and is a 1969 grad of the school himself.

One year, the city started digging near the school for flood plain work along Arapahoe and unearthed the city’s original 1880s dump. Things like this send bottle collectors into a tizzy, and Sinner was no exception. He borrowed the school’s photography lights for night digging, and occasionally he would send students out to check up on other collectors.

Holding up a desirable cobalt blue bottle, with raised date of 1887-1888, he estimates he has about 100 items from that site that either he or others found. Other discoveries took place when the city built both libraries along the creek. Sinner’s also the president of the Antique Bottle Collectors of Colorado.

Sinner says one woman collector swooned after seeing he had a silver spoon celebrating the “Texas Colo.”  Chautauqua opening on July 4, 1898 in Boulder. I enjoyed his Bing Crosby Ice Cream box, from Valley Farm Diary in Longmont, and his antique map table with drawers full of ledgers, mine stock certificates and old letterheads and ledgers. There’s a story behind each one.

His collection of postcards shows area landmarks and historic buildings like the Masonic Temple Building that housed the Temple Drug Co.  He showed me razors and razor straps from the Western States Cutlery Mfg. Co. in Boulder.

This month, you’re in luck. A display at the Carnegie Library through October commemorates Gold Hill’s 150th, the same as Boulder’s, and two cases of items, including brochures and photos from the Blue Bird Lodge (next to the Gold Hill Inn), are from Sinner’s collection.

You also should do a little of your own history digging on Boulder’s Sesquicentennial site at www.boulder150.com. Photos from Sinner’s collection are next to the 50-year business list under Boulder History. I like the yellow “Worms That Squirm” can from the Bios Earthworm Hatchery in Boulder. I’m watching for one of those at my next yard sale.

Jerry W. Lewis is a contributing columnist. Reach him by e-mail at jwlboulder@comcast.net. He also writes a blog at www.boulderreport.typepad.com.

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