"Phillumeny" is the collecting of matchboxes, matchbox labels, and matchcovers. The oldest branch of the hobby is the collecting of the removable labels from matchboxes. This started in the latter 1800's and is still the main focus in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Later, matchboxes appeared with the text printed directly on the box, or on wrappers that were not removeable Thus, the boxes, themselves, then became collectible. Japan had label clubs as early as 1905.

 

In North America, the focus of the hobby is heavily weighted toward matchcovers. Invented by American Joshua Pusey in 1892, although that's somewhat of a technicality. Charles Bowman invented a matchbook at the same time that was much more similarto the matchbooks we're familiar with today, but Pusey's patent was registered first. Diamond Match Co. bought the rights to the Pusey's matchbook in 1894, made some design changes...and the rest is history!

 

American label collectors gradually switched their attention to matchbooks instead of matchbox labels, so much so, in fact, that labels are not popular with today's North American collectors. By the early 1930s, the first organized matchcover clubs began appearing in the US, although none of these were exclusively matchcover clubs, and none of these survived. But, they eventually did give impetus to the birth of RMS.

 

In 1941, Henry Rathkamp and a handful of collectors founded what soon came to be known as the Rathkamp Matchcover Society. Today, it is the "parent" organization for phillumenists throughout North America. Under the unofficial umbrella of RMS, there are currently some 17 regional and specialty clubs around the US and Canada.

 

There are also clubs in England, Germany, Holland, France, Portugal, Romania, Malta, Russia, Slovakia, South Africa, Australia, India, and Hong Kong, but in almost all of these foreign clubs the collecting centers on boxes and labels.

 

This has always been a small hobby. Here in the US, it reached its peak in 1987 when official hobby membership reached 4,000. Since then, with all the anti-smoking campaigns, smoking restrictions, and the resulting decline of new matchbook production, the number of collectors has declined precipitously, paralleling the decline of available new matchbooks. As of this writing, the decline has apparently bottomed out, but collectors presently number less than a thousand. At the same time, the American match industry imploded, a victim of less demand, increasing labor costs, and foreign competition. Today, there is only one domestic manufacturer left: D.D. Bean, situated in New Hampshire.

 

Will the hobby die out? Not a chance. There will always be people who recognize the historical and nostalgic worth of matchcovers, and the attraction of their artwork. Those people will become tomorrow's collectors. But what about the matchcovers, themselves? Even if matchcover production completely stopped today, there are hundreds of millions, if not more, already in existence and waiting to be discovered in grandfather's shoe boxes, in Aunt Martha's garage, in dusty attics, and other oft-forgotten cracks and crevices.

 

We invite you to join a truly wonderful hobby.