Researching the Sale of World’s Columbian Souvenir spoons, concessions and the Reuben Rodriguez collection of Columbiana (and even a few notes about WCE tickets!)

I realize that every time I begin to write something about a specific topic from the World’s Columbian Expo I end up drifting off into other subjects. Good research is hardly linear; it’s more like a complicated root system of a tree—you just keep turning corners, switching pathways and often end up a very long way from the subject you were studying initially. That explains how spoons and tickets became intertwined for this particular article.

Souvenir spoons have been one of the very few topics that never never consumed me. But when I picked up the Reuben Rodriguez collection (in Michigan in June), I discovered that he had more spoons than I’d seen in one place before. I should add that since I’ve never been enamored of spoons as I have been regarding many other WCE souvenirs, I suspect (in fact I’m quite sure) that a few large WCE collections include many more spoons than I found in the Rodriguez collection.

Reuben Sr. kept most (not all, I discovered) of his WCE spoons in three large framed displays in one room in his house that was devoted nearly 100% to the WCE. Each of those displays housed several dozen spoons that did not appear to be displayed in any particular order. After dismantling that room, Reuben Jr. helped search the rest of the house. He turned up spoons in a variety of places and to my surprise, actually very little outside that room.

I wasn’t intending to discuss the breadth of the collection again here; but I’ve only now begun selling it and it’s always fun to find unexpected treasures along the way. As I noted earlier, Rodriguez had some great tickets. I instantly sold the five finest for more than $8,000! I wasn’t terribly surprised that the total number of tickets included the five super pieces and then a small number of common admission tickets.

But after I began sifting through the collection and sorting spoons by topic and silver, silver plate and stainless (most are sterling which is nice) I found a few odd pieces of paper among a large stack that included a stock certificate, a certificate of visitation and so on: Stored in the same cupboard were pieces of fair-related correspondence.

One of those sheets was a settlement invoice/packing slip from Heritage Auctions. If you have ever done business with the giant auction house you would instantly recognize the format—and that packing slips were printed on heavier colored paper.

The Heritage sheet was from the 2008 auction that included my personal collection of WCE tickets. That sale yielded about $40,000 and I discovered that Reuben Sr. spent some $8,000 buying my tickets from Heritage. Back in 2008 Reuben and I did substantial business; he was a regular customer for Columbiana I was selling.

The big question mark? Where are those tickets? Reuben Jr. verified what I suspected, that his dad NEVER sold any of his WCE collection. We quickly found those tickets I sold that included the pass to the Kilauea Volcano display on the Midway—now the most expensive WCE ticket ever sold. After that sale I mentioned to several collectors that it was only the second such ticket ever sold. Turns out it was just another resale of the first one. In the early 2000s I purchased my Kilauea pass from good friend and collector David Flippin; I paid more than $1,000 to purchase it from David, it sold in the Heritage Auction to Reuben Sr. for more than $2,000 and then I sold it on behalf of Reuben Jr. for $3,500+ this summer.

After my visit and packaging of the collection, Reuben Jr. found spoons in a variety of places, 7 or 8 with more valuable items in a safe, a few in a desk and so on. After finding that settlement sheet from Heritage I kept after Reuben Jr. to find those tickets! As I write this in late August, they’re still AWOL. It would be unfair to say the collection was in disarray, but it wasn’t cataloged nor was it stored/displayed with much attention to organization. In Reuben Sr.’s defense, a lot of collectors do things similarly—adding to a display or shelf when purchased until a shelf becomes quite full.

So, Reuben Sr. collected in that manner; and in the random paperwork I found were some clues as to when he acquired things and for how much; but that was more coincidence than by design.

I’m convinced that those tickets are in that house that Reuben Jr. inherited (on 40 acres!) when his dad passed away. But as of a couple weeks ago, still no luck finding them!

Everything in Reuben Sr.’s collection was treated pretty much the same. A Bertha Palmer or Ferris Wheel spoon was in a random display with lesser valued spoons. Paper was stored together–in stacks in a cabinet, the stock certificate and Heritage invoice stacked loosely with dozens of other sheets.

I am not surprised that the tickets were not treated as special rarities; in fact, I suspect Reuben Sr. could not have sorted them by market value had he been asked. So I’m not at all surprised that those former tickets that once were mine have not been found. Hunting for them has turned up a few random spoons, though! So where did Reuben Sr. stash those tickets?

So discussing spoons led me in a common circuitous path to find ticket information….but no tickets….yet!

Along he way, hunting through stacks of paper and turning over proverbial rocks I found another bit of information about spoons I had not known previously.

We know that there were an inordinate number of souvenir spoons created for the fair. And I suspect a great many were also sold off the grounds by sidewalk-salesmen or in myriad stores in Chicago.

Unfortunately for fair management, spoons happened to be a problem—since in licensing a concession to sell spoons on the fairgrounds, fair management made it an exclusive arrangement. That was unusual and had fair management thought about the concession agreement a little more carefully, I’m quite sure they wouldn’t have granted an exclusive license for spoon sales, which opened an irritating can of worms.

One of the most helpful products of my research was the list of 370 concessions granted and the sales data for each. In some cases the data was of immense help; in others, they only raised ore questions. My 2017 book about The Midway included some of this information (if you have the book, this material is included in the appendix that follows the book’s epilogue).

There is so much information in those concession tables that they deserve more attention; I will devote a future article to the them.

Interestingly, scanning through the often vague details of each concession, none of the 370 were noted as selling souvenir spoons! The tables of information comes directly from applications for concession licenses (and post-fair tabulation of sales); the entries are just what you would expect to see: The name of the individual or company granted the concession license and the 2-to-4-word description of the purpose of the concession.

For example, the Hagenbeck concession was awarded to the Hagenbeck Zoological Arena Co. Makes pretty obvious sense. Then you would find concessionaires Mrs. Lansing, Berriman Brothers and Franz Triacca. This points up the problem trying to figure out just who is in charge of various concessions. FYI, these three examples are, in order, for concession #235, silk cocoons, with sales of $152.60; concession #208, cigars, with sales of $80,509.20 (not bad in the day of nickel cigars); and concession #102, German Restaurant (in the German Village), with sales of $333,560.82!

But what can one derive if only the concessionaire is named? Berriman or Triacca?

I have never stopped researching information about the WCE albeit not quite as intensely as when I was working on two histories of the fair. But overall, data on 370 concessions and the $16,570,682 in goods they sold tells an amazing amount about the exposition, and as I pointed out in 2017, how Midway concessions provided enough revenue as a percentage of sales accruing to the fair to ensure profitability.

I’m now working on my third book about the WCE, a comprehensive catalog of ALL tickets from the fair. Concession information will provide important background data on the tickets. Since 1981, James Doolin’s “booklet” has been the only reference addressing the subject of exposition tickets. My new book will be just a tad more expansive.

I can’t bring myself to call Doolin’s publication a book since it’s less than 20 pages, and for the most part it is just a compendium of one-line descriptions of fair tickets. I still think he deserves a lot of credit for compiling such a comprehensive list 42 years ago.

Interestingly, I began my research about the fair at roughly the time Doolin’s “book” was published (actually two years earlier). Over that time, I’ve never stopped researching any and all topics related to the WCE. Even spending two decades of continual research for my 2017 history of the Midway, I knew there had to be myriad details yet to be discovered.

And in just the six years since that book was published by the University of Illinois Press, I’m actually shocked at how much more I’ve found. Fortunately, beginning more than 40 years ago I began making digital and paper copies of most everything I found, even though most such things that were found without a specific purpose yet in mind.

Going back to the subject of spoons, WCE President Higinbotham said after the fair that “there was an exclusive concession granted for the sale of souvenir spoons….(and they were concerned with) how to prohibit and prevent the sale of souvenir spoons by other parties.” Higinbotham went on to note that “the sale of spoons would be stopped in the Algerian Village at 10 O’Clock, and when the inspector passed out of the village at 10:30 every Algerian would produce spoons from his pockets, from his locked boxes, from his hat, from his wife’s clothing, and from all conceivable places where spoons might be hidden.” So it seems that a visitor to the fair could purchase souvenir spoons most anywhere. Higinbotham was using the Algerian Village as just one example of the myriad stands where unlicensed sale of spoons—and other goods—took place.

Such issues arose with a variety of products, concessions and issues. For example, Higinbotham said “another case was the exclusive concession for the sale of oriental goods. What are oriental goods? A very large proportion of goods sold as oriental were French goods of oriental designs, manufactured for the oriental trade.” Whew. And the list goes on of confusing and unauthorized situations that arose with concessions on The Midway.

To add a bit of finality to this column—I definitely will be writing one or perhaps two additional articles about the wealth of information from the WCE’s post-fair concession data—I thought I should go back through the 370 concessions to see which company was licensed to sell spoons. In going through the brief description of the purpose for every concession NONE listed the sale of souvenir spoons as their business!