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Collecting Ontario licence plates for 40 years
THE
BACK
BUMPER
2CENTS ARCHIVES
First started as "My 2 Cents" in 1997, I have written posts numbering into the hundreds. New posts arrive continually. Find an article by clicking the tag cloud below, or selecting a category, doing a search (see magnifying glass below on the right), or just scroll down to see the articles in chronological order.
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Nov 20, 2024
Grimsby '24
It took four weeks to find the time to write this article. If you're a regular reader, I hope you appreciate it. I was in perpetual...
233 views1 comment
Oct 4, 2024
New Grimsby Award in '24
This year at the Grimsby swap meet, we’re adding an award, but the finished products emerged in a roundabout way. Don Goodfellow had a...
72 views0 comments
Oct 24, 2023
Cluckin' and Quackin' in Grimsby
I had been looking forward to the 2023 edition of Grimsby for a long time. I was thrilled with how the 2022 meet turned out at its new...
246 views0 comments
Apr 2, 2023
Making the 2023 Ontario Souvenir Plates
It was a summer afternoon in 2022: I found myself at the town park in sleepy Rossmore, Ontario, swapping plates with Dave Steckley and...
147 views1 comment
Nov 11, 2022
The Grass is Greener in Grassie
The 2022 edition of Grimsby was always going to be unlike any of its previous installments. It had been three years since the last meet...
310 views0 comments
Oct 30, 2021
Driving Nowhere
It’s 6:55 PM on the last Friday night in October. At this moment, I’d be stopping for gas somewhere outside of Trenton. The air would be...
90 views0 comments
Oct 31, 2019
Grimsby Growth
I’m exhausted! What a meet. Where do I start? And, as I’ll ponder later on, where do we go from here? My kids are grown-up enough that I...
352 views1 comment
Nov 3, 2018
A blizzard of plates
No two Grimsby swap meets are the same. Each journey always leaves something unique by which I remember it. There was 2009, when a...
328 views0 comments
Oct 30, 2017
Collectin' one plate at a time
I was waiting at the curb with my overnight bag and a small cardboard box. My skinny house stood warmly behind me, its light shining out...
252 views0 comments
Dec 19, 2016
The secret's out
Well, that didn’t take long. I was in front of my computer on this snowy, Sunday morning, coffee in hand, when I hit my eBay bookmark as...
182 views0 comments
Nov 17, 2016
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November 2016 has been a tough month for many members of ALPCA. Long-time member and great guy Dave Kuehn, a guru of all things...
93 views0 comments
Nov 1, 2016
The family Grimsby
The times, they are a-changing… especially in Ontario, for a small group of close-knit people who band together every six months to...
156 views0 comments
Oct 25, 2015
The Grimsby shuffle
Raring to go. That’s how I’ve been this fall. The Jays are in the postseason, the weather has been halfway warm, and I’d been looking...
51 views0 comments
Oct 29, 2014
G-R-I-M-S-B-Y spells relief
I’ve got it figured out. That is: Why the fall plate meet in #Grimsby feels different from the spring meet in Acton. I was e-mailing a...
57 views0 comments
Oct 29, 2013
Long time coming
Grimsby 2013 was a long-awaited event that was a year-and-a-half in the making—for me, anyway. You may wonder: How can an annual event be...
49 views0 comments
Nov 12, 2012
Why I skipped Grimsby
By now, many of my faithful readers know that I wasn’t able to go to the fall Tinchasers’ swap meet in Grimsby. It was an unfortunate...
32 views0 comments
Nov 5, 2011
You had to be there
I made the six-hour drive from home to the Niagara region on the last Friday in October. Not for the wine, and not for the fruit, but for...
47 views0 comments
Nov 2, 2010
Grim pickings
The annual Tinchaser’s license plate swap meet in Grimsby is basically the event that marks the putting of my hobby to bed for the...
59 views0 comments
Oct 29, 2009
Destination super
October is a wonderful month because it brings three important occasions—Thanksgiving, Halloween, and the annual Tinchasers’ Plate Meet....
63 views0 comments
Oct 31, 2008
Grim Reaper (the Grimsby debut)
This year, the fall Tinchasers’ license plate swap meet changed locations slightly, from St. Catharines to nearby #Grimsby, about 20 km...
64 views0 comments
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