Heavy Metal Madness: The Horrors of a Global Marketplace

Gene Gable

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Introduction: Creativepro editor-in-chief Pamela Pfiffner has been kind enough to provide this valuable access to me so that I might chronicle my efforts to restore and operate several pieces of vintage letterpress printing equipment and an Intertype hot-metal line-casting machine. It is imperative that I get Pam off the hook right from the start by admitting that I know little to nothing about real metal-type craftsmanship. There are many valuable sources out there for quality information about this subject and a cadre of artists producing stunning examples of old-style printing and composing. From me you can count only on an honest review of what happens when you start a project that taxes you and your team way past your knowledge and tool limits. If I can bring any of my experience in publishing, business, and the graphic arts to bear on this seemingly insurmountable hobby, only then can I claim to be of value to you.– GG

General wisdom has it that most great projects start with an inspired idea or a noble premise. My experience is contrary. Most big projects start with a piece of paper called a work order, a client request, or an open purchase order. But more likely, the paper actually comes halfway through the project and the real beginning is the end — the deadline.

The ticking clock is what motivates most of us and begins the journey that ends in either a work of pride or another “good-enough” job.

So it should be no surprise that even with a hobby that fills two small outbuildings and weighs more than three Hummers, everything so far has been driven by deadline, including this already-late chronicle. Despite a life-long fascination with large mechanical devices and the people who operate them, I had no immediate plans to start a hobby that required the use of a forklift.

But then along came eBay, the great world marketplace, and one day I was suddenly faced with a life-altering deadline of 2 days, 9 hours, 15 minutes and 28 seconds.

Selling Your Soul through PayPal
If you are an “eBay person” then you already know this; if you are not an “eBay person” then you need to know this: the “e” in eBay stands for “evil.” Rumor has it that collector and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar wanted to call it “666Bay” but someone else had the URL.

Only the devil could have thought that putting every buyer and every seller of every conceivable thing in the world together was a good idea. It’s right up there in the category of “collaboration” software, which allows multiple people to work on a job simultaneously. Some things, like buying and selling stuff or creating a beautiful book, are best done face-to-face, in limited stages, with appropriate review steps and checkpoints built into the process. Not to mention time off to simply think about it and keep returning to it (the stuff or the book) so you can take as long as possible to make the final commitment. I love postponing decisions.

Nonetheless, once-in-a-lifetime moments are created willy-nilly on eBay every few seconds from what I can tell. Most folks passionately covet at least one object of desire — many of us have a house full of them. Mix that with the lure of gambling, the thrill of fierce competition, and the illusion of “it-doesn’t-seem-like-real-money” evils that eBay encourages, and you cash in on everyone’s worse vices. eBay breaks up solid relationships, sends people into financial hell, takes valuable time away from friends and family, and requires many hours standing in line at the post office. Or, $389 in forklift-rental charges.

All Obsessions Start Innocently Enough
After getting in trouble with eBay during my first binge back in 1995, I cut way back and just recently began checking in on type-related ephemera — mostly books, brochures, or other small objects from an era when setting type was considered a skilled craft and represented heavily by trade unions.

I noted an occasional Linotype machine float past the auction listings, but clearly you’d have to be crazy to buy something like that. And even if you were that stupid, it would have to be located in your very back yard and come at just the right moment in your life and be a real bargain to boot (eBay evil feature #1: Everything is a bargain). And then where on earth would you put it? And good heavens, something like that must weigh a ton (eBay evil feature #2: The shipping will always kill you).

But then one day there it was — my eBay bargain of a lifetime, and someone else’s good-riddance to a bunch of rusting iron. With less than 72 hours to consider it, I had to decide whether to bid on a print shop full of very heavy metal stuff located less than 20 miles from my house with a high-bid of only $200 (and no reserve!). I chose to minimize the warning in the fine print: “Successful bidder must remove everything included in this auction.”

“Everything,” in this case consisted of a ATF Kelly 17-inch-x-22-inch book press from 1934 (the biggest single item); a classic turn-of-the-century 10-inch-x-15-inch Chandler and Price platen press; an Intertype Model C line-casting machine with a serial number that places it from 1926; various saddle-stitchers, metal saws, rubber-stamp-making machines, laminators, and foil-stamping machines; and more than 60 drawers and 20 cigar boxes of metal type, type cuts, and — to my surprise — an enormous amount of both wood and metal chunks that serve no other purpose than to fill up space (more on that in a future missive).

As usual, I couldn’t make up my mind on such an important purchase, so my wife Patty did it for me — she placed the winning bid, which inched its way up to $700 before it was over. But I knew the loose type alone was worth many times that amount (eBay evil feature #3: You can always re-sell it and get more). Patty has nerves of steel when it comes to eBay and has calculated the uplink speed of our DSL connection to within nanoseconds so that she can snipe with a margin of victory slimmer than Karen Carpenter.

The Ghosts are in the Machines
I’m going to save the drama and horror of the physical move for another column (fortunately no one was killed), and simply end here by telling you that despite the evils listed above, what I love about eBay is not just that you can find anything you want, but that you can find the people that have what you want and are probably a lot like you.

In this case, the previous owner of my newly-acquired driveway full of stuff (see figure 1) was a very nice man, a Russian Orthodox Pastor of few words (see figure 2) who escaped Stalinist Russia only to set up a small shop in his basement. He printed religious books in Cyrillic for distribution to disenfranchised believers scattered around the world, and dabbled in commercial print work. He had bought it from an old Mission Street printer in San Francisco so the collection of cuts includes both religious and SF icons (see figure 3).

That puts me off to a good start karma-wise, I think, even if my back is now broken, I’m buying WD40 by the case, and I’m wondering if my home-owners policy covers lead poisoning to the city’s water supply.

Figure 1: The shipping will always kill you: My driveway after delivery of my new acquisition.

Figure 2: The previous owner poses in his studio, relieved that several tons of metal will shortly be removed from his property.

Figure 3: God and the Golden Gate Bridge: Both great sources of inspiration.

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