How I started collecting by Alan Chandler.

                 Collecting Petroliana for me was an accident!

    It happened about twelve years ago after I had completed building a large new garage. There was space for eight cars but loads of bare brick walls. I decided I needed some old enamel signs to add  atmosphere.

   My wife and I headed off to the John Atkinson auction with the catalogue marked up with all our proposed purchases. We arrived to a room packed with several hundred people and prices reaching five times the catalogue guide price. We didn't buy a single sign! However we did return with three old petrol pumps.
   I bought them as "restored", but soon realised I could probably do better. I spent the next couple of months doing them again and found it most enjoyable. Time to try and buy some more pumps. After a couple of years I had about twenty pumps mostly fitted with reproduction globes. Initially my only interest was restoring pumps but gradually it developed into the associated enamel signs, original globes, tins and Petroliana.
  I next bought a collection of about ten pumps imported from Australia. I didn't really know what I was doing but it seemed a good idea at the time. Shortly afterwards I received a phone call from Theo Van der Zon, who had also been on the trail of this collection of pumps. I think I was only able to buy them because Theo had been given the wrong telephone number!
  However, as so often happens in the Petroliana collecting circle, the best thing to come from buying the Australian pumps was subsequently meeting Theo. He has a great collection of pumps, (even then 300 plus), and a vast experience of the subject. Later we travelled to Hershey in America to their massive autojumble & still today we share a stand twice a year at Beaulieu.
  As my interest developed into the wider sphere of Petroliana I attended most of the national events buying original globes, enamel signs, tins & associated junk, (as described by my friends!)  Mike and Jackie Berry were regular suppliers, not just of items, but of knowledge about the entire hobby.
  Whilst I had initially subscribed to magazines and bought the books, they were all based on American items and brands which are mostly quite different from British products. There was almost nothing published about the British side of the hobby and research information was hard to find. Gradually by meeting and talking to other collectors I assembled the start of some information about the pumps I was restoring. My collection by this time had grown to about 40 pumps with globes, signs etc. It was time to share with others what I had enjoyed doing. I decided to publish "Petroliana...The First Book"!
  It's now eleven years since I started collecting and it's been a pretty full time hobby. My garage has been extended three times, now contains about 120 pumps, 600 enamel signs, 200 original globes, hundreds of tins and in total a couple of thousand items. I have now written and published three books on our hobby and a website, www.petroliana.co.uk .
  The best thing I have gained though, is meeting some great people, enthusiastic, interesting and prepared to share a hobby with others.