You Can Be Sure a Collector Lives Here--It’s Easy to Read the Signs

Melinda Nelson is hot on the trail of an 8-foot-tall metal Coca-Cola sign to add to a collection that already covers three walls of her home.

“I saw one but didn’t get it. I know there’s another one out there somewhere,” said Nelson, 45, who has decorated her new family room in Orange with anything that says Coke or Coca-Cola on it.

The sign, when she finds it, will join other Coca-Cola items--such as old Coca-Cola bottles, Cola Kid dolls dressed in clothes imprinted with the word Coke, toy Coca-Cola delivery trucks and Coca-Cola neon signs--she has been collecting for the past 12 years.

“We specialize in Coke signs,” said Nelson, who sometimes travels long distances with husband Darrell Nelson, 45, to find the signs, “and everywhere we go, we look for them. There are some signs we don’t have and that spurs us on.”

The Nelsons and about 100 others form the Orange County chapter of Coca-Cola Collectors Club International, which expects to attract about 1,500 members to its July convention in Anaheim. Nelson is the chairman of the 1989 convention.

“I was collecting Coke items for more than a year before I even knew there was a club,” she said. “I just liked the signs and decided to use them to decorate the room.”

The Nelsons go to auctions, garage sales, swap meets, antique shops, estate sales and old-time grocery stores and gas stations to find the signs and other Coke artifacts. Sometimes they get lucky.

“We had to peel the paper off some old signs we bought because they’ve never been used,” she said. “Those are major finds because they were in mint condition.”

They have thousands of dollars invested in their collection, which includes some Coke bottles first used by the Coca-Cola Co. in 1898. The company recently announced it will re-create one of its bottles.

“They’re only going to be available in the East, so we asked some friends to send us a couple of cases when they are issued,” she said, noting that other re-creations are available but that most of the original bottles are in private collections.

There is no direct connection between the Coca-Cola Co. and the Coca-Cola Collectors Club, she said. “We were known as the Cola Clan until the company gave us the right to use their trademark for the club’s name,” she said.

Although the Coca-Cola Co. sponsors dinners and other activities during the annual convention, there is little other connection. “Basically, we’re just using their name,” she said.

While most members join because they are infatuated with collecting, “they soon find it’s great for meeting new friends, and some even find it’s a good way to make an investment,” she said, noting that about a fourth of the members are former Coca-Cola employees.

It was a nice touch to introduce eight members of the Garden Grove United Methodist Church between worship services.

The congregation, friends and relatives gathered in the Fellowship Hall to greet Myrtle Schneider, Grace Perkins, Emma Morgan, Hazel Brewer, Madelia Dixon, Clara Knight, Dixie Murphy and Winifred German and enjoy refreshments. Each of them was honored as a “Super Senior” because each is 90 or older.

The church also has another nine members--Mary Heck, Marie Pearce, Beatrice Taylor, Nina Bayse, Agnes LaFavre, Van Spike, Gladys Blank, Jessie Johnson and Mabel Heggstrom-- in that age bracket who were unable to attend. But each was visited at home.

Niall Donnelly is really a nice kid, but they booed him anyway after he won a baby blue and white 1954 Chevrolet, the main prize in the recent Red Ribbon Drug Awareness Week at Esperanza High School in Anaheim.

But winning wasn’t the reason they booed him.

He is only 14, and the Esperanza freshman won’t be old enough to drive the classic car by himself until January, 1990.

Laguna Beach resident Al Maier, 58, has been playing Santa Claus for 15 years and donates his fees to charity. But before he dons his Santa suit, the retired Marine Corps pilot spends much of the year collecting and fixing old toys he gives to a needy family at Christmas time.

He and his Marine buddies did the same thing in the service. “It was an early form of the Toys for Tots

program that the Marines run today,”

he said.

This year Maier will make an unorthodox first appearance as Santa at 11 a.m. Saturday in a sailboat at the Mission Viejo Market-on-the-Lake parking lot.

Acknowledgments: The Orange County Council of the Boy Scouts of America has named potential Hall of Fame baseball players Don Sutton of Laguna Hills and Bob Boone of Villa Park as recipients of the 1988 “Good Scout Award” for exemplifying the spirit of Scouting in their personal and professional lives.