Cashing In on a Hobby : Unemployed Collector Is Forced to Sell Old Citrus Labels

Fantastic images in vibrant colors covered the Santa Paula kitchen table. Pictures of elephants named Jumbo, of clusters of just-picked pansies, of mountainscapes and riverscapes and scowling Native Americans with long black braids hanging over their shoulders.

And on each 12-by-12-inch piece of paper, in the lower left corner, was painted a small orange or lemon stamped “Sunkist.”

“Look at these; aren’t they beautiful?” marveled Joe Morales, owner of the citrus packing labels, waving his arms over the display.

Years ago, until just after World War II, citrus packinghouses used to paste such cheery paper art pieces on their wooden fruit crates, hoping to entice customers back east with tantalizing snatches of sunny, exotic California. Today, with the packinghouses stamping their corporate logos on cardboard boxes, the labels have become valuable collector’s pieces.

Morales, an out-of-work packinghouse foreman, began his love affair with labels in the late ‘50s, when he spotted some extras in a packinghouse back room. Over the years, his collection--all of which he picked up for free or traded for--grew to more than 3,000. He says their fanciful images take him to other worlds.

“What’s a pitcher got to do with lemons?” Morales asked, picking up a label depicting a serving pitcher and holding it up for inspection. “What’s a silver cord got to do with oranges? Nothing--they used beauty to attract business.”

When Morales started his collection some 30-odd years ago, he figured that someday it would be worth something. He never stopped to figure how much because, in his heart, he never really planned to sell them. A few weeks ago, however, he realized that it was time to put some on the market.

Since he lost his job in the Central Valley town of Ivanhoe in early 1991, laid off with nearly every other employee at the packinghouse following a devastating December freeze, Morales, 57, can’t find a job anywhere.

Two months ago, Morales, who grew up around Santa Paula, came home to live with his mother and look for a job in Ventura County. Although he still receives partial retirement from Sunkist, part of his $250 monthly pension goes to his two children, Joe Jr., 6, and Sonya, 4, who live with his ex-wife in Fresno.

With his finances getting extremely pinched, Morales sat down at the kitchen table this month and penned an ad to run in the local paper, announcing a citrus label collection up for sale.

“I hate to sell them; I really hate to sell them,” he said. “It hurts me.”

But the extra money helps. The $60 a collector shelled out the other day for one of Morales’ favorite sets of three covered his life insurance payment and gave him money left over to pay for gas, so he can drive around and look for jobs.

“I love this label,” Morales told a visitor, gesturing to one covered in a bright Scotch plaid and adorned with the image of a pink-cheeked girl named “Annie Laurie” reclining on white flowers. “I don’t know why, exactly. I just like to sit down and admire it.”

Eagerly, he reached over to grasp another colored piece depicting a folded pink fabric swatch. “Look at this--’Satin.’ Now watch this.” Morales pulled out the other labels in the set from the plastic envelopes where he stores them. “You’ve got ‘Satin,’ ‘Velvet,’ ‘Linen.’ ”

He smiled. “I get all excited when I play around with these things.”

Each label represents a different brand of oranges sold by the packinghouses and, as with any collector’s item, the labels are priced both for their scarcity and their trendiness.

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Bob Taafe, a Manhattan Beach resident and second vice president of the 200-member Citrus Label Society, can rattle off label values like baseball fans tick off their favorite players’ batting statistics.

“There’s one called ‘I Grow These Myself,’ showing Uncle Sam wearing a top hat and tails and holding a bunch of oranges,” Taafe said. “It’s from 1898 and there’s only 12 known to exist. The last one that sold went for approximately $1,500.”

Taafe is familiar with Santa Paula packinghouse labels. Some, like one depicting Santa Claus, are fairly common.

“There’s the blond senorita, the Santa, of course, and others were ‘Endurance,’ with a picture of a camel, and another one, ‘Strength,’ ” he said. “Right now, a label like ‘Endurance’ or ‘Strength,’ it’ll go for anywhere from $20 to $25.”

The fanciful pictures were supposed to equate oranges in grocers’ minds with freshness and the legendary paradise that others in colder climes assumed was California, said Nicholas Couley, Claremont-based owner of an advertising agency that markets citrus label reproductions.

“People would have visions of palm trees and sun and skies and blue,” he said. “They would say, ‘Oh, I wish I was there.’ And it was like, ‘Well, you can’t be there, but look at these labels.’ And the labels would also make people think, ‘Oh, these oranges must be really good for us.’ ”

Couley said the crates went out of use near the end of World War II, when wood was scarce and expensive. Packinghouses looking for a cheaper option switched to corrugated cardboard with the label stamped on the side, and have stayed with that method ever since.

For years, the labels were free for the taking, lying pell-mell in packinghouse storerooms and, in the minds of many packinghouse managers, taking up precious space.

Kenneth Creason, president and general manager of the Fillmore-Piru Citrus Assn., and himself an avid collector with more than 4,000 labels, said local packinghouses found them so cumbersome that they buried piles of them along the bank of the Santa Clara River.

“They were too bulky to burn,” he explained.

Creason went out to the riverbed recently to dig the labels up, but they had molded beyond restoration, he said.

Nowadays, collectors say, packinghouses keep their collections in vaults.

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Collectors often buy special, photo-album-type volumes in which to store the thin, fragile labels. But Morales can’t afford the albums, so he substitutes with clear plastic envelopes that he tapes up until they are the right size.

Nearly all of Morales’ thousands of labels, dating back as far as 1918, are in excellent condition. The colors are bright and hardly a corner is creased.

“One day I just said, ‘You know, mom, I need the money,’ ” he said. “I need a car to look for jobs. I’ve just got to get rid of some of these things.”