There's a certain kind of phone call we love getting around here. It starts with, "We were cleaning out the old barn, and there's this rusty sign nailed up on the wall..."
Don't pull it down with a crowbar. Don't hose it off. Just call us first.
Old advertising signs — the tin, porcelain, and enamel signs that used to hang on every country store, filling station, and tobacco warehouse in Eastern North Carolina — are some of the most collected items in America right now. And this region is full of them. For most of the last century this was working farm country, and every crossroads store from Tarboro to Kinston was covered in signs. The tobacco towns — Wilson, Farmville, Rocky Mount, and the warehouses in between — had them by the hundreds.
What We're Looking For
Gas & oil. Signs from filling stations and motor oil companies — pump plates, curb signs, the big porcelain station signs, oil can racks, and even the cans themselves. Gas and oil advertising is the strongest category in the hobby, period.
Tobacco. This is tobacco country, and tobacco advertising is everywhere here — tin signs, porcelain signs, thermometers, door pushes (the "push" and "pull" plates from store doors), and warehouse signage.
Soft drinks. Soda signs, button signs, thermometers, calendars, and coolers. The big national soft drink brands made signs by the thousands, and the older and more unusual, the better.
Everything else. Feed and seed, farm equipment, flour, ice cream, beer, bread, chewing gum, veterinary remedies — if a company made it, they made a sign for it, and somebody collects it.
What Makes a Sign Valuable?
Three things: age, graphics, and condition. Porcelain enamel signs — the heavy ones with the glass-like finish, usually pre-1960 — generally bring more than plain tin. Signs with pictures (a car, a person, a product) beat plain-text signs. And condition matters a lot, which brings us to the most important thing in this whole post:
A Word About the Fakes
Reproduction signs have been made for decades and sold in gift shops and flea markets. Some are marked as reproductions; many aren't. If your sign came off a barn or out of a store your family actually ran, odds are good it's the real thing. If it was bought at a beach shop in 1995, probably not. Either way, bring it in — we can tell the difference, and there's no charge and no embarrassment for asking. Half our job is telling people what they have.
We also buy the smaller advertising that went along with the signs: clocks, thermometers, calendars, store displays, counter jars, crates, and tins. Country store items from this region sell especially well because collectors love pieces with local history attached — and if that's your thing, our local history guide covers even more.
If you've got one sign, bring it to the shop at 101 S Main Street in downtown Robersonville — we'll take a look, and if we make a deal, you walk out with payment in hand the same day. If you've got a barn or a packhouse full, don't wrestle it all into a truck: we make house calls across Eastern North Carolina, we look at everything together, we make one fair offer with no cherry-picking, and we pay you on the spot.