My friend Gabby is a collector.  He has had several great collections in his lifetime.  It’s funny, though – he can walk away from a collection he has spent 30 years amassing.  Just like that.

His girlfriend Emily is something approaching a genius when it comes to music.  Gabby could appreciate what she was up to but he couldn’t keep up.  To put it mildly.

When she plunged into different styles of accordions – button boxes and squeeze boxes and hell’s bellows – Gabby started collecting record albums showing accordions on the covers.  He has kept  it up today.  And unlike many of his collections, he has not given this one away, not yet at least.

Gabby grew up in Nekoosa, Wisconsin.

Once a year his father drove the family up to Superior to the World of Accordions Museum.

It was a four-hour drive, but a trip that Gabby remembered fondly.

Especially lunch at Sammy’s Pizza and the Elbo Room.  It was one of the few times a year that his family ate out.  And then, at young Gabby’s insistence, they’d drive 17 miles west to Cloquet to see the gas station designed by Frank Lloyd Wright:

The point being – he had a soft spot for accordions.  Emily was playing them.  He was a collector.  He started collecting accordion album covers.

He sent me photos of most of his collection and I share it here.

This is a large collection.  There are a lot of photos.  You might get bored.  I didn’t, but you might.

Oh.  My.  God.  Exhausting.  Bordeline crazy.  I showed the photos that Gabby sent to my friend.  He allowed as he did not have a lot to add to the conversation, but that he did have some clippings that might interest me.  This was the first file:

This was, it turned out, only the beginning.   The second file had advertisements and comics.  Here are a few.

There were many more.  Guess who gave these clippings to him?  Of course.  Gabby the generous collector.  Yes, very intersting.   The last file had a single clipping:

I kind of expected that.   He then did a double-take.  “Gabby forgot one.  I don’t think there’s an accordion played on the album, but the cover – check it out!”

But – back to the Gabby collection – what did he think?