I hate to disappoint those of you who asked for stories about how we got some of our collectibles, but honestly...a lot of them came from eBay.

This ashtray didn't come from eBay, so I'll tell you the story. In 2006 I lost my bookkeeping job with Aunt Millie's bakery, when they moved the route accounting to the main office in Indianapolis, IN. My husband said "don't worry about it...take a little time for yourself" (isn't he the best husband ever? I think he is!). One summer day, on his day off, we went for a drive and stopped at an antique store in Marshall, MI. We were looking around, and found this ashtray on the shelf. Something was sitting on top of it, so we couldn't see the whole thing. I can remember almost standing on my head, to look at it through the bottom of the glass shelf that it was sitting on! I was able to figure out that it said "Commercial Hotel" so we asked a clerk to come over and show it to us. With the ashtray in hand, we were able to read that it said Elko on it! But we'd never seen anything from the Commercial Hotel that didn't have the White King or the rancher logo?? We bought the ashtray and when we got home I sent a picture of it to Mark Englebretson. He confirmed that it was an old logo from the Commercial, and he sent us the matchbook cover, with the same logo.

Part 2 of the story is NCR. The other thing we bought at the antique store was a little hand-made book that said "Elsie's cookies" on it. Someone had taken standard sheets of paper and cut it into quarters, with one recipe on each quarter. They punched holes on the left edge of each recipe and used the little doohickeys that you put through holes and spread the prongs, to hold the pages together. Anyway...that little handmade cookie recipe book has a recipe for chocolate chip cookies...and they're the best cookies ever!

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in 2002 we visited the Commercial Hotel and took these pictures