Our little #Ottawa Christmas dinner seems to have caught fire! It was only a few years ago that iffy weather and various other holiday commitments meant that only five of of us were around the table. There’d be a little show-and-tell, but aside from a small handful of plates to trade, there wasn’t much transacting going on. But it was still a nice evening out, and it was great to catch up with some local collector friends. It wasn’t a “thing” back then. But times have changed

I haven’t lived in Ottawa all my life. I consider myself a transplant, although I’m shortly coming up on 20 years here, so I suppose I’m as much an Ottawa resident as the next guy on the street. In my conversations with Ottawa-area plate geeks and armchair historians, I learned a couple of years ago about a fabled car junkyard, buried in a forest, with some wrecks as old as the 1930s. I guess it’s no big secret, but no one really said exactly where it was, except that it was

I went out to dinner at a local bar and grill the other night, and a swap meet broke out (a fight almost broke out over in the bar area, too, but cooler heads appeared to prevail). I was e-mailed by local collector Dave Grant about getting some plate geeks together for dinner over the Christmas holiday. I RSVPed, as did several other collectors, many of whom I rarely see. Seven collectors braved the frigid cold snap and met at the restaurant: Dave, Alan Bones, Eric Vettrorett