In early April, as Spring was springing and we were shaking off some of the Covid-crazies, we received an email from Cynthia Kindgren in Rockford, Illinois…she asked if we’d be interested in her recently-deceased brother’s collection of taxi cab license plates…over the years we’ve had several folks describe their available collections to us, including military, nature, sports, and colleges, but never taxi cabs!….so we exchanged a number of additional emails and learned the plates, all 1,000 or so of them, were in Phoenix, Arizona!…Cynthia shared a number of photos with us, and in short order an offer was made and accepted…then, she shared Page 2 of the story!…her brother Dan had been an avid collector of Checker Cabs, the icon of taxi service vehicles…at his passing, he had about 30 of them on his lot in Phoenix…of course I shared all of this with my wife, who just looked at me and shook her head, perhaps thankful that I’ve limited my collecting appetite to just license plates!…we’re including a picture of Dan and one of his favorite cabs, as well as a link to the Checker Cab Club website and several nice articles about him…as with license plate collecting, unique relationships develop, as happened with Dan and Joe Pollard…Joe was also a robust Checker Cab collector, passing in 2019 and leaving his spouse and Dan to redistribute tons of parts and more than 120 cabs!…on the Great American Plates website we have a Personal Collections section, to which we will be adding the Dan Smith Taxi Cab License Plates Collection, which will include some of his more unique plates from around the world…we’ll also be offering many others for sale under the Taxi TYPE button on the GAP homepage…to Cynthia, and especially Dan, let’s take it around town one more time, keep the meter running, and enjoy the ride!
