Words and Photos by Carl Foleen.
Back on Saturday, February 8th, 2025, about twenty JOCO club members met up at WSCO Petroleum Co. down in the industrial part of NW Portland for a guided tour of the WSCO Petroleum Museum. WSCO is a fully operating independent petroleum company and the museum is housed in a couple of large rooms there plus all of the wall space in the entire building.
Our host and tour guide, Glenn Zerkle is the creator (and curator) of the collection. He has been collecting signs, gas pumps, tire inflators and almost everything related to the petroleum industry for over 40 years. For Glenn, the search and bargaining for the piece is the real joy. That’s why he has sold most of three collections and the one we saw was his fourth!
Things have changed quite a bit since he started. Back in the beginning people would say “What do you want that old pump for. It doesn’t even work?” He could get signs and such for very little and sometimes for free if he would haul it away.
Some years later a lot more people have gotten interested in these old nostalgic pieces-especially from companies that are long gone.
Prices have steadily climbed. Good pieces can still be found in old buildings, small towns, and country barns from time to time but most pieces are in the hands of collectors. That makes bargains hard to come by. Glenn’s most valuable sign is now worth over one million. That’s a lot of Green Stamps for one that hung on a post outside a gas station!
Yeah, my mom and grandmother were avid collectors of green stamps – handed out with your purchase of merchandise from their station back “in the day.” If you collected enough books of stamps, you could trade them in for a set of towels or a casserole dish or all kinds of other stuff from the gas company’s catalogue.
Which reminds me, we didn’t see any of those. Humph, guess Glenn’s collection is not as complete as I thought.
Well, cutting him a little slack for that oversight, we had a great time there and his knowledge of all these pieces is remarkable.
