COLUMN: The Carillon Flashback December 1, 1993 – Retired builder needs one more licence plate for his collection

Simon Reimer will probably rest a little easier once he has added just one more licence plate to his considerable collection.

It’s not as if he doesn’t have enough to fill an entire wall of his garage. He has plenty to do that, and many more duplicate plates are stored away to use as traders with others who collect automobile licence plates as a hobby.

In nearly a quarter of a century, the retired Steinbach home builder spent some of his spare time collecting plates from all over North America, the only state or province to elude him was the tiny commonwealth of Massachusetts on the Atlantic coast.

Collecting license plates was a natural extension of Reimer’s travels all over the continent, which he enjoyed during his long career, first as a home builder and then a further 27 years in home and material sales for C.T. Loewen and Sons.

One of Reimer’s most distinctive and rare plates is from the State of Oklahoma, a special issue used only on the governor’s car and bearing the imprint “Tax exempt”.

Reimer notes he has visited all states and provinces, except Alaska and Hawaii, including Massachusetts, but was unable to obtain a plate during his stay there.

He said many plates have been acquired through correspondence with other hobbyists, while a few have fallen into his hands almost by accident. On one occasion, for instance, a wrecking truck driver gave him permission to remove a plate from a car being towed away from an accident.

As for that single missing plate, Reimer said he was more than happy to discuss a trade with anyone having a spare plate from Massachusetts.

He didn’t have long to wait for replies to his request. A week after the front page story in the Dec. 1 issue of The Carillon, Reimer received a flood of responses.

He said he received several calls from fellow collectors with a spare Massachusetts plate. One caller even offered to obtain a plate, explaining to Reimer he would be travelling to that state in the near future.

But Reimer said what surprised him most was a comment from the desk clerk at the Comfort Inn in Grand Forks, North Dakota, who told him she recognized him from the newspaper photograph.

“I guess the paper really gets around.”

– with files from Peter Dyck