| Bill Retskin has written three books and a white paper on matchcovers, including The Matchcover Collector's Resource Book and Price Guide, The Matchcover Collector's Price Guide, 1st Edition, The Matchcover Collector's Price Guide, 2nd Edition and Matchcovers of the 1939 New York World's Fair. | |
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As a student at the University of Miami in the early 1960s, he studied photojournalism with Wilson Hicks, LIFE's first photo editor. He was photo editor of his college newspaper, wrote for several college publications, and has edited over a dozen hobby and related newsletters and bulletins in the last 25 years. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Retskin used his camera for photojournalism, weddings, school photography, and general newspaper and magazine assignment work. Most of his early training in pre-press preparation, copy, layout, and composition came as a consultant to high school and college yearbook staffs throughout the State of Florida. He helped compile, photograph and edit over 20 school yearbooks during this period. In the late 1960s, Retskin spent a summer with Ansel Adams at his Yosemite National Park studio, studying landscape and portrait photography, printing, composition, and design. Teachers included Imogene Cunningham, Bret Weston, Minor White, Gerry Sharpe and others.
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| In the 1970s, he produced numerous press releases and company catalogues for his own businesses. In 1986, in answer to a need from within the matchcover collecting hobby, Retskin started The Front Striker Bulletin, a matchcover collecting publication for the serious collector. Since 1992, The Front Striker Bulletin merged with The American Matchcover Collecting Club, a worldwide collecting organization dedicated to the study of matchcover industry history, the hobby, and matchcovers.
As a collector since the early 1970s, Retskin's eclectic interests have led him to collect pocket knives, cigarette and cigar lighters, hotel advertising tins and signs, gavels, hay and meat hooks, cast iron miniatures, and mechanical advertising pencils. As a microcomputer analyst in the 1980s, he designed database applications and wrote several instruction manuals on mainframe and microcomputer language. In late 1998, eBay and the InterNet became a prominent part of his work with matchcovers. As of the re-opening of this WebSite, he has listed over 18,000 items on ebay, 99.5% of them, matchcovers and match books. Retskin is single and lives in Asheville, North Carolina. |
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