Every year, people burn up and throw away some 5 trillion matches all over the world. In the United States, it wasn’t too long ago that we made and used 800 billion matches a year. At its peak, some 12,500,000,000 matchbooks circulated during the course of one year in this country. The first phosphorous friction matches were manufactured in the United States in 1836. By 1875, the number of match manufacturers in the U.S. reached a high of 79 Joshua Pussey invented the matchbook in 1892 (although there is some debate on that) When Diamond Match Co. purchased the rights to the matchbook in 1894, the American match industry, as we know it today, was born. The first matchcover “ad” appeared in 1894-95 with the appearance of the famous “Piso” matchcover. In 1896, a very famous hand-written matchcover appeared, when the manager of the Mendelson Opera Company bought 100 blank matchbooks and had hand-printed messages and pictures of the opera’s leading players put on them. There is only one copy of this matchbook left today. It is owned by the Diamond International and was originally insured for $25,000, although that figure may be higher now. There are only four domestic match manufacturers left in the U.S. today. RMS is the largest and oldest matchcover collecting organization in the world. There are currently some 29 matchcover/matchbox collecting clubs in the U.S. and Canada At last count, there were at least 18 other such clubs in 13 different countries around the world. Back to RMS Home Page