"Phillumeny" is the collecting of matchboxes, matchbox labels, and matchcovers. The oldest branch of the hobby is the collecting of the removable labels from matchboxes. This started in the latter 1800's and is still the main focus in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Later, matchboxes appeared with the text printed directly on the box. Thus the boxes, themselves, then became collectible.

 

In North America, and to a lesser extent South America and Western Europe, the focus of the hobby is heavily weighted toward matchcovers. Invented by American Joshua Pusey in 1892, Diamond Match Co. bought the rights to the matchbook in 1894...and the rest is history!

 

American label collectors gradually switched their attention to matchbooks instead of matchbox labels, so much so, in fact, that labels are not popular with today's collectors. By the early 1930s, the first organized matchcover clubs began appearing. None of these survived, however, but they eventually did give impetus to the birth of RMS.

 

In 1941, Henry Rathkamp and a handful of collectors founded what soon came to be known as the Rathkamp Matchcover Society. Today, it is the "parent" organization for phillumenists throughout North America. Under the unofficial umbrella of RMS, there are currently some 25 regional and specialty clubs around the US and Canada.

 

There are also clubs in England, Germany, Holland, France, Portugal, Romania, Malta, Russia, Slovakia, South Africa, Australia, India, and Hong Kong, but in almost all of these foreign clubs the collecting centers on boxes and labels.