The mercury is inching past the 95-degree mark and you`re wondering why the weatherman, who had promised temps in the mid-80s, can`t seem to get the temperature right.
If weathermen have lost their credibility with you, try checking with Algonquin businessman Dave Daniels.
Daniels has more than 500 thermometers in his collection, and chances are at least one of them will be right.
Some of those thermometers advertise beer, whiskey, funeral parlors, banks, trucking companies, coal, grain and feed companies. Some are antiques, and some are just ordinary.
Thermometers advertising soft drinks-from Pepsi and Squirt to Dad`s Old Fashioned Root Beer, Kayo and Coca-Cola-make up a large part of his collection. ”The oldest Coke thermometer is not the bottle shaped one,”
Daniels says. ”The cigar-shaped, the one I have, is the oldest Coke thermometer made.”
Among the most unusual items in his collection are an all-porcelain thermometer, one shaped like a scale and those featuring two-digit telephone numbers. Pieces of corn peek through a window of the Outogamie Coop Hybrid thermometer. A mailbox with a thermometer on it probably reminded some hard working mailman about the pleasant as well as unpleasant aspects of his job.
All of them have brought Dave Daniels some measure of fame.
Wayne Harris, president of the Thermometer Collectors Club of America and the authority quoted in Schroeder`s Antiques Price Guide, notes that the collecting of advertising thermometers has been popular for years but that Daniels` collection is most unusual because it is so large.
In fact, according to Harris, Daniels has one of the largest collections of thermometers in the United States.
Anita Gold, antiques and collectibles columnist for The Tribune, agrees with Harris. Although collecting thermometers is not an unusual hobby, having a collection of 500 advertising thermometers puts Daniels on the list as a major collector.
But then a large and unusual collection seems appropriate, for Daniels himself is an unusual man, one who is an entrepreneur and collector, affable and energetic.
Chicago-born Daniels, 60, owns the franchise for Remax Realty in Algonquin, Lake in the Hills, Crystal Lake, Cary and Fox River Grove. He has lived in the Algonquin area since 1968 when he moved there from Chicago where he had been in the carpentry business.
Yvonne Beer, executive vice president of the McHenry County Association of Realtors, has known Daniels for 20 years but didn`t know he collected thermometers.
”But it doesn`t surprise me. Dave is an interesting man and very entrepreneurial,” Beer says. ”He is a logical common-sense sort of guy who takes a difficult concept, comes in, and hits the nail right on the head. I have great respect for him because he can see the potential and is not afraid to take a chance.” Because no one had ever bought a real estate franchise in the county, ”Everyone was laughing at him when he bought the Remax franchise in McHenry County, but it has been very successful.”
Indeed, Daniels` life could be called a typical Horatio Alger story, only years ago Daniels peddled sandwiches instead of newspapers.
He sold soft drinks and sandwiches to factory workers, making a profit of one cent on each item. ”It was hard work making a penny profit on a sandwich,” says Daniels, who still has the cart he used.
Before he was out of his teens, he worked on the railroad and hauled coal simultaneously. In the early `80s, when real estate was slow, he opened an Antique Mall in Algonquin.
Daniels, who is divorced, has two daughters and two granddaughters. One daughter lives in New Jersey; another, who collects antique automobiles with her husband who is a lawyer, lives in Arizona.
Daniels` fascination with thermometers began in when he moved to Algonquin. A wooden thermometer was hanging on the chimney of a house he was trying to sell. The oldest in his collection, it was one of the first that the Algonquin State Bank had made when it began in 1902. Inscribed with ”25,000 Surplus, 25,000 Capital,” it told the customers of the bank`s assets.
”I thought it was interesting that they had $25,000 capital and $25,000 surplus,” Daniels said, ”so I started collecting thermometers with two-digit phone numbers, soft drinks, thermometers with products in them like coal and corn. People would drop them off and give them to me. It was a lot of fun buying, selling and trading.”
Perhaps that bank thermometer brought him good luck, because he sold that house again recently-for the third time. It`s the thermometer that hangs on his office wall, reminding him about his start in the real estate business.
At one time, thermometers from Daniels` collection hung on a wall in his office. When he remodeled, they were put in boxes and stored at his home in Lake Barrington Shores.
”I really never stopped collecting,” Daniels said. ”It`s getting really hard to find originals. I don`t display them anymore. I would sell them to someone who would appreciate them but there`s too many sentimental reasons. … I had so much fun collecting them.”
Each thermometer has a story of its own. One antique thermometer he found in a schoolhouse. It was encased in cast-iron grillwork to keep the curious fingers of the students from playing with it.
”I wanted that thermometer because it reminded me of my school days,”
Daniels says. ”There was a thermometer just like that one outside the principal`s office. Everytime I got in trouble, I had to walk by that thermometer. That thermometer was my conscience.”
A Lill Coal thermometer with pieces of coal in it reminds Daniels of a job he had when he was 15 years old.
”We bought coal from the Lill Coal Company and delivered it to people`s homes,” he recalls. ”Most of the time it was so cold my hands froze gripping the handle of a 55-cent bag of coal. We would deliver the coal, take out the cinders and stoke the furnace for the customers.”
There are other thermometers that remind Daniels of his Chicago roots, of growing up near Armitage and Halsted. There`s the Chicago World`s Fair of 1934, a silver neck thermometer with Chicago`s skyline etched in the metal. There are thermometers from Chicago-based firms such as Ryser Bros. Cheese and Murphy Miles Fuel Oil with four digit phone numbers: Rogers Park 8300 and Superior 4090.
Long-time friend and business associate Diana Wood wanted to get Daniels a thermometer from her hometown of Buchanan, Mich.
”Every time I made a trip back I would inquire if any of the businesses in town had an advertising thermometer, old or new. I remember asking the C&C Cooperative and the answer was always `no`.
”I had looked for a long time and had just about given up when one Sunday at the Kane County (Flea Market) in St. Charles I saw a C&C Cooperative thermometer from Buchanan,” Wood says.
She tracked down Daniels, because she was so excited about her find that she couldn`t bargain for it. ”I couldn`t negotiate with the seller. I would have given them anything for it. Dave walked over and calmly bargained for the thermometer,” Wood recalls.
”Nobody can wheel and deal like he can. That`s why he likes to collect thermometers. It is very similar to real estate.”
One of the largest thermometers Daniels owned was a three-foot by three-foot clock and thermometer. It was on the wall by his swimming pool at his Algonquin home. He sold that piece of property and the thermometer along with it.
He has thermometers from many different states, but he says, ”It would be interesting to have a thermometer from every state.”
His interest in collecting thermometers at antiques stores, garage sales and flea markets eventually led to an interest in all antiques. Frustrated because he could never see anything in antiques shops because one item was piled on top of another, he decided to open an antiques shop where the customers could see the merchandise. During a slow period in the real estate business in the early 1980s, he bought the old Ben Franklin store in downtown Algonquin and turned it into the Algonquin Antique Mall.
Daniels closed the operation when the economy began to pick up. ”Real estate got too good,” Daniels said. ”I didn`t have time for it. I had an old-timer running it; he left and I couldn`t find anyone to run it.”
When Daniels was actively trading thermometers, he had a Daniels Realty thermometer made for trading. The value of that thermometer has multiplied because collecting thermometers has becoming increasingly difficult, according to Richard Porter of Onset, Mass. Porter, who has been called the
”thermometer man of Cape Cod,” has 894 thermometers in his collection, which he began in 1972.
Thermometer Club president Harris, who lives in Sacramento, Calif., says he believes that along with himself and Porter, Daniels has one of the largest collections in the United States.
According to Porter, ”Once a thermometer is broken . . . once the tube breaks, you may as well throw it way. That`s why there are so few antique thermometers around; they broke and were discarded.”
Which is what makes a large collection so interesting.
Daniels says he has never paid more than $20 for any of the thermometers in his collection. Thermometer prices are based on age, ornateness and whether the tube is intact and can range from $5 to $200. Damaged, missing or substitute parts bring down the value substantially.
Most American-made thermometers were manufactured between 1875 and 1940. When modern manufacturing took over the production of thermometers, many lost their distinctiveness, according to experts.
Although thermometers of equal beauty and craftsmanship were produced in Europe, they have not appeared in this country in any great numbers. American- made thermometers still dominate the market.
According to an article by George Caswell in the New York-Pennsylvania Collector, few large collections of thermometers are known to exist. Taylor Instruments (now Sybron Corp.) preserved many of its manufactured items. The largest collection is in the Rochester Museum and Science Center in Rochester, N.Y., the city where the Taylor firm began in 1851.
The Corning Glass Center Museum of Glass in Corning, N.Y., has the world`s largest assortment of clinical thermometers. Not only were they used for taking the body temperatures of humans, but the temperatures of bears, whales, crayfish, pythons, earthworms, elephants and locusts.
The idea of a thermometer can be traced to the Greeks who knew liquids expanded and contracted with temperature change. They used that information to open temple doors as early as 100 B.C. Credit for inventing the thermometer goes to Galileo, who produced a thermoscope, which consisted of a large glass bulb with a long narrow open-mounted neck inverted over a container of colored water, alcohol or mercury. The thermometer as we know it today was built by Gabriel D. Fahrenheit in 1714.
Inexpensive thermometers for home use came at the turn of the century. They came in tin cases and initially sold for a few dollars. Most American thermometers were manufactured and produced by Taylor. They are still the leading producer of thermometers.
