The First Debt: How a $20 Loan Shaped My Life
- joe Tonelli
- Sep 3
- 8 min read
I sat down to write a blog post and found myself on a healing journey. This is the story of my first purchase 47 years ago, and the lessons that stick with me long after the item is gone. It's more personal than I intended, but it's the truth of this business.
Hello and welcome to my blog. My name is Joe Tonelli, and I have been in the antiques and collectibles business for my entire life.
My journey actually started before I was born. I grew up in a family of collectors. My father has been an avid collector and dealer in North American hunting and fishing collectibles since the early 1960s. He and my mother would attend local yard sales, farm auctions, flea markets and—in the early days—specialized decoy shows and hunting fairs across the Midwest of the United States.
I actually attended many of these before I was born, when my mother was still pregnant with me. Unlike most families, our vacations were decoy shows at Holiday Inns and hotels. My dad would conduct business with other collectors set up in their hotel rooms, usually a day or two before the actual show took place in the ballrooms.
It was a wonderful experience. Most of these shows were at Holiday Inns or "Holidomes"—which were innovative indoor recreational complexes designed to attract families by offering a "fun center" experience. These facilities typically included tropical-themed décor, swimming pools (often kidney-shaped), mini-golf, billiard tables, and tiki bars, functioning as a one-stop vacation destination within the hotel.
One of the most memorable was the Point Mouillee Hunting Festival near Detroit, MI, where a decoy show was held in the nearby Holidome before the festival. It was a week-long adventure. I remember my dad would rent a small conference room with tables set up to display all the wooden duck decoys he would bring to sell before the actual show in the ballroom started. He would bring so many that he transported them in used 55-gallon drums!
The festival wasn't just a market; it was a hub for artists. They held a contemporary decoy carving competition every year. My mother, was a very talented young artist and one of the first female decoy carvers in the country. The first few times, she couldn't enter because the competition was only open to men. So, my dad would enter her beautifully crafted carvings as his own for her.
I remember what a big deal it was when the rules finally changed, and she was able to enter on her own—a young woman in the middle of a room full of men carvers. It was a quiet but significant victory.
My sisters and I would save quarters for the entire year to play video games in the arcade. My mother would have a well-stocked cooler to make lunches and snacks. Going out to dinner was a rare treat—I can still remember the excitement of a trip to Ponderosa Steakhouse or McDonald's. One year my younger sister spent so much time in the pool her hair turned green from all the chemicals used in it.
It was such a large gathering of collectors that the Holiday Inn would be fully booked, and those who did not make their reservation a year in advance had to stay at the nearby Howard Johnson's hotel. My dad and the other collectors would travel between the two venues.
On one of these trips to the Howard Johnson’s, I went with my dad. I couldn’t have been more than 7 or 8 years old. While shopping the rooms my dad bought a Mason Decoy Factory Challenge Grade Hen Bufflehead, even at the time a treasure find and very rare. No one knew what is was but my dad, which was usually the case. After purchasing it, he handed it to me and said, “Hold on to this.” I still recall someone saying are you nuts letting that kid hold that! But that was my dad, he always gave me the respect that most kids didn’t get and took a stand for me many times as a young boy in a man’s world of collecting.
Another time I remember I was on a trip with my dad to see a dear family friend, decoy collector and carver Charlie Moore in DeKalb, IL (I will save Charlie’s story for another post). On the way there, my dad, who could never pass up a junk shop, stopped at a place alongside the road in St. Charles, IL. As usual we both got out and just walked into the shop, not seeing the “No Kids” sign in the window. We were almost halfway through the shop when the owner came up to my dad yelling, can’t you read the sign saying no kids! I will never forget my dad’s fearless and bold response to the man saying “that kid knows more about this stuff than you ever will” in the mist of obscenities they were exchanging.
Little did I know at the time, but I was learning and experiencing things that would serve me for my entire life not only in the collectibles world but in my professional career in construction, which I am now retired from as a senior superintendent. I received an education that could only be obtained from experience. At this time, there were no books, no reference guides, no internet searches, no cell phones. Relationships and deals were all made face to face and with trust, your word and a handshake.
My parents weren't the only collectors in the family. My grandfather, a World War II veteran and Buick dealer in the small Illinois town I grew up in, collected Slot machines, Sleepy Eye pottery and vintage Buick cars which were displayed in his dealership's showroom. One of his favorites was a 1929 Buick coupe used in the movie The Sting. He also had a canary yellow, factory-original 1965 Buick Wildcat Riviera (the last one I saw sold for in excess of $250,000 in 2010).
My weekend job was to wash these cars. This included a 1946 Roadmaster—the first car Buick produced after World War II. It was a jet-black monster with four-inch whitewall tires. I would hand-wash and wax the car and had to scrub the whitewalls with a spray bottle filled with bleach and a hand brush. It was a daunting task. The wax we used went on pink and dried white, creating a fine dust. My grandfather, a meticulous Navy veteran, insisted there could not be a speck of white dust left when I was done. At 10 years old, this is how I earned money to spend on collectibles, $2.00 a car.
Although I had spent countless hours around collectors, I didn't start collecting myself until I was 10. I had a fascination with the history of the Second World War, which I first expressed through building scale military models. My dad told me I should stop wasting my money on models and put my time into something more worthwhile. Since I was spending my weekends with him at flea markets, yard sales, and gun shows, and I had an interest in WWII, I started to collect relics from the war.
The first items in my collection were given to me by my grandfather: a box of U.S. insignia and patches, and a matched German drilling shotgun with a hunting society dagger. For those familiar with them, German relics are beautiful, meticulously crafted items designed to inspire patriotism, the shotgun and dagger were no exception covered in extensive engravings of scenes of hunting in the Black Forest.
But my first purchase was a second model Luftwaffe dagger, worn by World War II German Air Force officers. I was ten and a half years old, and I had $45.00 saved from washing cars at my grandfather's dealership.
The day of my first purchase started in the morning at the Sauk Trail Gun Show in Princeton, IL, at the Bureau County Fairgrounds looking at offerings I couldn't afford. It was the same place where, the year before, I had entered a military model diorama of a battle on the Russian Front in one of the fair’s craft competitions and won a blue ribbon. Later, a gentleman walked in with the dagger stuck in his belt, trying to sell it. The price was $65. It was complete with its knot and hangers, all original. Others at the show were priced at $75-$85, but because it wasn't extraordinarily rare, dealers weren't interested.
I pointed the man out to my father. He said, "If you're interested, you need to go up, introduce yourself, and ask to see it."
It was a terrifying thing for a 10-year-old boy to do. I summoned the courage, and the man let me look at it—not once, but several times throughout the morning. I tried to get him to come down to my $45.00, but to no avail. The price was $65, take it or leave it.
Each time I was turned down, I went back to my father, who would simply say, "That's just the way it is. What do you want to do?"
I replied that I wanted to buy it but couldn't without an extra $20. My dad said, "If you're sure you want it and it's good, I will lend you the extra $20."
This was a big decision. It meant I had to wash the jet-black 1946 Roadmaster once a week or ten times—two and a half months of workings Saturdays—to pay off that $20.
For me, that dagger was an amazing treasure to own. I made the agreement with my father and closed the deal with the man.
I attended this show for many years after that with my dad, many of which we held a corner three table block end cap, which was a sign of prestige in that small world.
Little did I know all the lessons I learned that day. As I sit here now, it gives me pause. I am so grateful for those experiences, but it reminds me of the sad fact that what made collecting so special to me is now gone forever.
I have thousands of stories I hope to share with you here. These are the names of many dear friends, now gone and all but forgotten by the world—but not by me. I hope you can begin to understand how special this "crazy collecting obsession" is to me. It has defined me and taught me lessons I could not have learned anywhere else.
I have finally become a relic myself.
I hope my stories bring a smile to your face and that you can take away something more than just an object—a memory that is now only shared by a select few. As I said many of the people I knew and loved and called friends in the collectibles business are gone now. I, who was once the young kid, am now the old man.
It's been 47 years since I bought that dagger. Thousands of items have passed through my hands, from $0.25 to $250,000 in value. But the real value has been the people, the stories, and the treasure hunt—the excitement of waking at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning to walk around a sale with a flashlight hoping to find a treasure.
In those early days, I didn't have much money, and there were more things to buy than I could ever afford. Now, the people are gone, and the things are gone. All I'm left with is a pocket full of money.
It literally brings tears to my eyes telling this story.
Author's Note: The Pointe Mouillee Waterfowl Festival continues its mission today, supporting conservation and celebrating waterfowling heritage since 1947. You can learn more about its history and modern events on their website ptemouilleewaterfowlfestival.org
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