Seafair collectibles really float his boat

Seafair's right around the corner, so get ready for the Begonia Show, the Badminton Tournament, the Davy Jones Street Dance and the National Baton Championships.

Oops. Our mistake. Those are from the 1955 Seafair program, not this year's. Looks like we've been spending too much time around Jay Wood's collection of Seafair memorabilia.

Maybe you've seen him at the hydro pits, selling vintage Seafair buttons out of a velvet-lined guitar case. Or you've run across his postings on eBay, where as "seafairpirate" he sheds some of the duplicate items he's acquired. "I buy up whole collections, keep the few pieces I need and sell the rest," said Wood, who estimates his hoard of some 3,000 Seafair-related items is worth $10,000 to $15,000.

The pieces Wood sells represent a tiny fraction of what he keeps in boxes, drawers, closets and glass-covered display cases at his Woodinville home, including such choice items as:

• A 1951 Seafair cookbook with recipes for Clam Meat Loaf, Tuna Treat, Salmon Salad Ring and Yummy Balls (rolled-up globs of ground beef, pork and rice).

• A 1972 ceramic Jim Beam whiskey decanter, depicting the legendary Slo Mo Shun IV hydro cutting across the waters of Lake Washington.

• An oversized 2000 Seafair skipper pin, which Wood has been told is the only one of its kind, because it was made as a prototype but not put into production.

• A 1952 Seafair magazine describing the 20-year-old Aurora Bridge as a "beautiful, tall span ... a modern six-lane thoroughfare connecting the north end with the city center."

Seattle's summertime extravaganza, which started in 1950, was finishing its first decade by the time Wood, 46, was born. But that hasn't stopped this landscape contractor from pursuing items as old as a 1911 pin from the "Potlatch" festival — Seafair's predecessor — and as new as a bag of 2005 skipper pins he bought a month ago.

"I'm a collector by nature," said Wood, who grew up in the Shoreline area. "As a kid I collected bottle caps and baseball cards."

His earliest memories of Seafair are of going to the Lake City parade and of being scared of the pirates, but loving it.

He didn't actively collect Seafair items until he was about 20, when he and a friend visited a flea-market booth that had old Seafair skipper pins for sale. "They looked cool, and I like the idea that there was one for every year," he said.

Eventually, his visits to flea markets and antique stores became less productive, so about five years ago, he started placing ads and buying up entire collections.

His transactions over the past few years on eBay, where he has sold more than 1,000 items, have made the collection financially self-sustaining, with his sales more than paying for the Seafair things he buys. And at his e-mail address, alwayslandscaping@msn .com, he's always interested in hearing from people looking to part with Seafair stuff they've got stashed in basements and attics.

But selling and trading through ads and online isn't as much fun as the person-to-person contact he gets each year at Lake Washington, every Thursday through Sunday of hydro week (Aug. 4-7 this year). That's where he puts up a cafeteria-style table and umbrella in an area set aside for collectors.

"The money's not really the motivation," he said. "I get to meet some cool people. There will be people filling holes in their collection, or getting something for their dad, or they'll say, 'My kid was born in 1990 — do you have something from that year?' "

With some 2,400 buttons in his collection, Wood has skipper pins and pirate buttons from every year they were produced. But that doesn't mean his collection is complete, he said, because variations of each year's pins were made to honor certain organizations or events.

His most precious piece is a skipper pin from 1954, marked with an ABC, noting that the American Bowling Congress was in town for a major tournament. He said a friend sold one for $750, so he decided he'd need $800 to part with his.

Setting prices on memorabilia is an inexact science. Although there are common price ranges for some standard items, Wood says it always boils down to matching a seller's willingness to part with an item to a buyer's desire to have it.

"If you've got something good and you get a hold of some goober like me that's really got to have it, maybe you'll get a few hundred dollars."

This year, Wood will actually be a part of Seafair, as an honorary clown. Wood is the chairman of an annual mountain-bike event for multiple sclerosis research, and through that he met Jim "Barney" Barnes, a 41-year Seafair clown whose wife heads the state chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

"Jay's attitude is very caring, and he has a tendency to want to reach out to everyone," said Barnes, who said Wood was a hit when the clowns traveled to British Columbia for a festival in May.

In his free time these days, Wood's been studying "The Ultimate Balloon Twisters Guide" so he can quickly bend balloons into funny-looking animals. "I thought if I'm going to be a clown," he said, "I ought to at least have some minimal skills."

Although Wood's interests in anything connected to Seafair are wide-ranging, he has limited — to a few hundred items — his hydroplane paraphernalia, which can be a collector's passion in its own right.

"You know what?" he said. "There are thousands and thousands of cool boat buttons out there, but I'm trying to stay focused on Seafair."

Jack Broom: 206-464-2222 or jbroom@seattletimes.com