Tiger Hightest Magazine Online A Primer on Gas Station Collectibles Gasoline station and oil company collectibles represent one of the fastest growing hobbies in the western world, as demonstrated by the ever-growing number of books being published for the mass market and more swap meets springing up across the U.S. and elsewhere with each passing year. The most common term, but by no means an undisputed standard, is petroliana , coined by Jerry Keyser Sr. This term has gained popularity in recent years with its use in Classic Motorbooks catalogs, though not necessarily within the pages of all the specific books it advertises for sale under this category.
Some people prefer the alternate spelling of petroleana .
Many others instead favor the word petromatica , as advocated by Ed Love and popularized in The Tiger Rag , the predecessor publication to our print magazine. Others still, particularly in Canada and parts of Europe, rely instead on the word petromobilia . Part of the reason may lie in the fact that this hobby has always been somewhat of a factious one, with networking among enthusiasts limited at best during its formative years, even when they lived in close geographic proximity to each other. Many early collectors operated in a vacuum, not knowing with absolute certainty that other collectors existed. Once groups of associated collectors developed over time, they coined their own vocabulary and have more or less stuck with the term of their choice.