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Formerly the BACK BUMPER
Collecting Ontario licence plates for 41 years
2CENTS ARCHIVES
First started as "My 2 Cents" in 1997, I have written posts numbering into the hundreds. New posts arrive continually. Find an article by clicking the tag cloud below, or selecting a category, doing a search (see magnifying glass below on the right), or just scroll down to see the articles in chronological order.
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Acton 2025
I didn’t bring anything to trade, but it was the Ottawa Senators’ fault. Eric Vettoretti and I had been planning our Acton trip for a...
Apr 28
Ottawa Christmas Dine-N-Swap 2024
Dave Grant organized the annual Ottawa Christmas Dinner once again, which he founded in 2008. It has gradually changed into the...
Jan 6
Grimsby '24
It took four weeks to find the time to write this article. If you're a regular reader, I hope you appreciate it. I was in perpetual...
Nov 19, 2024
Landing in Lansing
The 2024 ALPCA Convention in Lansing was less of a convention for me, and more of a mission… a quartet of missions, actually. But square...
Jul 3, 2024
Acton '24 and Afterward
Saturday was Acton-packed, let me tell you. I woke up in Milton, spent five hours in Acton, drove to Brantford, Took a coffee break in...
Apr 28, 2024
Ottawa Christmas Dine-N-Swap 2023
The annual Ottawa dinner and swap meet was another holiday success! Dave Grant organized this year’s event for Wednesday December 27th....
Jan 1, 2024
Cluckin' and Quackin' in Grimsby
I had been looking forward to the 2023 edition of Grimsby for a long time. I was thrilled with how the 2022 meet turned out at its new...
Oct 24, 2023
Acton at Centre Ice
The Acton meet came full circle this year—and my, how things have changed. The inaugural Acton swap meet, now 20 years ago, happened on...
May 3, 2023
Ottawa Christmas Dine-N-Swap 2022
2022 was the year of resumption in my plate geek world. I’d been taking for granted my various outings until 2019, and then I was...
Dec 29, 2022
The Grass is Greener in Grassie
The 2022 edition of Grimsby was always going to be unlike any of its previous installments. It had been three years since the last meet...
Nov 10, 2022
Acton & Stirling '22: Back in the Saddle
Thirty months. It sounds like a jail sentence. But that’s how long it’s been… Thirty long months since our last indoor swap meet in...
May 6, 2022
Driving Nowhere
It’s 6:55 PM on the last Friday night in October. At this moment, I’d be stopping for gas somewhere outside of Trenton. The air would be...
Oct 29, 2021
Vineland and the Great Outdoors
The annual indoor October swap meet (heretofore known as “Grimsby”) won’t happen in 2021 because of the unpredictability of changes to...
Sep 1, 2021
Ottawa Swap Meet 2001
June 2, 2001: That was the date of the second of two plate-collecting swaps meet in Ottawa, held in the gymnasium of Laurentian High...
Jun 24, 2021
Acton meet cancelled: COVID-19
The 2020 Acton licence plate swap meet is cancelled because of the COVID-19 emergency. Read on about COVID-19 (I'm a biology teacher).
Mar 28, 2020
Grimsby Growth
I’m exhausted! What a meet. Where do I start? And, as I’ll ponder later on, where do we go from here? My kids are grown-up enough that I...
Oct 31, 2019
The Long Road to Acton 2019
The best kind of road trip involves a proper balance of driving, nice weather, good food, laughs, and of course, finding licence plates...
May 5, 2019
Ottawa Christmas Dine & Swap 2018
Our little #Ottawa Christmas dinner seems to have caught fire! It was only a few years ago that iffy weather and various other holiday...
Dec 28, 2018
A blizzard of plates
No two Grimsby swap meets are the same. Each journey always leaves something unique by which I remember it. There was 2009, when a...
Nov 2, 2018
Valley Forge 2018: Part 3 of 3
One thing I learned about Philadelphia is that it’s bigger than the map makes it seem, and it takes a longer time to get to different...
Jul 27, 2018
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