Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, October 26, 1993 TAG: 9310260303
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Medium
That's why he's calling his store RP Collectibles.
Randall J. Proffitt is one of the newest folks to open a shop on Main Street.
``My father was always a collector, and my grandfather was a horse trader,'' said Proffitt, who grew up in Pulaski. ``So I guess it was sort of inherited, really. But I love it.''
Like many a youngster growing up in the 1940s and 1950s, Proffitt started his collecting with comics. If he had kept all the comic books he had as a kid, he wouldn't need to sell other collectibles.
He also used to have literally thousands of movie lobby cards. He sold those to a dealer at Snooper's Antiques Mall near the Wythe-Pulaski county border.
``I wish now I'd kept them,'' he said, because their value has grown.
He never thought he`d open his own shop, though he did sell some collectibles back when Gene's Trading Post at Cloverdale rented space to outsiders. That stopped in the mid-1970s.
Proffitt was a disc jockey at what used to be WPUV in Pulaski. ``I listened to a lot of old radio shows,'' he said.
He graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1959 and has worked in a number of fields.
He was the Virginia director of the Loyal Order of Moose for four years, and that job took him back and forth across the state. ``Of course I went into every flea market and antique shop I could find,'' he said. ``And I'm the type of person that never throws anything away.''
That trait has now paid off. ``I'm just doing this now,'' he said.
``The pocket knives are what I was really into,'' he said. ``Like every other business, you have to see what sells and what doesn't.''
Other shelves boast depression glass, trading cards from movies and TV shows, a poster from the movie ``The Last American Hero'' based on the life of race-car driver Junior Johnson, a photo of Universal Studio make-up artist Jack Pierce turning Lon Chaney Jr. into ``The Wolfman,'' antique jewelry, and six drawers of cassettes with recorded radio shows from ``Our Miss Brooks'' to ``The Lone Ranger.''
``There are quite a few collectors of old radio shows,'' he said. ``And that gives me something to do when I'm not busy. I can sit here and listen.''
Proffitt is located at 59 W. Main in the space previously occupied by the Pulaski Main Street Inc. director's office, which has moved across the street, and the Pulaski office of state Sen. Malfourd ``Bo'' Trumbo, R-Fincastle, which has moved to the second floor of Signet Bank.
by CNB