I was walking with a friend of mine when he did something really odd around 48th Avenue. He paused to look at a telephone pole, pointing out a nail with the number 57 stamped on the head. He then snapped a photo of it with his phone and excitedly explained how this mundane bit of hardware fits into a longtime San Francisco hobby of date nail collecting. As it turns out, a complete set of these nails from a certain time period or region can fetch a pretty decent price. A collection from the Great Northern Railway sold on Ebay last year for $1,100. A single, particularly rare, 1952 nail from the Santa Fe line was auctioned off for $600.
Railroad companies started using date nails in the 1800s to record the dates of chemical treatments on their ties. Utility companies started doing it some time later. For example, whenever a utility pole is installed within PG&E’s territory, the crew hammers in one of these nails marked with the current year. If the pole has work done on it later, they hammer in a new one. Often times, the old nails are removed, so collectors have found a niche market in tracking down the overlooked ones. Fortunately for them, there have been quite a few lazy utility workers over the last century or so.
I've heard claims of oldtimers finding nails from closer to the turn of the century, but the oldest confirmed nails used by PG&E are from 1922. Most railroads stopped this practice back in the '60s, but utility companies still use it today. The pre-1952 nails are the most rare, but they’re still out there. The oldest one I’ve found so far is from 1935. I also find it interesting that the older nails give an idea of the growth of some areas. I happened to know that my building was about 60 years old, and when I checked, I found a nail in the pole out front from 1953. It’s almost like a little neighborhood timestamp.
It takes a certain lack of self-consciousness to walk down the street investigating telephone poles like Sherlock Holmes. But for the people involved in date nail collecting, they take it pretty seriously. While I’ve seen a few for sale online, I’ve only heard of one guy who has a complete set of PG&E nails, and he declined to say how much it was worth and turned down my requests to photograph his collection. As disappointing as this was, I understand there is a fair amount of exclusivity involved with any collectors items. If you’re the only one with the whole set of anything, you’d probably like to keep it that way. Also, it should be noted that since utility companies still use them for record keeping, pulling nails from utility poles is actually illegal.
