Have you ever wanted a label from a bottle of witch hazel from the 1950s? A rubber band display from the Great Depression in mint condition? A 1920s Rice Krispies advertisement print?
Chances are Mark E. Sackett owns it, and might even sell it to you at The Pressroom and Mercantile, a showroom, letterpress shop, and home to thousands of vintage advertisements and other ephemera.
Inside the nondescript storefront, located at 1073 Howard St. near Seventh Street, restored letterpress machines, and over 300,000 items are scattered across the store, with the rest hidden in the nooks and crannies of the building. Sackett’s collection has grown to more than 15 million antique printing and ephemeral pieces.
“I really am careful about what I buy,” he said without irony. “And now, it’s out of control.”
Inside Pressroom and Mercantile, each piece of furniture is curated: Cabinets dating back to 1888, walls adorned with advertising from defunct businesses, niche movie posters from the 1950s, a fake beer barrel with gold leaf lettering.
Spanish gothic light fixtures shine above as Dean Martin and Ella Fitzgerald music plays throughout the space. Shelves, cabinets, and tables brim with vintage bottle caps, typewriters, and children’s books. The original 1920s windows let light emerge near the high ceiling, leaving you to ask yourself: “Is this really in SoMa?”
Sackett’s collection started long ago with admiring the miniature beer bottle salt-and-pepper shakers at his grandfather’s house in Kansas City, which were created as promotional items for restaurants to use to advertise beer companies in the 1940s and ’50s.
The 12-year-old Sackett began dumpster diving with his brother behind bars for old full-sized beer bottles and liquor bottles to display in his room. With the support of his father, he joined the Beer Can Collectors of America (BCCA) despite not being old enough to drink.
“My parents supported every dumb thing I ever did,” Sackett said. “And so they were like, ‘Well, he’s not getting in trouble, so I guess if he wants to collect these things he can.’”
Sackett went on to become a successful graphic designer and art director before moving to San Francisco in 1988.
He bought 1069-1073 Howard St. in 2004 for $1.6 million dollars. In the 1920s, it was a printing plant owned by William Randolph Hearst, and is where the San Francisco Examiner was once printed.
“I walked in the building and fell in love with it as soon as I got to the top floor,” Sackett said. “I hadn’t even seen the rest of the building yet.”
He thought at the time, “‘I wonder if I could be the king of my own castle.’”
He kept elements such as the original windows, used the top floor for his studio, and leased out the other two floors to tenants.
The second and third floors are now private venue space and, in 2018, he opened The Pressroom and Mercantile on the first floor.
The displayed collection, compiled over the course of his life, is from all over the world. He recalled following someone he just met at a printing press fair across the border to the Netherlands.
“I found it in an attic two hours south of Amsterdam,” Sackett said — ”it” being a 1920s display for a fly spray brand called Tanglefoot.
The store, which is open Monday to Sunday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., has attracted dedicated patrons. Among them is rapper Snoop Dogg, who is also, Sackett said, a physical ephemera collector.
“When Snoop was here, he said, ‘Let me do a little video for you,’” Sackett said. “I put the video on my Instagram and my phone started blowing up. The neighbors from across the street asked me if I was with Snoop Dogg. People were calling me from all over the world. They asked to talk to him and I said, ‘No, you can’t talk to him.’”
“He’s a really cool guy,” Sackett added.
He no longer collects much, he said. But sometimes, he can’t resist.
“Last week I bought an atlas cover. That was just the most beautiful thing,” he said. “It wasn’t very expensive, but it was just like: ‘I had to have that.’”
“This is where we cross over into mental illness or a virus,” he continued, cheerfully. “How could I have something? I mean, I have everything.”
