I first met Ralph Williamson in Santa Cruz at De-La, he presented me with a custom mini and said " my card ". A few years later I stopped by at his home near Seattle. At the time I only knew him from our brief meeting and his photos and his collection shown in Victors M's book " The complete book of Frisbee". Ralph had a Frisbee Museum and I contacted him about a visit. I got the tour and found out that the collection was for sale! On that visit Ralph challenged me to several games of putt with a mini basket, right there in his basement surrounded by classic discs. The old guy beat me each time.
That visit sparked a interest in collecting, I had started buying discs outside of the game of Disc Golf, thanks to Victors book I had some direction. A few years went by and I called Ralph and found that the collection was still up for sale, I was not sure I wanted all of those dusty old discs but I did the deal!
When the moving and storage van pulled up and started unloading all the apple boxes full of discs it was a little crazy, when they were done half of my garage was full, no place to park my car! There were discs, shirts, posters, publications, photos, film, even a mold for the Sky-Pie.
At the time i figured I knew about golf discs but what happened was a education on all things flying discs including golf discs. I have really enjoyed filling in the gaps in his collection. He must have had 100 midnight flyers but not a single set, now I have 150 midnight flyers and 9 complete sets! Ralph was known for his Pluto Platters but was missing 3 styles, proud to say I filled those gaps!
As I near the end of the re numbering process and have handled every disc I learn something new. ( I still have about 1000 discs to go ) Some times I feel that e bay and face book have made it too easy to find discs and get stories from the people who were at historic events. It is good to see others with the collecting bug! Ralph did it the old fashion way and pounded the pavement and toured the country playing disc sports.
I think the fact that he shared his collection to anyone who was interested really got me going, I enjoy the sharing here on line, I think Ralph would be pleased, Thanks Ralph
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