Michigan Get Together 2026

Once again, we had a great gathering of friends from near and far. And the weather cleared, just as planned! Twenty-two of us spent the day near Fremont, Michigan, with our hosts, Larry and Dee Dee. The runners-up for the “traveled-the most-distance” awards were Bill and Jan, Don and Donna and Allan and Aviva, all coming from Illinois. There was no question Kurt and Ann from Virginia deserved first place in this competition. The Michigan group always welcomes everyone and really appreciates when folks from other areas are able to join them.

There were heavy rains just south of us, but Larry's pole barn, which is now his scale display area and workshop, kept us dry at jacket temperature. The food was served in generous portions and conversations, scale-related and other, were plentiful. The constant presence of the scales surrounding us added to the general good vibe of the day.

Larry is a very enthusiastic collector! His collection has exploded in size and scope in the years since we were last here in 2022. His passion is restoring scales, and his collection includes several platform scales, especially those by the Buffalo Scale Company. He likes bright colors and that is evident in his color choices of the ones he has restored. He doesn’t worry about the original manufacturer’s color but goes with what he enjoys.

The show-and-tell had its usual variety of the unusual. Don brought three hard-to-find small coin scales including the highly sought-after Anscheutz. This one has special meaning for Don as it came from the collection of Jerry Katz.

Jack's reputation is to turn up with at least one scale that is so exceptional that most likely it has never been seen by any of us. His reputation is intact! He brought an unbranded tabletop scale with a mechanism where the user adds weights by rolling them onto a special hanger at the end of the beams. A phone search used AI (artificial intelligence) to locate the patent and reveal that The Computing Scale Company of Dayton, Ohio, bought the patent. Our conclusion was that Dayton never made the scale and may have bought the patent to eliminate competition to its computing scales. Has anyone ever seen one like it?

A banker's scale with frowning clown faces on the base was Greg’s contribution. He is interested in tracking down the maker, and the discussion that followed gave him a couple of good ideas of where to start.

Gregg showed his set of weights from the island country of Malta. He also discussed Wilhelm Berg’s new book S. Mordan & Co. Balances & Postal Scales. Berg is a member of the German scale society Maß und Gewicht and lives in Berlin. He examined over 700 Mordan scales and determined a way to date them. There is an English version and Gregg thinks it is a very useful book for a collector of Mordan scales. If you are interested in learning more about it, see Equilibrium page 5408 for the book review.

Allan showed a Pelouze scale to weigh "tab" cards, or as they are more commonly known today, punch cards, for computer input. A bit of research found that the cards originally had round holes and 90 columns. Then IBM came along and used square holes and 80 columns. However, the cards must have been the same size because the scale would count them before they were punched.

(Be sure to click all photos for larger versions.)

The day ended on a high note with folks getting their satisfying fill of scale talk while visiting with their fellow Scalies. We all left to go in our separate directions, saying goodbye with promises to meet again next year.

Save the date: September 18, 2027. We'll be hosted by Jack in Scottville, Michigan. Hope to see ya there!