There are times, who knows, but often when we see some old cookie tins, chocolate boxes or old advertisements, we are touched, even if they do not belong to our generation. Nostalgic mood? “No, you just think that they are special and that they were not mass-produced,” my daughter told me during a showdown over a similar box for which she besieged me.

Such an exhibition “Greek Advertising and Packing Boxes, 1900s-1970s” opens tomorrow at 19:00 at the periodic exhibitions of the Vassilis Papantoniou Foundation in Nafplio (together with the local municipality). This is 1/10th of the collection of Christos Kosturos, about 170 advertisements and 120 metal boxes that he collected over the years with a passion for authentic advertising.

“This is a “pocket” exhibition with a nostalgic theme and reminds us all of something”, says Stamatis Zannos “K”.partner of the V. Papantoniou Foundation, who took care of the museum design.

It all started with the teenage years of Christos Kosturos. “When my parents and teachers and I were driving from Nafplio to Athens, I looked at the inscriptions all the way”, says “K”. Of course, the collection started later, when a friend gave him a Lumidis metal ad from the 60s. From then on, he began to collect items, running auctions all over Greece, to antique shops, contacting Greek collectors abroad in search of old Greek advertisements and food packaging boxes. Advertisements for Greeks in Egypt, such as “Spate” water, American expatriates who drank coffee in a tin with a figure of Venizelos, etc. Purchase prices of an old tin advertisement or box can range from 10-20 euros to 5000 euros, explains 45- summer collector, economist-entrepreneur. “There is an advertisement for the Greeks of Egypt in 1905, for which I paid 3,000 euros. The price of a commodity depends on demand.

His biggest weakness is Kyknos, a 107-year-old cannery. “I grew up in Nafplio and from a young age saw advertisements everywhere in the city and knew, like everyone else, that this factory lived in the area.” It divides ads into categories. Tin, enamels, lithographs and offsets, the simplest. Among the boxes, his favorite among others are ladder boxes with Papadopoulos biscuits, with Mytilini varnishes, coffee.

What drives him in a box that once held a lot of oil? “This is a box with a lithograph that contained the fat used by housewives of past decades. It reflects a shrewd businessman who has invested in quality. I am interested in salvaging original Greek advertising and metal packaging boxes. And also stories. That there are, for example, advertising diaries of the Alepudeli family, the father of Odysseus Elytis, who had a soap and fire oil factory in Piraeus. With the same passion, he tells us about the Hellenic silicate factory and the pottery factory in Egaleo, where shells and mortars were made.

“This is the Greece of our fathers and grandfathers,” says collector Christos Kosturos.

In our discussion, he often mentions the Greeks of Egypt, who were famous cigarette manufacturers. Although he himself is against smoking, he emphasizes that there were tobacco traditions in Greece and mentions the Matsangu tobacco factory in Thessaly, founded in 1890, Papastratos, Karelia. We also had traditions in the textile industry. Our mothers and grandmothers called him: “Klostai Petaludas – Muzakis”.

The visitor, says Chr. Kosturos follows the economy and business of the country through the exhibits. “How they developed in pre-war Greece, the recession that followed the war, the development of industry in the post-war years when factories opened and exports began. A decline that began in the 1980s when historic industries were shut down for socio-political reasons.”

This is a different report, he notes. “This is the Greece of our fathers and grandfathers.” Of course, some vintage advertisements would not hold up today, such as “arapaki soap from Corfu with the slogan ‘even blacks whiten’ or Haitoglou halvah, which advertised 5500 calories per 500g, a real calorie bomb, at a time when society wanted to fill the stomach” .

A white swan on a red surface is featured in many advertisements. Why Kyknos, notes Stamatis Zannos, supported the museum for so many years. The Vassilis Papantoniou Foundation (IBP) – formerly the Peloponnesian Folklore Foundation – was created by Ioanna Papantoniou in 1974 in memory of her father, who owned Kyknos. He wanted to repay him. The purpose of the foundation is to research, record, study, rescue and disseminate modern Greek and world culture.

The exhibition will run until January 29th.