The Collector: As her scale collection grew, Bonne Ahrens used her maiden name as a limiting factor

Bonne Ahrens collects the one thing most of us want to avoid during the holidays – scales.

It started more than 50 years ago when her husband, Ken, went to a farm sale and came home with an antique red commercial scale.

“I said, ‘What on earth are we going to do with this?’ ” Ahrens recalled.

Ken was then a student at Whitworth University, and he’d paid $40 for his find – a lot for a couple on a budget who’d been married just two years.

But the sturdy scale with its metal weighing plate attached and the manufacturer’s name ornately etched behind the glass was a thing of beauty. So she displayed the Angldile computing scale, circa 1909, in their home.

“I got so many compliments on it, I began looking for others,” she said.

After she’d collected quite a few scales, her husband had a request.

“He said I needed to focus on just one brand.”

So she decided to collect Hanson scales because Hansen, albeit with a different spelling, is her maiden name.

One of them was often used on the ranch they owned for many years. The rectangular metal cattle scale has hooks affixed to each end.

“We weighed the baby calves with it,” hrens said. “It goes up to 100 pounds.”

Last year, on Craigslist, she found a nursery scale and snapped it up.

“I didn’t know they made baby scales!” she said.

It features a pale pink face with light blue trim and is decorated with alphabet blocks and illustrations of a baby and a lamb. She’s never used it to weigh an infant, but she can attest to its accuracy.

“After I took my cats to the vet, I came home and weighed them on this and it was the same.”

Another accurate model came from a Deer Park pawn shop. Manufactured in the 1940s, the Hanson Weigh Master has a 300-pound capacity, and is the type of standing scale usually in a doctor’s office.

“If I see a Hanson in good shape, I buy it,” Ahrens said. “If the glass is intact, it makes it more valuable.”

Several smaller kitchen scales, including one with a rooster atop the plate, make up the bulk of her collection. A vintage 1940s-era 8-pound red version features a yellow graph in the center to measure cups of butter or shortening by weight.

A Hanson model 2000 utility scale has yellowed suggestions for use on the plate. Suggestions include, “Laundry: Weigh the amount sent out GET ECONOMY RATES.”

One of the few non-Hanson models she owns came from a man who visited their Chattaroy home while purchasing a truck from the couple. He saw her Angldile scale and asked if they’d take $100 off the truck’s price if he brought her a scale. They agreed, and he delivered an antique grocer’s model, complete with a metal scoop used to measure candy, sugar or flour.

“It even has the weights,” she said.

The red scale that started it all turned out to be a good investment. In the 1970s, she came across a magazine article about their Angldile. Its worth at the time was between $3,000 and $4,000.

For this collector, however, the joy is all in a name.

“They are things with my maiden name,” she said. “It reminds me of my family.”