During Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway shareholder-meeting weekend in Omaha, he and Bill Gates stopped at Fairmont Antiques & Mercantile. The visit brought Buffett back to a childhood ritual: spending his weekly nickel on five pieces of penny candy.
A nickel’s worth of childhood
In a June 19, 2018 report, GeekWire’s Kurt Schlosser said Buffett recalled that, at age six in 1936, he received a nickel a week and spent it at a local drug store on five pieces of penny candy. The account connects that memory to the Omaha shop visit decades later.
The sweets named in the report include Cracker Jacks, peanut brittle, Whoppers and Milk Duds. They are examples from the story, not a complete inventory of what the shop carried. Asked about his tastes, Buffett said, “I like almost everything.” GeekWire’s account of the visit was published June 19, 2018.
Gates spots a piece of computing history
The candy was not the only nostalgic find. Gates came across an old issue of Popular Mechanics containing an article he described as heralding the start of personal computing and as partly inspiring Microsoft. That is Gates’s characterization as reported by GeekWire; it does not establish that the magazine article alone caused Microsoft’s founding.
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What the 2018 story does—and doesn’t—tell us
The report captures one visit during Buffett’s shareholder-meeting weekend and the memories the two men shared there. It is historical reporting, not a current guide to Fairmont Antiques & Mercantile: the article does not establish the store’s present hours, operations, or candy selection.
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