This intriguing volume sheds light on the diverse world of collecting film- and media-related materials. Lucy Fischer's introduction explores theories of collecting and representations of collecting and collections in film, while arguing that collections of film ephemera and other media-related collections are an important way in to understanding the relationship between material culture and film and media studies; she notes that the collectors have various motivations and types of collections. In the eleven chapters that follow, media studies scholars analyze a variety of fascinating collected materials, from Doris Day magazines to Godzilla action figures and LEGOs. While most contributors discuss their personal collections, some also offer valuable insight into specific collections of others. In many cases, collections that began as informal and personal have been built up, accessioned, and reorganized to create teaching and research materials which have significantly contributed to the field of film and media studies. Readers are offered glimpses into diverse collections comprised of films, fan magazines, records, comics, action figures, design artifacts, costumes, props- including Buffy the Vampire Slayer costumes, Planet of the Apes publicity materials, and Amazing Spider Man comics. Recollecting Collecting interrogates and illustrates the meaning and practical nature of film and media collections while also considering the vast array of personal and professional motivations behind their assemblage.

This book, by noted SS and helmet scholars Mike Beaver and Kelly Hicks, presents the combat and parade helmets worn by the SS from its earliest days to the end of wartime production. The examples shown are genuine artifacts of the Third Reich, and most are shown here for the first time. Some of the finest collections and sources globally have been solicited in the construction of this book. The value of these SS helmet resources from the world over cannot be overstated in terms of their contribution toward collector knowledge - as well as the safety and survivability of this historical hobby. The photographic selection, and excellent quality of photo-representation, brings to life the heraldry and visual impact of these iconic objects. The reader will not only understand and become well versed in the recognized variations of SS helmets, but will also have a feel for the historical context in which they were used.

Bob Ball explores areas that will surely be of interest to those fascinated by tales of the Old West. Here are photographic examples of tools, barbershop implements, gambling devices, signs and posters, and a myriad of other infinitely interesting collectibles. He features "cowboy" items, including revolvers, pistols, maps, boots, and chaps, and horse gear, such as bits, saddles, and spurs. A fascinating section covers modern items, such as cowboy-movie posters. A thorough price guide ties it all together. For those who enjoyed Bob's Cowboy Collectibles and Western Memorabilia, this new volume of Western memorabilia is a must.

Rediscover every toy and prize you ever pulled out of a Cracker Jack box in this wonderful guide! Comprehensive in scope, toys from the late nineteenth century on up to the 1990s are recorded, representing a major contribution to the expanding Cracker Jack collecting field. Over 290 color photographs, depicting both the front and back of many prizes, aid in the identification of both individual toys and sets of prizes. The thorough categorization of prizes assists in easy cataloging. Prices are included for these varied and fascinating toys.

Fully illustrated with more than 2,000 images, 2020 U.S. Coin Digest, 18th edition, is a comprehensive, fully researched and vetted color guide with values to all United States coins issues featuring in a nearly indestructible hardcover with a lay-flat, easy-to-use format to make your experience even more enjoyable.

This complete reference to U.S. coins includes all circulating and non-circulating coins, from early American Token Coinage to modern commemorative issues of the 21st century. The following features make the U.S. Coin Digest the only reference you need for collecting U.S. coins:  

• 2000 images--nearly all in full color--provide a spectacular visual guide making identification and appreciation of U.S. coins easy and enjoyable.
• Thousands of detailed listings completely and expertly vetted, allowing the consumer to collect with confidence.
• A clear and easy-to-use guide to identifying minting errors with color images by Ken Potter, leading authority on error coins and author of popular Strike It Rich with Pocket Change.
• Coins of Colonial America
• U.S. Territorial Gold coinage
• U.S. Mint Sets, Proof Sets and Prestige Sets with current market values
• Coins of Hawaii, Puerto Rico and Philippines

Poems that will make you laugh. Some might bring a tear. But most certainly will make you think, and appreciate our LORD and Savior, JESUS CHRIST.

Now in its revised sixth edition, this classic reference book is designed for the collector, with a historical survey, hundreds of color and black and white illustrations, a description of how mechanical wristwatches work, and a thorough glossary. Updated price ranges for various wristwatches are included, along with a chapter on fakes, knock-offs, and hybrids; even a chapter on the popular Swatch watches is included. Information on the preservation, care, and repair of wristwatches rounds out the volume, making it the most complete reference for novice and experienced collectors alike.

This is an important resource for designers, textile lovers, and African art scholars. Over 200 color photographs beautifully illustrate the mud-cloth art of the Bogolan people in Mali, Africa. Their art form, in which geometric, abstract, and semi-abstract patterns are hand painted with mud dyes on hand woven cloth, has gained enormous popularity internationally. Informative text, by noted African art historian Irwin Hersey, examines the evolving cultural role of mud-cloth art, and gives technical information about traditional methods of its production. The mud-cloth designs featured in this book come from African artists, who have depicted scenes of African village life, and exciting geometric and abstract patterns in rich earth tones. The CD included with the book contains over 200 patterns, and is compatible with most graphic, design, and editing programs.

Every individual book has a history which can help us to understand what difference it may have made in the world. Within these pages you will find books damaged by bullets or graffiti, recovered from fire or water, or even disguised as completely different texts for protection in dangerous times. Marks of ownership - be it a rich treasure binding or a humble family inscription - shine a light on social history and literacy, while student doodles from the sixteenth century and a variety of pithy annotations give us a sense of readers through the ages. We increasingly recognise that the cultural and research value of books lies not just in their printed contents, but in the many other things they can tell us about the ways they have been used, read and regarded. Generously illustrated with examples from the early Middle Ages to the present day, Speaking Volumes presents a fascinating selection of books in both public and private collections whose individual histories tell surprising and illuminating stories, encouraging us to look at and appreciate books in new and non-traditional ways.

The development of electricity in private homes, the companies that saw the opportunity (Sunbeam, Oster, KitchenAid and General Electric, among others), and the range of appliances manufactured, from toasters to irons, are explored. Tips to identify, care for, use, and repair vintage appliances and vintage non-electric kitchenwares from canisters and breadboxes to cookie presses and dustpans are also presented.

During the Great Depression, glass companies turned to machine made methods to produce inexpensive, colorful glass for the table and kitchen. Green was a popular color for this glassware and its popularity is very evident today among collectors. This book, the first of its kind to extensively cover only Depression Era green glass, contains over 250 color photographs illustrating a wide variety of pieces. Examples of forty-six patterns and brief histories of the glass companies are included, along with a chapter of incidental pieces from such firms as Anchor Hocking, Bartlett-Collins, Federal, Hazel-Atlas, Imperial, L.E. Smith, U.S. Glass and others. Authors Monica Lynn Clements and Patricia Rosser Clements have created an indispensable guide for all who collect Depression Era glass and enjoy the beauty of green glassware.

A fascinating book on the origins of writing. Before Writing gives a new perspective on the evolution of communication. It points out that when writing began in Mesopotamia it was not, as previously thought, a sudden and spontaneous invention. Instead, it was the outgrowth of many thousands of years' worth of experience at manipulating symbols. In Volume I: From Counting to Cuneiform, Denise Schmandt-Besserat describes how in about 8000 B.C., coinciding with the rise of agriculture, a system of counters, or tokens, appeared in the Near East. These tokens-small, geometrically shaped objects made of clay-represented various units of goods and were used to count and account for them. The token system was a breakthrough in data processing and communication that ultimately led to the invention of writing about 3100 B.C. Through a study of archaeological and epigraphic evidence, Schmandt-Besserat traces how the Sumerian cuneiform script, the first writing system, emerged from a counting device. In Volume II: A Catalog of Near Eastern Tokens, Schmandt-Besserat presents the primary data on which she bases her theories. These data consist of several thousand tokens, catalogued by country, archaeological site, and token types and subtypes. The information also includes the chronology, stratigraphy, museum ownership, accession or field number, references to previous publications, material, and size of the artifacts. Line drawings and photographs illustrate the various token types.

Time is a great mystery. A changeable element, which expands or vanishes, but that appears concrete as it is marked by the passing of seconds, minutes, hours, days, and years. The path toward the capture of minutes and seconds coincided with the phases of scientific evolution that allowed man to manufacture watches that are increasingly reliable, but that are also in tune with changes in customs, social needs, and aesthetic canons. This book covers the art of watch manufactory as well as 60 great models, covering both their technical evolution and style trends. In each chapter in-depth studies will guide the reader to the history of the most important manufacturers, the personalities linked to the models treated, technical innovations, styles of the period, or records achieved by the wristwatches: from the watch that helped Charles Lindbergh during the first transatlantic solo flight, to the one worn by Sir Edmund Hillary on the top of Mount Everest, the most iconic models will be discussed in detail.

Contributions by Jani L. Barker, Rudine Sims Bishop, Julia S. Charles-Linen, Paige Gray, Dianne Johnson-Feelings, Jonda C. McNair, Sara C. VanderHaagen, and Michelle Taylor Watts The Brownies' Book occupies a special place in the history of African American children's literature. Informally the children's counterpart to the NAACP's The Crisis magazine, it was one of the first periodicals created primarily for Black youth. Several of the objectives the creators delineated in 1919 when announcing the arrival of the publication-"To make them familiar with the history and achievements of the Negro race" and "To make colored children realize that being 'colored' is a beautiful, normal thing"-still resonate with contemporary creators, readers, and scholars of African American children's literature. The meticulously researched essays in A Centennial Celebration of "The Brownies' Book" get to the heart of The Brownies' Book "project" using critical approaches both varied and illuminating. Contributors to the volume explore the underappreciated role of Jessie Redmon Fauset in creating The Brownies' Book and in the cultural life of Black America; describe the young people who immersed themselves in the pages of the periodical; focus on the role of Black heroes and heroines; address The Brownies' Book in the context of critical literacy theory; and place The Brownies' Book within the context of Black futurity and justice. Bookending the essays are, reprinted in full, the first and last issues of the magazine. A Centennial Celebration of "The Brownies' Book" illuminates the many ways in which the magazine-simultaneously beautiful, complicated, problematic, and inspiring-remains worthy of attention well into this century.

This is the Revised Edition of the classic bible of American furniture. It presents a thorough analysis, through over 700 photographs and detailed text, of the various elements of design, decoration, craftsmanship, construction, and finish of early American furniture. Each type is shown and discussed with three examplesgood, better, bestand the relative merits and consequent value differentials of each are compared. It explains why superficially similar pieces of furniture of the same approximate age and scarcity, and possibly by the same maker, may vary considerably in desirability and worth. It is a unique, indispensible guide for today's students, collectors, dealers, and curators in judging and evaluating antiques. More than 100 types are discussed and 675 examples are illustrated, including some of the most notable pieces. The ultimate reference, as important today as when first written in 1950.

This book provides a convenient reference to the history and characteristics of the self-loading pistols that were adopted by the military forces of the nations involved in the two World Wars. It presents a selection of nineteen self-loading pistols - and the firms engaged in their manufacture - during this period, together with a technical appraisal of each weapon. For each pistol a history of both manufacturer and pistol is provided, along with a colour photograph and cutaway views of both the pistol and its breech operation. Details and cutaway views are also provided for the cartridges used by these pistols. All of the weapons illustrated are representative of the pattern issued to the military, and in many cases they continued to be produced for the commercial market.

Covers of Gold is the third ground-breaking book about collectible sheet music by Marion Short. Exciting new categories covered in this book include baseball music, the evolution of fashion, the Big Band era, and the elusive sheet music cover illustrators. These subjects and more are accompanied by over 550 full color photographs of the actual music, encompassing the approximate time span of 1900 to 1940. Covers of Gold follows the success of Marion Short's first two books, The Gold in Your Piano Bench and More Gold in Your Piano Bench also available from Schiffer Publishing.

This is the first comprehensive study of the Renaissance commonplace-book. Commonplace-books were the information-organizers of Early Modern Europe, notebooks of quotations methodically arranged for easy retrieval. From their first introduction to the rudiments of Latin to the specialized studies of leisure reading of their later years, the pupils of humanist schools were trained to use commonplace-books, which formed an immensely important element of Renaissance education. The common-place book mapped and resourced Renaissance culture's moral thinking, its accepted strategies of argumentation, its rhetoric, and its deployment of knowledge. In this ground-breaking study Ann Moss investigates the commonplace-book's medieval antecedents, its methodology and use as promulgated by its humanist advocates, its varieties as exemplified in its printed manifestations, and the reasons for its gradual decline in the seventeenth century. The book covers the Latin culture of Early Modern Europe and its vernacular counterparts and continuations, particularly in France. Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought is much more than an account of humanist classroom practice: it is a major work of cultural history.

The contour Coca-Cola bottle is the most recognized package created by man. It has been called an international icon and one of the most significant artifacts of the twentieth century. Of everything that has been written about The Coca-Cola Company, the one error of omission has been the complete and accurate story about the creation of its famous contour bottle and the impact it has made in the world.
Knowing his entire life that it was his father, Earl R. Dean, who designed the bottle, it became the author's mission to get the story told before the truth was forever lost-to set the record straight-not only for his father and his descendants, but for the millions of people all over the world who have enjoyed a romance with his bottle.