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Why Do People Collect Old Magazine Ads?

September 30, 2008 By Tom Murphy Leave a Comment

Rather than me answer that question, let me point you to a recent blog by “Alana” at Alana’s Books and Magazines.

She starts off with

Long before there were pop up ads on the internet, commercials on the television and radio, merchants used print media to get their message across to the consumer masses. Just about any company that has or had goods of services to sell has advertised in a magazine at one time or another.

Alana's collectiblesAnd then gives some of her opinions (which by the way I share) on why we collect old advertisements of yesterday.

Well done Alana!  You’ve got an interesting blog, and always good insight to antiques, books, magazines and the likes.  Keep it up!

I’m Tom Murphy and thanks for helping me give Ephemera the encore it deserves.

Tom

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Ephemera at Bonanzle

September 23, 2008 By Tom Murphy 3 Comments

As most of you know, selling at eBay – whether it be Ephemera or Pez dispensers – is becoming more and more expensive for the casual seller. In fact, the site is becoming overrun by the “big boys” – folks like the “Best Buy Outlet Store” and the “HP Marketplace”.

Several alternative auction venues have turned up in the not too distant past – among them Delcampe Auctions which has already been discussed here – and where I am very likely to be moving my ephemera sales.

But today I uncovered yet another site – Bonanzle (pronounced Bon-an-zle). Per their site:

Bonanzle is an online marketplace for buying and selling goods faster while having more fun. We also aim to create the marketplace that is the most simple, yet powerful choice around.

A search this morning found 750 items with the keyword ephemera. Some of it does not really fit into what many of us call “ephemera” (like 33rpm record albums?) … but there are still some interesting items – especially if you are into vintage postcards.
This postcard of The Loop, Union Ferry Depot, San Francisco, CA TROLLIES is just one that caught my eye. It’s one of some 500 postcards for sale by “Paper Time Machine” of Fort Worth, Texas. To the best of my knowledge, he is not a member of T.E.N. – The Ephemera Network – but you can bet I have invited him.

Bonanzle has taken some of the basic concepts of both Craigslist and the original eBay marketplace and they have trumped both major venues with features that appear to improve the entire concept of selling and buying.

Amongst the highlights they claim are:
• No fee for sellers or buyers, we are a community
• Post an item for sale in less than 60 seconds
• Talk with buyers and sellers in real time via instant messaging feature
• True simplicity as it should be
• Import your Craigslist and eBay listings
• Tailored for sellers with multiple items to sell
• Host a 1-3 hour “Bonanza” which gets prominently featured throughout the site
• Price recommending feature
• Import your feedback from eBay

I’m still evaluating Bonanzle… but it sure looks interesting.

I’m Tom Murphy and thanks for helping me give Ephemera the encore it deserves.

Tom

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Digital Libraries

September 22, 2008 By Tom Murphy Leave a Comment

The more I search, the more I find.

It may not be new news to many of you… but to me it is.  A large number of our Colleges and University Libraries are putting together “Digital Libraries” and within those libraries they often have “Digital Collections”.

The one I ran across most recently is at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.  Today’s find was their “Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850 – 1920″

This collection presents over 9,000 images, with database information, relating to the early history of advertising in the United States. The materials, drawn from the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University, provide a significant and informative perspective on the early evolution of this most ubiquitous feature of modern American business and culture.

The collection was funded by the Library of Congress and Ameritech and has enabled them to make rare advertising history resources available via the World Wide Web.

The images illustrate the rise of consumer culture, especially after the American Civil War, and the birth of a professionalized advertising industry in the United States and are drawn from over a dozen separate collections within the Library.

If you have an eye for interesting, and rare advertising items this may well be the place for you to peruse.  It’s perhaps the first broad, web-based collection of related documents – as the ads cover the period from 1911 to 1955.

Take a moment and jump over to the Emergence of Advertising in America collection.  And while you are there, have a look at some of their other interesting digital collections…. maybe their Ration Coupons on the Home Front, 1942-1945 collection?

I’m Tom Murphy and thanks for helping me give Ephemera the encore it deserves.

Tom
Click to see my current eBay items

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Collecting Old Vintage Ephemera Souvenirs

September 18, 2008 By Tom Murphy Leave a Comment

“Do you remember when the circus came to town? When the President came to town? When Elvis came to town?”

That’s the title and lead in line to Alana’s  most recent blog article.  Alana is a lady from Wisconsin who runs two online websites selling vintage collectibles, used and rare books, back issue magazines, postcards, ephemera and other antique and retro cherished treasures of days gone by.

Alana's collectiblesHer current blog article helps define Ephemera, what it is, and where it can often be found.  She believes that Ephemera is finding its niche in the study of social sciences and in an earlier blog article reported that “Ephemera was once prized more by collectors than serious researchers and scientists, but more scholars are realizing the wealth of information that ephemera can offer. Ephemera is truly a window to the past of the common people as well as that of the elite and those who shaped history.”

I’m currently inviting Alana to join The Ephemera Network, often referred to simply as TEN.  I believe she would be not only a good member.. but perhaps a good educator and research aide to those of us who are already members.

How about YOU?  If you read this blog, you clearly have an interest in Ephemera, why not check out The Ephemera Network?

I’m Tom Murphy and thanks for helping me give Ephemera the encore it deserves.

Tom
Click to see my current eBay items

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The New York Public Library’s Digital Cigarette Card Collection

September 16, 2008 By Tom Murphy Leave a Comment

In my most recent blog article I mentioned that I had done some traveling of late and wrote of the Bata Museum in Toronto.  What I failed to mention is that our travels also took us briefly home to New York City – but that was an Ephemera-free visit.

NYPL Digital Cigarette Card CollectionToday I ran across references to the New York City Public Library’s (NYPL) Digital Collection of tobacco cards, which now numbers more than 125,000 individual items, including more than 3000 complete sets.

I’m not a collector of such items but know that many of my Ephemera collector friends are.. and that there are several such collectors who belong to the new “Ephemera Network”.

If you have not as yet run across the NYPL collection I highly recommend it to you.  The collection was made possible thanks to an endowment by a Mr. George Arents who was an heir to the American Tobacco Company.  Mr. Arents (whose biography is a bit confusing because both he and his son dropped the Jr. and III after their names when the elder died, and them moved themselves up to Sr. and Jr.) was an avid collector of Tobacciana, which encompases all tobacco related items, not just tobacco cards.

If you have any interest in tobacco, or cigarette cards or related items, I highly recommend a visit to the NYPL Digital Collection… and from there to two blog articles on both Mr. Arents and the overall topic of Tobacciana.  From those blogs you can reach out even further to what may well be a never ending set of links to related topics.

According to the NYPL link, “most cigarette cards were produced by conventional offset or other economical commercial printing processes, but a few series were issued as original gelatin silver photographs or printed on silk or linen fabric; others were created as puzzles or paper toy cut-outs.”

The appeal of contemporary cigarette cards fell by the 1950s, ceasing their production and distribution… and from there began yet another Ephemera collectible… “Cigarette Cards”

Enjoy!

I’m Tom Murphy and thanks for helping me give Ephemera the encore it deserves.

Tom
Click to see my current eBay items

Technorati tags: , Encore Ephemera, Cigarette Cards, George Arents, New York Public Library, Tobacciana, Ephemera, The Ephemera Network, Delcampe Auctions

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Long time absence….

September 11, 2008 By Tom Murphy Leave a Comment

Wow, it’s hard for me to believe it has been so long since my last posting here.  I have been all consumed in chores, trips, events and other miscellaneous time consuming activities that have kept me away from the keyboard.. and from this blog.  Sorry!

One of the trips we took was to Toronto, and while there we had the pleasure of visiting a very interesting museum… The Bata Shoe Museum.  While I had hoped to perhaps see some Ephemera related to shoes, there was none to be found.  But the Museum still proved to be quite interesting.. perhaps bordering on fascinating.   The museum was founded in 1995 by Ms. Sonja Bata, the wife of the late Thomas Bata (who died during the time of our visit to Canada).  Mr. Bata was a well-known Czechoslovakian shoe manufacturer who had emigrated to Canada at the beginning of World War II. His family enterprise in Czechoslovakia had been nationalized under the Communist occupation. From the beginning, Sonja Bata shared her husband’s determination to rebuild the organization and took an active interest in what was to become a global footwear business.

Bata Shoe MuseumThe Museum celebrates the style and function of footwear in four impressive galleries. Footwear on display ranges from Chinese bound foot shoes and ancient Egyptian sandals to chestnut-crushing clogs and glamourous platforms. Over 4,500 years of history and a collection of 20th-century celebrity shoes are reflected in the semi-permanent exhibition, “All About Shoes”.

If you happen to be in the Toronto area, I highly recommend a visit to the The Bata Show Museum.

We’ll be back on the Ephemera beat very shortly.. so thanks for your patience.One of the first things we will be reviewing in a bit of detail is what appears to be a new blog entitled “Ephemeral New York – Chronicling an ever-changing city through faded and forgotten artifacts“New York City

The site is the creation of a magazine editor from the West Village who recalls stepping over winos to enter the Grand Union on Bleecker Street, a happily chaotic class packed with 35 other first graders at PS 41, and that Mays, not Whole Foods, was once the flagship shopping destination of Union Square. Sometimes wry and often wistful, she feels the presence of the city’s ghosts everywhere.

If you have any roots in New York City (as I do) then you’ll certainly want to check out this blog with me.  I’ll review it a bit more in a future article… but it you have time, stop by and let me know what YOU think of it… Ephemeral New York

I’m Tom Murphy and thanks for helping me give Ephemera the encore it deserves.

Tom
Click to see my current eBay items

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