No comments about Donald McGill: The Michael Winner Collection.

1 comments about Scrye Collectible Card Game: Checklist & Price Guide (Scrye Collectible Card Games Checklist and Price Guide).

1. I like the item. My only problem with it was the fact that it only covered a certain time peroid for the CCG that i was collecting at the time. This meant that i didn't have the entire lists of all the sagas in the CCG. Other than that it was a great help for what i was looking for. I recommend this product to others and hope they enjoy it as much as I did.

4 comments about Card Sharks: How Upper Deck Turned a Child's Hobby into a High-Stakes, Billion-Dollar Business.

1. I found the book to provide an interesting history on collecting from early times to present. After the history lesson is over, William's seems to spend an inordinate amount of time dwelling on the various misdeeds of Upper Deck President Richie McWilliam. McWilliam has a very strong (and negative) reputation that is well understood within the industry. Why spend half a book telling everyone that he is dishonest, a liar and a cheat when it is already well understood?



2. The "Barbarians at the Gate" of the baseball card industry. Fascinating, yet creepy, to see from the inside how a child's hobby has been exploited by sleazy characters. Will definitely turn you off collecting new cards as an investment.



3. I enjoyed this book very much. It has two themes: first, it shows how one company with the right idea and the right people behind it can revolutionize an entire industry, against all odds. Second, it tells us that to succeed in today's competitive markets you have to elbow your way in. While the allegations of wrongdoings by trading card companies seem like unsubstantiated hearsay, the book does make you feel that you are on the inside, witnessing how the real entrepreneurs do it. Very entertaining read.



4. I feel any person who is in the hobby of collecting cards or thinking about getting in the hobby should read this book I found it interesting some of the aligations of conterfiting ones own cards interesting. Some people would be shocked to know why there cards have no value.

1 comments about Between Friends / Entre Amis.

1. I have wonderful cousins from Prince Edward Island who visit me in Maine at least twice a year. Their company is all the gift I want from them, but two years ago they bought me this book in our favorite used book store near my town.
   
   "Between Friends/Entre Amis" presents photographs of landscapes and people along the 5,522 miles of the International Boundary, embellished with quotes in English and French from a variety of sources (including my subject line, which is attributed to Sitting Bull, Chief of the Sioux). The original edition was produced in 1976 by the National Film Board of Canada; the photographers' brief was to interpret places and people where there is "a sense of the border present in the daily lives of the people that live there." The beautifully produced book was a gift to the United States on the occasion of the Bicentennial.
   
   The book is divided geographically into five parts. The first few times I looked at it, I was captivated with the spectacular scenery shots; but over time I've come to treasure the photographs of people in all their simplicity and diversity.
   
   Some of my favorite photographs, by section:
   
   THE NORTHWEST -- Full of rocky peaks; the snowy Boundary Mountains; the braided White River that carves itself a new channel every year; Chuklat Village in the mist; a young girl in braids and a big smile in Eagle, Alaska.
   
   THE ROCKIES -- A snowy, cloud-shrouded mountain road in Manning Park, British Columbia; two retired Olympic Peninsula loggers standing tall in front of a truckload of logs, one wearing a string tie with a starfish clasp; a Canadian ranch with a looming U.S mountain as backdrop; mule deer on a hillside near the British Columbia-Washington border.
   
   THE PLAINS -- A small white church with leaded windows and a steeple, alone in a wheat field under billowing clouds; a sheep farmer in a dim barn with his flock of sheep, light slicing in sharply from a window; a rainstorm far across a field in Manitoba.
   
   THE LAKES -- A woman fishing through the ice with a shiny silver pile of fish in front of her; The Outcasts, a cheerful-looking motorcycle club in Detroit; a group shot in a Boy Scout campground; a railway bridge over the Niagara River gorge; the St. Lawrence River.
   
   THE EAST -- An "international pool table" straddling the NY-Quebec border; a ballerina whose kitchen is in Canada, her living room in the U.S.; snow geese migrating across the St. Lawrence River; a grinning team of ice hockey players; the members of the world's only international Masonic Lodge.
   
   "Between Friends/Entre Amis" is a wonderful book produced to a fine concept. The edition pictured above is a limited re-release with a sky-high price tag, but I treasure my copy more because both book and slipcover are in mint condition from the long-out-of-print 1976 release -- and because it was a gift to me in love and friendship.
   
   "Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes." Henry David Thoreau
   
   Linda Bulger, 2008

No comments about Beatrix Potter and Bunnykins: Price Guide.

No comments about A Day on the Bay: Postcard Views of the Chesapeake.

3 comments about Old Magazines: Identification & Value Guide.

1. Nothing against this publication, but it was not what I was looking for. I thought it would give the value of individual issues of specific magazines which it did for what I would consider antique magazines. However, there was very little information provided on old issues of contemporary magazines.



2. Old Magazines Identification and Price Guide is written by Richard Clear and advised by David T. Alexander, two long time dealers with decades of experience in the field of collecting magazines and pulps. The first thing that stands out about this book is its attractive look. It's magazine-sized, printed in full color on thick, glossy stock. Three vintage magazine covers are printed per page and at 288 pages (NOT 224 as Amazon states In the listing) you get almost 900 color cover reproductions. To me that alone is worth the price of the book. So many very rare magazine covers are included...from popular things like Life, The Shadow, and Mad, to obscure titles like Camera Craft, Electrical Review, Gun Molls, Jolly Joker, and Peep Show.
   
   Clear uses multiple sources to arrive at prices in the guide including surveys of dealers, computer listing, online auctions, and his own thirty plus years of experience. Pricing for long running magazines is done by span of years. For example Life Magazines from 1950 - 1959 are listed at $5 - $10 each while those from 1960- 1972 are listed at $2.50 to $5.00 each. Even with thousands of magazines listed, evidently no guide can be complete and exhaustive. As a collector of monster magazines I was a bit disappointed to see so many omitted from the pages of the book. While a few such as Famous Monsters of Filmland and Monster World are included, many others are not. Fangoria, Scarlet Street, Midnight Marquee, FilmFax, and Cult Movies are all missing. Perhaps these are just too new, but that doesn't explain why older publications like Monster Parade, Castle of Frankenstein, Shriek, and Horror Monsters are also not included. Likewise, Clear includes some of Marvel Comics 1970's horror magazines such as Legion of the Monsters and Vampire Tales, but omits Dracula Lives and Tomb of Dracula.
   
   I found the prices to be a bit inconsistent from my own experiences. Warren titles like Creepy and Eerie are way too low, particularly on the early issues which feature Frazetta covers. On the other hand, prices on Famous Monsters and Vampirella seem right on the nose so go figure...
   
   Clear does make special notations for magazines which featured the work of notable writers like Edgar Rice Burroughs and Norman Rockwell and prices the magazines accordingly. Unfortunately one thing sacrificed to print all these wonderful covered was more detail about writers and artists. For example, Weird Tales which feature stories by Robert E. Howard or H.P. Lovecraft go for significantly more than others of the same period, yet Clear does not note this, nor does he mention Weird Tales covers by Margaret Brundage. Oddly though, Clear does make mention of the stories written by Robert E. Howard for Fight Magazine. These inconsistencies do make for a somewhat perplexing guide.
   
   Still based upon the sheer number of quality covers printed and the number of titles it does include, the book does prove to be a valuable, if not complete resource for magazine collectors.
   
   Reviewed by Tim Janson



3. I bought this book because it has nine hundred covers, printed on glossy paper, three to a page (mostly two and a half inches deep) and best of all, in color. The listing is alphabetical with the magazine title, publisher and prices relating to the life of the title. This arrangement makes for some odd visual surprises Jungle Stories (1954) is facing Kimball's Dairy Farmer (1917) or Everbody's Poultry Magazine (1916) facing Exciting Detective (1940).
   
   The color covers are a bit of an extra for a book that is really a listing but you get a chance to see how publishers presented their newsstand wares over the last hundred years or so. All type covers from the nineteenth century change into illustrations in the first half of the twentieth century and finally into photographic covers that we see today.
   
   How accurate the prices are I can't say but apart from first issues most titles seem to be very reasonable. So if you are going magazine hunting in shops or car-boot sales it would be useful to take this paperback as a guide before you haggle.
   
   If you like looking at magazine covers check out these two titles, ' Front Page: Covers of the Twentieth Century' by Stephanie Duperray and Raphaele Vidaling, or the sumptuous 'Great Magazine Covers of the World' by Partica Kery, both books have hundreds of colored covers arranged in meaningful chapters and finally 'Cover Story' by Steven Heller and Loise Fili, a beautifully designed paperback showing two hundred American magazine covers from 1900 thru 1950.

1 comments about Children's Book Covers: Great Book Jacket And Cover Design.

1. This beautiful work is inspiring to all who work in the area of education and childhood studies. It is a delight and offers new insights to the reader.

No comments about Breese's Guide to Modern First Editions.

1 comments about Wish You Were Here: An Album of Vintage Mackinac Postcards.

1. Compiled and with commentary by Steven C. Brisson, "Wish Your Were Here: An Album Of Vintage Mackinac Postcards" is a superbly organized and presented collection of historic postcard color and duo-tone postcards of Mackinac Island. The images range from steamships, docks and harbor views; to main street vistas, churches and cottages, to island hotels, and so much more. Enhanced with a bibliography, a list of acknowledgments, an index, and an appendix (Publisher Information and Dates of the Cards), "Wish You Were Here" is a very highly entertaining, as well as informative and nostalgic post card collection that is especially recommended to Mackinac Island enthusiasts and amateur historians as a perfect memorial tribute to a colorful island's past grandeur.