Antiques Collectibles Books

A book full of interesting information and beautiful color photos, mainly for English shotguns. Very readable, with the contents arranged in a rather original way. The book needs an alphabetical index at the end.

As a dealer who specializes in upper end shotguns, I think I know more than the average sportsman about shotguns... BUT... I was amazed at the ammount of great info in this book. VERY READABLE. If you have any interest in quality side by side shotguns - get it!!!

this is an excellent book worthy of any gun book collection; however, it is exactly the same book as Vintage Guns for the Modern Shot. Buy one but not both.

This was purchased for our 4 year old who is a major Hot Wheels fan. He and dad pour through the colorful photographs and line up all their cars that match those found in the book. I am sure from a collectors point the information of the value along with the detailed picture would be very useful. It is a nice thick, heavy paged book that will be around this house for a long time.

I find this book extremely helpful in listing a very large percentage of the current (1989 onwards) Hot Wheels variations. The book follows on from the earlier editions and I find it a very useful refererence source.

Awesome very fast shipping. Arrived in excellent condition. Will buy from again. Thanks so much.

If you collect variations of Hot Wheels, you have probably heard of the Godfather of Variations, Michael Zarnock. This guy is nuts about variations and has put together one of the top 3 Hot Wheels collector books ever published. I love the book and have loved it since volume 1 because it has fantastic Blue Card identification pictures and very accurate price guide. If you don't know if a variation is real or fake, just check the Grail, it will let you know if you are dealing with fraud or not. In other words, if it is not in this book you are probably not dealing with a variation. Indispensible to a serious Hot Wheel collector. Gratzi, Don Zarnock.

I just got got this book today and It was more than I expected there were tons and tons of pictures, mr. zarnock give yourself a pat on the back because you did one heke of a job.

I design and sew costumes for our local theatre company and this book has been a huge help in designing the proper look for a particular time period. It is a fun book to peruse to compare prices and styles with today's clothes.

This book has wonderful pen and ink drawings of womens, mens, children and accessories fashions. A great book for fashion drawing students as well as giving a good feel for that era.

This is a very good reference book. It does not show you the little details that photo books of fashion can provide, but the illustrations give you a good feel for the attitude of 1930s fashion. It is full of pen&ink style renderings of men,women and children's clothing. The drawings are also copyright free....

I've bought, read, or browsed through many books on this subject. Granick's book on Amish quilts is the most comprehensive and fascinating I've seen. A delight to read. A delight to the eyes. I recommend it highly.

As a serious collector of Amish quilts, and a textiles professor who also does research on the topic, I am so glad that this book is in print. So many of the others on Amish quilts show the quilts without the cultural context. The cultural and religious context is briefly presented in this book, which is a departure from most of the others.

Not ony does Eve Wheatcroft Granick walk through the evolution of the Amish quilt, she also helps the reader grasp Amish heritage and culture. I would highly recommend this book!

I highly reccommend this book to anyone interested in Amish quilts. The pictures are gorgeous and the historical text is fascinating. I bought an antique quilt 2 years ago and was told it came from a farm auction in an Amish community in Iowa. As it is a double wedding ring pattern with a multitude of small print calicos and pink backing I dismissed the idea that it was of Amish origin. However, after reading about quilts from Iowa and their use of patterned fabrics I am thrilled to think that it probably is Amish.

A wonderful book!

This book is an invaluable resource for any business or collector dealing in silver (coin, silverplate, or sterling). This was a gift I purchased for a collector's library and the third reprint I've purchased over the years. A must-have book for the silver research library.

This is a "must have" for anyone who collects, sells or loves sterling silver.

this is the book to have if you are an antique silver collector. Wonderful addition to my silver library

I got this book through inter-library loan on the advice of an online silver seller and hobbyist? expert? We are restoring an 1800s farmhouse in New York state, and have found various bits of silver and pottery and other things. Everything is quite worn and dirty from being underground for decades. I did a number of online searches but it was this book which enabled me to identify, just in the course of one afternoon, two pieces of cutlery -- one old silver, one less old silverplate, and be fairly secure in the ID because this book tells a bit about some of the marks, such as their locale.

No resource is infinite. This book shows many, many marks, and the text tells of the history and relationships among many of the manufacturers. I'd definitely recommend it to anyone else doing research. Don't forget your loupe or other strong magnifier!

This is a good book for American Hallmarks BUT, it is extremely out-of-date. Also, many entries do not have a picture of the mark, making identification difficult. There must be a better book out there somewhere!

I wanted a book to help me identify a bunch of pocket knives I had acquired and what they might be worth. This book helped me do that quite easily and I would recommend it to anyone with similar goals. "The standard knife collectors guide" by Ritchie and Stewart was also of equal value.

I would have liked to have seen more color photos and fewer copier quality pictures but the process was good enough to do what I needed. This book made it easier to discern differences among similar knives because of the detail that was included in knife types.

If it wasn't for Case knives it wouldn't be much of a book.
There is some good basic information, about the same as included
in most knife books. Many many knife makers are not mentioned.
I purchase reference books on all my interest and with few
exceptions these books list a great percentage of the total
industry, not just a few as this book does. It sure could have
been better described.

Well its a typical price guide. The values in it are way overinflated and none of the knives actually bring that much money. It is also missing prices for several highly collectible knives.
The Case XX section of this book is kinda difficult to find what you are looking for.
If you are thinking of buying this book then dont, I would recommend POCKET KNIFE TRADER'S PRICE GUIDE VOLUME 8 it is much easier to figure out and has actual prices and it is cheaper. It is also fresh off the presses and is written by a group of people who are directly involved with Case and Tony Foster who knows everything about knives.

This book is great. I wanted a book listing knife values and this shows everything on that subject for all knives.

A lot of good information in this book from Mr. Price!
I would have liked to see more info on obscure knives but I also understand there are only so many pages in the book(750 or so), what info is found between the pages is detailed and accurate.
A definite worthy addition to anyones library that collects knives.

I purchased this book along with Christmas Tree Pins/O Christmas Tree and since I rated that book a "5", I am rating this book a strong 4. While the pages are a bit thinner in weight (but still of good quality), the photos are excellent with the pins presented nicely. And, even though the number of pins featured are fewer, this book also includes santas, angels, reindeer, wreaths, and other seasonal pins which makes this a good addition/companion to my library.

Ms. Gallina has done impressive research. Her pictures are well done, in color, and carefully organized by designer and theme. Her captions are descriptive and the values are clear.

This somewhat small book was extremely helpful to me in identifying the values of some recently purchased Weiss candle Christmas Tree Pins. It has also shown me what pins do not carry such a high value.
I would love to see more books like this one for holiday jewelry.
I would highly reccommend this book to anyone interested in Vintage and New Christmas Jewelry.

This book by Jill is one of my favorite books, and not just because my own jewelry is included. Jill's wonderful photography showcases a wonderous variety of this collecting category. I doubt there are very many collectors who don't have a least one Christmas tree pin in their collection. And truly, it is very likely that every single woman who loves jewelry has at least one tree pin for holiday wear. This beautiful book is a perfect addition to any vintage costume jewelry reference library, for collectors and dealers alike. And it may even convert non-collectors! Thanks Jill!

Very enjoyable book with great history of the designers of today and yesteryear that made Christmas Pins. Good color pictures with a price guide that reflects today's prices. If you are a new pin collector this is a must have at a reasonable price. If you are a seasoned collector you will enjoy reading about the short histories of your favorite designers.

Design, according to Adrian Forty, encompasses not just how things look, but how they are made and marketed as well. In a very readable and well-illustrated book, Forty shows how design reflects and changes culture. His fascinating historical accounts show how modern consumer society developed. Victorian pocket knives, for instance, mirrored and reinforced that era's strict social structure. In another example, Forty reaches back to the 1750s to show how Wedgewood china introduced revolutionary changes in industrial manufacturing, design, and marketing that made the industrial revolution possible. Objects of Desire should appear on the reading lists of every design department and business school

What is design? Is it what we make it to be, how we want it to be, or is it just designed and accepted by society? Adrian Forty writes the book in an unusual way by setting up each chapter as its own entity, yet the concepts in all the chapters somehow relate. The author enjoys jumping from topic to topic at high speed which makes the read interesting with the overwhelming examples there are in products- in one chapter it went from pocketknives to watches to childhood furniture to textiles to soap to architecture within a span of a couple pages. Ridiculous as it may be, it somehow kept my attention. Filled with pictures of antique and modern design, Forty proves that design has progressed though time according to the needs or perceived needs of society. It makes you see things more as designs than products, and inspires you to wonder why something was designed the way it was. This book was assigned to be read in one of my college classes, and I decided to keep it instead of selling it back after the semester ended.

I rediscovered this book after college since I was probably too young to truly appreciate it the first time around. I use it now as the textbook for my Culture of Design seminar because it is one of the rare design history books that can ground design in its social context with real depth or clarity. (And boy, have I looked!)

While it can seem long winded to some, the ideas contained within are so novel and well explained that it can make someone allergic to 18th and 19th Century Design (like myself) truly appreciate the radical innovations of that period. For example, the Industrial Revolution was not just due to the steam engine's invention but more specifically to division of labor such as implemented in Wedgewood's factory in the mid 18th century.

The chapter on "Differentiation by Design" is a gem, showing how design reinforces class, age and gender roles. In the chapter on labor saving devices, women didn't really save any labor since cleanliness standards simply rose to meet product opportunities...

It's true that the book's layout, infographics and quality of the images do not do it justice... Hopefully the next reprint will address that.

This is more for the reader who wants to read an economic and cultural treatise on the development of design and how it has affected culture.

If it wasn't so long-winded I would have actually enjoyed it a lot more. Forty has looked at some of the assumptions we have made about design and culture and realised that they are not quite as they seem. A classic example he uses is that the invention and high use of sewing machines coincided with the impossibly ruffled gowns and dresses of the 1860's - the assumption has always been that the sewing machine made this type of style possible. Forty points out that these dresses did indeed use up to 100yds of fabric, and the use of the sewing machine only made them possible by making them more affordable. Sweatshops paid machine sewers far less than they paid hand sewers - therefore more complex dresses made by machine could be made for cheaper cost. My only problem with Forty is that he takes nearly 2 pages to say this.

I have some other problems with this work, I don't think it is well illustrated - all illustrations are small and in black and white - a bit hard to take in things that he calls 'richly glazed' and so on when you can't even see the colours. It also means he has catalogues and so on in here printed in impossibly small form so you can barely make out the designs.

On another petty note, I was surprised to see the picture of a cauliflower tea pot - fully functional from Wedgewood on one page, and then several pages later a picture of the mould was shown - both from 1760. What suprised me was that there was no reference in the text or near either illustration alluding to the fact that these were both in here. I thought something like this would at least have a small footnote directing to the other page.

I realise that with printing you have to make compromises but I didn't feel that these essentially editing and printing details did the book and its subject full justice. This really is a great book - divided into 11 chapters from the first industrial designers, to design in the home, labour-saving in the home and design and corporate identity. It just doesn't really quite make it.