Having recently moved to a new home, after 24 years, my wife
and I are faced with the reality that we have Too Much Stuff—and not enough
room to display it all. As much as we love our many and varied collectibles, we
need to clean house. We’ve already given things away and made donations, but
the trick is finding the right home for highly specialized pieces. That’s why
we’ve enlisted a friend who sells on eBay under the name bookloverjb to help us
out.
We’ve just begun this process, and I’m hoping that writing
about it here will draw the attention of the right collectors.
Long ago I got hooked on pressbooks, those oversized,
slick-paper campaign booklets that include movie ads and promotional gimmicks.
I’m starting to weed out my collection, so if you’re interested in John Wayne
titles like The Flying Leathernecks or The Sea Chase, an ad supplement for
Bogart and Bacall in The Big Sleep
(with a few ads cut out), Robert Youngson’s The
Golden Age of Comedy and The Further
Perils of Laurel and Hardy, or a reissue of Laurel and Hardy’s Great Guns, take a look. I even have a
1949 reissue pressbook for King Kong
which RKO paired with Val Lewton’s I Walked With a Zombie. There are plenty more to come.
We have an overabundance of Disney collectibles, from a charming
1940 Syroco figure of Pinocchio to a handful of limited-edition pieces from an
old Disneyana convention. (My favorite is a figurine of Donald Duck striking
the gong from the opening sequence of The
Mickey Mouse Club.) There’s also a lovely ceramic lamp of Bambi from the
1940s manufactured by Goebel.
While we’re at it, my wife is paring down her massive
collection of Royal British commemorative ware, starting with a selection of
Edward VIII items, ranging from modestly priced teacups to more imposing pieces
like a coronation jug.
If you go to eBay and type in the seller name “bookloverjb”
you can then search under Disney, or pressbook, or Edward VIII and find the
exact items I’ve been describing. Or you can browse and find a wide variety of
pieces from a number of consigners.
We have much more to weed out as we settle into our new
digs. Stay tuned!
