When I was a little girl, I loved horses (I think most little girls do), and I was an avid reader. So it would only make sense that I would discover The Black Stallion series by Walter Farley.

In summer I would ride my bike (often pretending it was a horse) to the library, where I’d roam the stacks for books. Eventually, I’d pick out enough books to fill that banana-seat bike’s basket, and head home (perhaps whinnying on the way). The frequency of my visits varied by weather and the difficulty of the books I selected, but one thing never differed: there was always at least one copy of The Black Stallion series in that basket.

Being a voracious reader from a thrifty family, buying books wasn’t something I did. Libraries were the most practical way to ensure enough texts to sate my need — no, my greed to read. As a child, I was able to devote entire days to reading, and so, I never had late books and the fines that accompany them. It wasn’t until high school, with the added responsibility of hard classwork and my first job, that I learned the pain of overdue book fines. Once I did, I discovered the joy of cashing my pay checks (nearly litreally) at the local bookstore. Of course, by this time, I had no interest in horse stories.

Fade out on my late teen years, and in on my 30’s. I’m older, but no better off in the overdue library book department, so I have learned to be wiser in my book purchases. I regularly shop for books at rummage sales — not only for myself, but for my children. One fateful summer morning, I find a hardcover copy of The Black Stallion. But the cover is not as I remember it. Remember, I had read the library copies, so the books I had read were either dull cloth boards, or pictorial boards with the modern arch or ‘horseshoe’ shape as a window to the illustration. Here, in my hands, was a dust jacket with much more impressive art!

I paid my 50 cents (my, this was a while ago now!), and I think I whinnied with excitement.

That night, smitten not only by joy of rediscovering a long lost friend and the excitement of introducing The Black to my children, but by the artwork, I searched online for more books in the Black Stallion series.

In my searching, I discovered that I was not the only one interested in reclaiming their childhood favorites — prices can run quite high especially as many titles are now out of print. But I also learned more about the author, and this convinced me that I was justified in my obsession to get all the books.

In 1940, while working on his first book, an editor told him, “Don’t figure on making any money writing children’s books.” Farley disagreed, saying “If you can write a book that will interest children you can make a living.” He proved his point with The Black Stallion and developing it into a series that has sold over a hundred million copies in the last 60 years, complete with a fan club. At the time of his death, Farley had received over 500,000 letters from fans, and his books remain popular — so popular, that generations later, movies based on his books are being made.

Like Alec and The Black, Farley did what he loved; he dared to dream, to use his imagination, and to make the dreams reality. And he inspired others to do the same.

In 1989 when Farley passed away, his local library in Venice, Florida, designated its children’s wing the Walter Farley Literary Landmark to honor the author’s legacy and his activity in children’s reading programs. A permanent exhibit of Black Stallion memorabilia is on display there.

To make a long story short, I now own 10 books in the series, including many first editions and copies with fine dust jackets. I also have Man O’ War, the three Island Stallion books, and an elusive copy of Farley’s The Great Dane Thor… I’m still on the lookout for an autographed copy, original fan club items… Well, you know how these things happen.

But as Walter Farley himself said, “I believe half the trouble in the world comes from people asking ‘What have I achieved?’ rather than ‘What have I enjoyed?’ I’ve been writing about a subject I love as long as I can remember, horses and the people associated with them, anyplace, anywhere, anytime. I couldn’t be happier knowing that young people are reading my books. But even more important to me is that I’ve enjoyed so much the writing of them.”

And I’ve enjoyed so much the reading and collecting of them.

Recently, the world of action figure collecting has been rattled by the news that Marvel Comics has unexpectedly broken off their contract with Toy Biz, the company that has had exclusive rights to produce and distribute articulated action figures of Marvel Characters for well over a decade. Sure, Marvel will sell rights to put their characters on everything from diapers to genetically modified tomatoes, or as I’d like to think of them, Dr. Doomatoes - but Marvel Action figures have been special since ToyBiz has started taking them seriously. If you can sort through the legalese of the public contract, Marvel has paid a hefty premature severance fee and I think there’s also five goats and at least one vestal virgin in question.

ToyBiz and their director of product development, Jesse Falcon, have been incredibly collector-friendly over the past few years. They’ve interacted with fans, and have created figures with an even focus on marketing and obscure fan-favorite characters, so it’s a shame that we won’t be hearing much more from them after 2006 when Hasbro takes the helm. ToyBiz will still produce wresting lines and movie properties like Curious George (having ended their Lord of the Rings contract at the end of 2005), but their core Marvel line, which they’ve become synonymous with, will be moving on. This news comes very soon after the news that Palisades Toys has abruptly closed up shop. People will lament these passings in song one day. The vikings of the future (since time is cyclical) will lift giant steins of mead and toast them in dead languages, and then go back to playing Warcraft in their mothers’ basements.

I visited ToyBiz at Toy Fair this year. Every year, they have a group media event, which is lovingly called the ‘nerd herd’, at which all of the internet news outlets are ushered politely through the showrooms, cameras aflutter, to gather as much visual evidence as they can to disperse to nerds who are not as fortunate. The feeling in the showrooms was noticeably somber. Instead of animated demonstrations of the toy lines, we got a ‘you know what these are’ speech and were set free to snap photos. While this is what everyone there wanted anyhow, it rang like funeral bells. Everything in the showroom, we were assured, is in production and WILL find itself onto shelves, despite the changing of the guard. That information should settle about 50% of all of the collector rumblings out there.

I’ve uploaded all of the photos taken in the ToyBiz showroom to this gallery - click through and enjoy!

The first action figure display that we came to held the Fantastic Four line of figures, both waves one and two. While wave one is on shelves now, wave two (which I spoke about in the earlier Super Skrull article) will be hitting in April of this year, with no figures planned after that. Included in wave two are Human Torch (with transforming action), Invisible Woman (with a clear variant figure), Thing (with unarticulated arms, to perform some action feature), and villains Dragon Man and Kang.

Continuing with the Fantastic Four theme, an animated series is due to come out this year and will be accompanied by a line of action figures. There are noticeably smaller than the 6” figures that Marvel usually makes, and the first wave will include Dr. Doom, a non-flamey Human Torch, Thing and a Skrull. Wave two will include Hulk, Mole Man, a flamed-on Human Torch, a very Evangelion-looking Doombot, Mr. Fantastic & Invisible Woman. Somewhere in there, an enormous, rocky Mole Man creature will also come out.

Next came Marvel Figure Factory, which are tiny dioramas that one assembles from 20 to 30 tiny parts, all packed in a tiny crate. Any fans of Japanese gashapon know exactly what these are about, as the gashapon craze is nothing new. ToyBiz put out the first wave of these many months ago, and they consisted of a handful of known characters, backed up by an even larger array of ‘mystery figures’. These figures were blind-packaged, meaning that you had no idea who you were buying - only that they box had a big ol’ question mark on it. Inside could be a variation on a known character, or it could be a completely new character that wasn’t even listed on the box. They’ve followed up that concept with another wave of these figures. These have just hit retail a few weeks ago, but are still difficult to find. I’ll tell you this, though - each mystery box is stamped with a code number. If you figure out this code (and there are online sources that have broken it), you’ll know what’s in every box. Wave two of these includes Ghost Rider, Namor, Dark Phoenix, Dr. Doom, Nightcrawler and a host of other exciting surprise figures. They retail for about 6 dollars per figure.

A new line that ToyBiz will be distributing this year is Marvel Icons, which are 12” figures made of rotocast plastic. Previous to rotocasting production, 12” (or 1/6 scale) figures were prohibitively expensive and difficult to make. As new technology came along, ToyBiz was able to make these large-scale figures and retail them for only ten bucks each, which is an incredible bargain, considering that most 6” action figures are in the price range. They maintain all of the detail and most of the articulation of the smaller figures, and they’re BIG. Why settle for a 6” Captain America when you can have one that you can bludgeon someone with? You may have seen these types of figure before, as ToyBiz has made them for the Spider-Man and X-Men movies, as well as for a few other choice characters, and every one of those figures was excellent. Now, they bring this scale to characters like Iron Man, a new Wolverine and Captain America, all of whom comprise the first wave, which will hit in late 2006.

Now we hit the big deal of Toy Fair for many collectors - Marvel Legends. Maybe you heard about the Marvel Legends Kansas debacle last week, but that’s an article unto itself. In short, prototypes for a series not due out until May were accidentally left on a Wal-Mart shelf after a promotional photosession and were quickly bought by a dedicated and unwitting collector, who quickly became the talk of the town. Man, did that get the geek juices flowin’.

Marvel Legends have become popular due to a combination of highly detailed sculpting, super articulation and character appreciation. They’re items of high value due to the fact that they show up very inconsistently in stores due to a strange distribution scheme, and are also bought up (when not hoarded by eager stockboys and resold on eBay) very quickly.

2006 will see a good handful of Marvel Legends waves, all of these figures will include various parts of a larger figure. Collect all of the figures in the wave and you can assemble a beautiful extra-huge figure out of these extra parts. In the past, we’ve seen the Sentinel, Galactus and Apocalypse waves, and since all of these guys are very large characters, often dwarfing human-sized heroes, it makes sense to create them in a larger size. Future Marvel Legends big-figures (or BAFs) will include Giant Man (exclusive ONLY to Wal-Mart), Mojo, Onslaught and MODOK.

Here’s where we walk the line between popular and obscure, as Mojo and MODOK are often regarded as thoroughly ridiculous and pointless characters. I mean, Mojo is a fat slug with a robot-spider body who rules over a TV dimension, and MODOK is a giant head whose acronym stands for ‘Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing’. Oh, once he was once ‘Designed Only for Calculating’, but after his puppy died, he was never the same. You can see why these would be regarded as ridiculous, and yet, here they are. Maybe it’s the big ol’ ‘up yours!’ that ToyBiz is giving to their corporate masters, and maybe they’re just making figures that THEY would love to see, but I love ‘em for it.

Of course, these waves of figures include your standard array of heroes and villains, including three figures of Iron Man (who is a personal favorite) in various armors, Spider Woman, Beta Ray Bill (who is a space horse with the powers of Thor), Ant Man, Havok and Wasp, among a ton of others, too numerous to count. After these waves are over, there’s a slim chance that anyone will be left out. Add to this a series of Marvel legends two packs, both of archenemies and figures to re-create epic battles, as well as box sets of various super teams and events in Marvel Comics history, and it’s really too fun for words. Marvel Legends WILL continue once Hasbro takes over, but they may not be anything like this at all.

In short, it’s a banner year for Marvel figures, and it may be the last, so celebrate it.

A few years back I won a handmade doll bed as part of a larger lot in an auction. The bed came complete with a mattress, pillow and a delightful little doll quilt. The quilt was a simple affair of small squares of colorful fabric sewn together and attached to a backing with ties. It wasn’t terribly old or executed with great skill, but something about that little quilt charmed me.

Quilts include a top layer, a middle layer of batting and a backing, all stitched together. Although quilting has been around for a long time, patchwork and appliqué quilts became popular in the United States during the 19^th century. Quilting profited from innovations such as the sewing machine and factory produced fabric as sewing became easier and fabric became cheaper. Quilting fell out of favor in the U.S. in the 1940’s, but experienced a resurgence of popularity in the 1970’s and remains a favorite needlecraft to this day.

Fine antique quilts can command thousands of dollars in the marketplace and are regularly featured in museums. Many quilt lovers enjoy collecting antique doll quilts, which can be less expensive than full-sized quilts in similar condition. Because they are so small, they’re easy to store and display. Doll quilts can be framed, hung on a quilt rack, used as eye-catching wall hangings – there are any number of ways to show off your antique doll quilts.

Because they were frequently well loved and often used playthings, antique doll quilts can be difficult to find in good condition. Examine the piece carefully for rips, tears or repairs before buying. Also, doll quilts were popular sewing projects for children, so the workmanship might not be to the level you’d expect from a full-size quilt.

A crib quilt is another type of collectible quilt that was made for children. Like doll quilts, crib quilts are smaller than standard quilts. However, since they were generally made by adults for children’s beds, the workmanship of these quilts tends to be better than that found in doll quilts. Follow this link to see a few great examples of antique crib quilts: Smithsonian Quilts

Slips are some of the most popular and sought after garments in vintage lingerie collecting because they combine the details that delight the senses as well as the emotions. Vintage slips offer visual and textural treats: the indulgence of abundant lace and flouncing hemlines, the luxury of real silk, the charm of chiffon, the drama in the drape of bias cut heavy satin, the slip and sheen of high quality nylon…

But by the late 1970s, when women stopped wearing slips & bras and other foundation undergarments as a part of their daily dressing, many manufacturers stopped making these items alltogether. Those that continued to make them opted to play it cost effective and stopped importing French lace and ended investing in expensive fabrics such as high quality blended nylon satin and silks. Of course, now that these delightful unmentionables are no longer made, slips are hot on the collectible market.

Recently, I sat down to talk with Kimberly, a fellow vintage lingerie collector and owner of Glamour Gurlz Vintage Slips, to discuss the allure of vintage slips.

Kimberly, when did you first fall in love with vintage lingerie?

I personally began collecting vintage lingerie and other glamorous vintage ‘dress up’ items when my dear sweet grandmother passed away about 15 years ago. My mother & I had to sort through all of her beautiful & glamorous lingerie, foundations, costume jewelry & clothing, so that we could donate it to charity. As we sorted through her things, we reminisced about watching her sitting at her vanity, clad in girdle, slip, stockings, heels and bullet bra — This was the era when it was an ‘art’ to make yourself as desirable as possible. I remembered how I used to think “I wanna be just like that when I grow up!” And then I thought to myself, “There is no way I can part with such grand memories!”

But still why ‘old’ & not ‘new?’
Lingerie and glamour accessories in today’s market are not the quality product you find in a vintage item. For example: A modern full slip in today’s market usually consists of a basic nylon in black, white or beige or the standard ‘polyester’ satins. Finding one with more than an inch of lacework is almost non-existent.
Slipping into vintage lingerie takes you to a whole new level of sexiness… I honestly believe once anyone owns a piece of vintage lingerie, they will never go back to the modern, flimsy mass produced styles. When you buy vintage, your buying a piece of history, a collectable, one of a kind item.

But, in a nutshell, those who have owned vintage lingerie become addicted…

Do you have a favorite style or time period?

A favorite of mine was introduced to me by a close friend a few years ago… the designer is Saramae Lingerie and was sold by high end department stores from the 40’s through the early 70s.

These are extremely rare pieces of lingerie and very hard to come by, so when I find one I jump on them.

They normally consist of soft silky nylon with a extraordinary 5-10″ imported cut out lacework, backed in a sheer soft pink or contrasting chiffon.

I currently have over 100 in my personal collection by Saramae Lingerie and do not intend to sell them. I collect these as a true collectable piece of history, a rare and unique gem.

(To Be Continued)

About 7 years ago, out at a flea market, I spied two little green pottery dishes, each about the length & width of a playing card, with a leaf at 2 of the 4 corners. While green, they are impressed with a pattern that looks like wood grain. The two piece are taped together for a dime, so I bought them, thinking they will make nice candle holders or whatnot.
When I get them home, I inspect them a bit closer. They appear to be older Majolica pieces, with lots of crazing, but I don’t have a clue as to what they are. I dismissed ideas such as butter plates and salt dishes, for one reason or another; but what were they? Printed on the bottom, they have a large © with Batlin & Son, Inc. printed below it. Armed with this information, I headed to the internet.

A quick search of Baltin & Son provides only legal copyright information, which at I ignored, as this legal dispute was about plastic & metal banks, and tells me nothing of the pieces which sat on my desk. However, the lack of information didn’t stop my searching. I became obsessed.

After a few weeks of dedicated searching, I found something of interest: another Batlin piece, a box with a cute elf atop it, in green. It turns out, it’s a cigarette box, and inside, were to be two green dish ashtrays. A box missing it’s dishes, and me without the box — what luck! I bought it and was excited to re-unite dishes and box.

As it goes with many collectors, one item never remains alone for long, and I moved along collecting teapots, salt & pepper shakers, pitchers, sugar bowls, vases, etc. — And, I have learned more about the pieces I own from other collectors.

Little is known about Batlin & Son, and perhaps this curiosity is in part what drives collectors, for when one Batlin collector bumps into another, we are as eager to share and disc we know of the company & the pieces themselves.

The pattern is called the Jack & The Beanstalk pattern, and was made by Batlin in the 1930’s-40’s. Apparently, the Jack and the Beanstalk pattern also was made in brown, but the few pieces found all seem to have a southern heritage, suggesting a local influence, limited run or sales test.

Batlin also made a few other patterns, such as a Gazelle and a brown bear, and while the Beanstalk pattern is the most popular, Batlin’s rarity moves many collectors do collect the other pieces as well. Some pieces are marked “Batlin & Son, Inc”, some “L Batlin” and others with only “Japan”. And I’ve found slight size differences between those marked “Batlin” and those marked “Japan” — with the latter pieces being slightly smaller.

Along with the cigarette set, the most sought after pieces are the cookie jar, plates and tea cups. I’ve heard, but never seen, that a ceramic lamp was made in this pattern as well. Sadly, I have none of those pieces. But, as a collector, I have faith I’ll get them yet!