Collectors’ Quest has just unveiled it’s new pride and joy - the marketplace! Now you can buy and sell your items with ease.

Why Should You Do It Now?

For a limited time, posting to the marketplace is FREE so put up as many items as you can. You can always use that extra cash for something new in your collection.

It’s So Easy

1) You can move items into the marketplace from your collection with just a click.

2) No long descriptions needed - you can use the various fields provided to help describe your item or just use the description you already have.

3) Once you agree on a price with the buyer, our bid tool provides a virtual handshake between buyer and seller. Upon the handshake, we will remove the item from your collection.

4) Buying is easy, just use our search tool to find what you are looking for, click on the items for details and then contact the seller.

How to Get Started

Want to see what is up for grabs? Check out our marketplace. If you are already a member of our community, click here to start selling. If you haven’t joined as yet, click here to see all of the benefits.

Happy Hunting,

Liz

Back in February I posted 13 Fascinating Clippings From 1957, which included this bit:

In a feature called May We Present, we learn of the miracle of dog obedience via Blanche Saunders (featured with her poodles).

“Miss Saunders’s talents are now so much in demand that getting your dog into one of her classes is roughly comparable to getting your son into Harvard.”

Well, at least it was easier than getting your daughter in.

And then I heard from Beverly. Her niece Lisa found the post and contacted Beverly to let her know — because Blanche was Beverly’s great aunt (and therefore Lisa’s great great aunt). This is what she wrote:

We don’t have many photos or much background material, so the items below were so meaningful. I’m so glad you have a hobby that takes you through old magazines! You have have come across my mother Joan Saunders, who also trained poodles and had her own poodle shop in Manhattan.

One never knows how one is going to connect with others. And isn’t the Web fabulous!

The Web is indeed fabulous! I think I may have been even more thrilled than Beverly; for while it certainly is fun to connect with people, it’s super-bonus-point-time when my junk gets validated for having a purpose.

I asked Beverly if I could share her story; she replied, “By all means, share the story, Deanna.” And sent along the following information:

I am rather pleased for my great Aunt Blanche, who was quite an unusual, accomplished woman way back when women were stuck in “little boxes.” She was a Canadian, by the way, from Petitcodiac, New Brunswick. How she got to the elegant realms of Manhattan and a townhouse in the east Fifties must have been quite a story—one that she took with her. She had the first (and for years the only) poodle shop in that New York townhouse in addition to running Carillon Kennels. Katharine Cornell, the Bennett sisters (Constance and Joan), Gov. of New York Tom Dewey and a slew of celebrities and members of Eastern Upper Crust were among her clientele. I attach a document with some other background that you might find of interest.

This is some of the information she sent; I include it for any others who are interested in Blanche Saunders & poodles:

Catharine C. Reiley, “Poodles in obedience”, Mackey J. Irick, The New Poodle, 6th ed. (New York: Howell Book House, 1986), [includes] an account of the 10,000 miles 10-week “trailer trek” across North America during the fall of 1937 by Helene Whitehouse Walker (founder of the sport in North America, and charter member of the Poodle Club of America) and her then-assistant, the now-legendary trainer, instructor, and author, Blanche Saunders–with three Standard Poodles–to popularize the then-new sport.

…Saunders died in 1964; her memory is honoured each year at the Poodle Club of America’s National Specialty when a trophy in her name is awarded to the highest-scoring Poodle in the Open B class.

So it certainly would be fair to say that Blanche Saunders helped put the “standard” in poodles. *wink*

Beverly signed her email saying, “And thank you again. I’m certain that wherever my aunt’s spirit is, she is enjoying this connection.”

Now doesn’t that just make collecting, scanning and sharing seem so important & vital? Who knows what keys you & your collection hold to someone else’s history. So get out your stuff & share it in the Collectors Quest Community — I just know someone out there is going to be thrilled that you did.

Vintage Ford Service Station, Lenexa Garage, Courtesy Johnson County Museum

Meeting In The Middle, the 2008 annual conference for both the Mountain-Plains Museums Association & the Association of Midwest Museums, was held last week. One of the Wednesday sessions that I attended was Create Access To Your Collections — Digitizing Collaboratively, which was all about the process of creating JoCoHistory.net, a collaborative project of the Johnson County Museum, Johnson County Library, Johnson County Archives, and Olathe Public Library to provide greater access to historical materials related to Johnson County, Kansas.

Now, before you non-technical &/or non-Kansas folks let your eyes glaze over or begin to reach for that ‘back’ button on your browser, let me tell you this is one fascinating project for collectors.

1979 Halloween Party Photo, Courtesy of Johnson County Museum

And just plain fun for those of us who just love looking at old photos.

Sure it’s focused on one county in Kansas, but as far as online databases go, it’s so much more than that. With this easy to use site, even if you aren’t a collector of Kansas, you certainly can find images and information on rather any historical collection you have. Along with search options, there are easily understood categories (people, places, groups, etc.) & collections (by museum, society etc.), all cross referenced with a timeline.

Along with providing greater access to old photographs, valuable ephemera, & historical information (and preserving those fragile photos & paper), JoCoHistory.net makes connections that might otherwise have been missed.

Antique Photo Postcard, Children Riding Ostrich, Courtesy Johnson County Museum

In schools, for example, teachers are finding the resources to make the connections between the national or ‘big picture’ history lessons and the local stories, heroes and events — including finding places for field trips & tours.

And students can get help with with their homework! No, they won’t be given cheat-sheets or the answers, but they will be assisted in where & how to find the answers. Local biographies, something largely missed in school texts, standard history books and even on the Internet, are luring students into pursuing more individual research. Students of all ages are becoming interested in history! And JoCoHistory is quickly discovering that interest in the site isn’t only local — parents & kids from other locations around the US are contacting the site for help in making the connections to their own locations.

OK, call me a history nerd, but how thrilling is that?

But wait, there’s more! Like the Ginsu knives, JoCoHistory offers much more for collectors and amateur historians.

• It’s all easy to use, with the candy (images) right there for sweet instant gratification. That’s so important for me; when researching I often prefer to scan photos to see if a database really has what I am looking for.
• You can get prints of the photos &/or higher quality scans of the images to print yourself. With each listing you’ll get information on Owner, Ordering Information, Resource Identifier, & Photo Use and Limitations — complete with links for easy access.
• Research tools for further help.

Retro Smaks Drive In Sign, Photo Courtesy Johnson County Museum

Perhaps the coolest feature is the History Mystery section, where JoCoHistory features images they’d like help with. If you can identify something or someone in the image shown, you can easily send in your information. What’s more, this feature is active on all images on the site simply by clicking the link by Feedback. David LaCrone, Digital Content Manager for the Johnson Country Library, says they’ve received 522 comments since the site began two years ago, with tips coming from folks scattered across the globe.

Feedback and comments on items in the database are verified before any information in the official record is changed; if it cannot be substantiated, comments are saved and included as Public Comments only. Hey, these are museums, historical archives & other organizations dedicated to factual details — that’s why we trust them. But these comments are always interesting, varying from the completely informational to the sublime “This is not so-and-so; I know, because I am so-and-so” and the “How great to see family photos; ours were lost to Katrina.”

Vintage Fashion Show, Pember Co. Department Store, Courtesty Olathe Public Library

At the beginning the site had 15,000 images and now it has over 28,000. They’ve learned that the more images and information they upload to the site, the more popular the site gets — and that’s something they intend to exploit. Along with increasing the number of images uploaded, and the number of collaborative partners from other historical societies, museums and organizations (each with their own unique collection of images), JoCoHistory will also be adding other objects — artifacts of the 3D variety in photographic form — as well as audio files to the database. Too cool.

Many other organizations could should take note of all that JoCoHistory has done; it sure would make my life much easier. (When I spend hours at JoCoHistory, it’s because I’m delighted and interested, not frustrated.)

Note: The site is just two years old, yet they will be updating their site by early 2009, including (if it’s possible) an even more intuitive design and a blog. I saw a brief preview and was impressed. So bookmark the main page of JoCoHistory now, kids; the other pages linked to here could change and you won’t want to miss anything.

As a rule, I generally don’t watch sitcoms with laugh tracks. I’d like to think that I’m intelligent enough to know when to laugh, to differentiate between a moment of sadness and a moment of comedy, and to allow the titular ‘situation’ of the ‘situation comedy’ play itself out in a vacuum without these prompts. The Office, 30 Rock, My Name is Earl, most animated series, the general disfunctionality of humanity - this is my kind of comedy.

Of course, if you tell me, ‘but it’s about nerds!’, I need to take a look - usually out of a combination of morbid curiosity, kinship, and a rabid desire to shoot down any stereotypes I might see and disagree with, being a longtime warrior from within the trenches of nerd-dom.

So, I was surprised to be completely drawn into the entire first season of The Big Bang Theory, which I missed on TV but caught up with on DVD. While the promos for the show predicate on the relationship between a cute blonde girl and four nerds, as well as their quest for carnal relationships (ergo, the unfortunate throwaway joke that makes for the title of the show), most of that is usually a sub-plot to the greater qualities of the nerds and how they function together, and with society. Some are more successful than others.

Even better : these are nerds who are MY age. They’re relatively successful people, they have intellectual jobs, and they collect toys and play video games. Sure, they all embody very distinct ‘geek’ stereotypes - the nice guy, the OCD guy, the hapless lothario, and the terminally shy guy - but the interplay and balance all coalesces into a fair picture of the nerd world. I’m not sure how many theoretical physicists have Halo 3 nights, but I’m willing to accept that as a possibility. I don’t know any physicists and I’ve never played Halo 3. Regardless, it’s charming, and I didn’t really find it to be pandering, even if it DOES ultimately involve a blonde with a penchant for wearing very small articles of clothing.

Throughout the show, there are Batman cookie jars, action figures, prop replicas, board games and graphic novels, usually making up bits of scenery or minor plot points. Being a gigantor nerd myself, when they say ‘Alex Ross One-Sixth Scale Batman Maquette’, I immediately picture the exact collectible they’re talking about. I can recognize the graphic novels on the shelves by the color patterns on the spines alone. I know who makes the Green Lantern shirts that Sheldon wears. I know that Wolowitz is holding a DC Direct First Appearance Flash figure, and I KNOW that if Leonard tries to sell it at the local comic shop, he’s not going to get more than three bucks for it. And even though they don’t mention it outright, the board game they’re playing in one of the later episodes is Talisman. And not an early edition, either - one of the later editions with shaped cards to represent the players. Herein lies the kinship.

Episode 14, ‘The Nerdvana Annihilation’, actually deals with the nature of pop culture collectibles at the advanced age of 20- or 30-something. While the blonde initially condemns them as childish and wasteful, it’s ultimately resolved that these quirky things are what make us US. Still, it’s something that I’ve fought with enough times for the whole episode to hit home, as it would for most collectors. It’s ‘only’ a sitcom, but the insight shown by the episode is evident. The creators themselves are collectors, and when theoretical physics gets involved, they actually call upon a physicist to ensure accuracy.

Plus, Johnny Galecki has been great since his days on Roseanne. Watch for cameos from two other Roseanne alumni.

The show began airing as the writers’ strike loomed, and was one of the unfortunate casualties, falling off the air between November of 2007 and March of 2008, which didn’t allow it to gain the momentum that it deserved with an audience. Fortunately, a second season has been picked up by CBS and will be airing on Monday nights, starting on September 22nd. The First Season DVD includes 17 half-hour episodes, and one behind-the-scenes featurette which is moderately informative, but the DVD also allows you to pause the screen right after the credits, where the writers and creators actually write out background information on where the stories came from, or the state of the writers’ strike, or just bits of poetry. These are usually on the screen for less than a second, but they reveal even more heart when they can actually be read.

I’m looking forward to the second season, and I very much dig the first season DVD set, which I recommend at least previewing on Hulu.

Scene from American Splendor

Collectors are often depicted as solitary, selfish creatures — sometimes even, like in scenes from American Splendor and Ghost World, as socially awkward individuals who relate better to ’stuff’ than to other humans. While it may be true that collecting, like many hobbies, is more the sport of introverts than the social spectacle of sports (as team player or fan), that doesn’t mean that all collectors are all the mumbling, shuffling, eye-contact-fearing, social-avoiding kooks they are caricatured to be (however charmingly portrayed).

Some people will say that collecting fills a deep psychological void; be it caused by some deficit of a materialistic culture, a disconnect from our own personal history, or even a wish to disconnect (distract) from our own lives. These people see ’stuff’ as a way for the collector to shy away from the ‘real issues’. Even the related activities of researching are seen as a way for the collector to avoid the here & now, burying noses in books and computer monitors as opposed to seeking social interactions & relationships.

In Canada’s The Gazette, Susan Schwartz reports on a new book by William Davis King which depicts collecting in such a negative light:

In Collections of Nothing, as much a memoir as it is a treatise on collecting, King recalls his divorce a decade or so back, when he was 43. His ex-wife was, like him, full of self-doubt, he writes, wrestling “with a sense of nothingness. Both wanted something deeper than the companionship they had, he writes. “That clinging impulse, that relentless searching, that drive to fill an emptiness” went, for her, into reading fiction. For him, it went into collecting.

His suspicion is that collecting is, for many, a way of retreating from relationship rather than engaging,” he writes, “like the turn to a woodshop in the basement or a late-night blog session.”

Sheesh! By that token, no relationship is safe from the dreaded “hobby”.

As for the hobby of collecting, hunting (shopping) and networking (be it in organized collecting groups or the ‘usual gang’ at tag sales), are vital parts which require interaction with humans. Ditto researching. Even the most hermetic collector will have social interactions, as Schwartz herself acknowledges, saying, “I think of collecting as kind of a social pursuit: I love meeting people in the flea markets and antique shops I haunt.”

But of course Susan & I would agree — we’re both writers, no doubt equally familiar (and comfortable) in our solitary late-night writing sessions, ‘retreating from human contact’.

However, both King and Schwartz have omitted other points in their discussion of collecting.

Scene from Ghost World

One is the fact that many collectors are not alone in their hobby. Hubby and I are virtually joined-at-the-hip, only separating — one to the left, the other to the right — to cover more ground, or when one sits with the pile of stuff while the other runs to the ATM. Collecting is something we do together — that brings us closer together. That’s compatibility, kiddos.

We share collecting with our family too, to build our relationships. We go with the kids and with our parents — sometimes there are three generations of us at an auction. And we aren’t the only ones. We also see pairs of pals, goggles of giggling girls, and other assorted groups hunting in packs as a social event.

Yet, I think the best proof that collecting is a social activity can easily be shown to you anytime, anywhere.

Just ask a collector to tell you about their collection. Then stand back and let the evidence pour in as they yack yer ears off. They’ll give you more details on the items & how they were obtained than you can absorb without a stenographer present — and offer to take you ’round town to see all the best spots too.

That’s pretty social.

We collectors still might be a bit kooky; but we’re not necessarily alone or lonely, using ’stuff’ to fill some void.