Extensive Photographic and Camera Collecting Library Chapter One

12-15-2017

#214

Gentle reader,

I belong to a film camera collecting group on FaceBook.

As longtime readers know, I have written extensively about my camera collections and adventures. My fellow members of this group are not aware of these previous blog posts. In the future I will go through the list and see about updating them and then posting them on FaceBook.

However, I have neglected that hobby and concentrated upon other hobbies such as my recorded music collections and furthermore, my decades long, adventures in building the ultimate home stereo system on a budget. Having finally achieved that system, I was looking around for something else to occupy my time that didn't involve remodeling the house. OK, that might confuse you. Remodeling has been keeping me busy since I retired at the end of April. I am nearly done with the upstairs part of the house. I started outside and then moved in as the weather became less conducive to outside activities.

I had posted a link to blog #211 on the Classic Camera Collectors FaceBook page, here it is: Returning to my roots: Vintage Cameras and Shooting Film.

Then it occurred to me that fellow collectors might be interested in seeing my extensive (more than ten linear feet) book collection devoted to photography and camera collecting. The response was an overwhelming, "YES!" 

This is only the First Chapter and shows the collection as a whole and the various groups are shown flipped upon their collective backs as you shall see. So, without further ado, here it is.

Above is only the main portion. The bottom shelf, as you can see is car-related books. The remainder of the camera/photography books are on another shelf and here are the ones from that shelf:

To my knowledge, this is the ENTIRE TIME LIFE BOOKS: LIFE LIBRARY OF PHOTOGRAPHY. It took me years to gather all the volumes and various other parts of it. Again, to my knowledge, they offered no further annual updates after 1982. Not that the format was smaller and the cover is a different color.

Also to my knowledge, this is the ENTIRE KODAK LIBRARY OF CREATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY. I lucked out on this one. Finding someone selling the entire collection as a unit. I have not checked to see if they are in chronological or other order. My OCD was not as, how shall I put this, as refined as it is now. Now that I've realized that I'm telling myself, "It is NOT important!"

I will be accepting offers for most of the books that I will be showing here and in all the future chapters. The ones that I will want to keep will become known once I figure out which ones they will be. I have been an eBay member since 1998 and have sold multiple thousands of cameras, mine as well as all of the late Colonel Bill Arps massive collection. 

Colonel Bill, as he liked to be called, was my camera collecting mentor and in many ways like a father to me. My own dad was in California and we were not close. I shall refer to him henceforth as: C.B. My first contact with C.B. was at a Camera Collecting Show in Tyson's Corner, Virginia. Sound's like a sleepy little village, doesn't it? It was once. Now it is huge with many high-rise buildings and WAY too much traffic. So glad that I'm retired! Sadly, due to eBay, such shows are pretty much history. Anyway, I was looking at one sellers wares and picked up a Pentax K1000. I tried it out and asked how much he wanted for it, "What's the tag say?" "$80." "Well that's what I want for it." I bought it and walked away thinking, "What a grouch." He may not have actually been grouchy that day. But with the wife he had then and up to his death, well, those that knew him and had met her, would truly not blame him for being grouchy. That's the most polite way I can put it.

So, a few weeks later, the kids and I were at the Salvation Army and I'd picked out a few cameras and was looking at others when I heard a voice behind me, "Do you collect cameras?" I turned around and it was the same man! Yet, this time he was smiling. He had a shopping cart full of cameras and started handing me one after another, "You're gonna want this one, and this one..." "Hold on, I only have so much money!" 

Turned out, he and his wife volunteered at that Salvation Army store which was the main one for Northern Virginia. He checked out donated cameras and priced them. She did the same for books. The halcyon days of finding classic cameras at thrift stores seem to be over. At least in this area. Anyway....

We began to talk, and he gave me his card with his telephone number then. No cell phones then, this being the Dark Ages, the early 1990's. I visited his home and he took me down to his basement to show me his collection. WOW! Well, I'll write a post about C.B. and his collection in a later post.

Some of theses books came to me postmortem with the blessing of C.B.'s widow. As did the beautiful cat-skin hanging in the listening room. No, C.B. was not a Dentist and Hunter. He bought it in Thailand. His widow said, "Oh, there's that leopard skin, just throw it away." To which I replied, "No, it's beautiful!" Since I've whetted your appetite, let me find a picture of it.

See the eyes? My wife decided to try and put some three-dimensionality  back into the cat and sewed the backing you see to it and partially stuffing it. Prior to stuffing it, one of our cats, Moe, was "helping" by walking on the skin and sniffing. When he saw the eyes, he jumped STRAIGHT UP and took off out of the room like his tail was on fire! We laughed so hard we were crying. Anyway, turns out is was a FISHING CAT native to ASIA. One of the few cats that likes to get in water. The fur is SO soft! We are not hunters and the thought of killing some innocent animal (unless it was post-Apocalypse and we were starving) upsets us both.Even though my wife is an avid gun nut.

Here below, are the camera and photography books in situ, but as I wrote above, I have flipped the images to the left so they appear to be on their backs. Thus you won't have to tilt your head to read the spines. I have collected them from multiple sources over many, many years.

It may seem confusing, but keep it in mind, the bottom book, ABOVE, is the first one on the left on the top shelf. I continue each picture below with the BOTTOM BOOK, being to the right of the TOP BOOK of the stack in the photo above it. Confused yet?

OK, so in this case, there are SIX books from the previous photo. I didn't catch that in editing. I'll strive to improve.

See? The game box (Mille Bornes which is an old and very fun game) is to the left of the Shutterbug book above and to the right of SELL & RE-SELL YOUR PHOTOGRAPHS. Catching on now?

Don't worry if some seem to be missing. In future chapters every book will be shown from the front, unless it is missing it's dust jacket AND is blank on the front cover in which case, I have a photo of the title page.

See that 1999 Camera Blue Book? Great sources of valuable information. I wanted just the Audio book. But again lucked out when someone was selling a bunch of them. I kept Camera and Audio and sold off the rest individually. Quite profitably too.

Here's a teaser, what do you suppose those thin ones are above? Oh, I think you will like them!

Collectors, some specialty ones above!

As are the ones above!

Now that is all that I am going to show you now. I made over 200 images and it took quite a while to do that plus all the labeling, editing, cropping and shrinking involved. 

I'm still thinking of whether I want to divide the chapters by type of books or simply by the order they are on the shelves. The former would be a LOT more work. I had to move several larger and heavy items out of the way to access all the books and then pull each and every one off and photograph them individually. Ever tried to carry a 42" Plasma HD TV? They are NOT lightweight like LCD models. No sir! But it was given to me and I use it to do my car racing simulations on. But I wrote about that in previous blog posts as well.

Thanks for looking and as they say on TV, "Happy Picking!" And in our case, Happy Clicking!

Scott 

#214 12/15/2017