This marvelous collection of children’s classics are still available today.
The golden age of collecting has been rapidly vanishing as the boomer generation reaches their 80s. Interest in collecting stamps, coins, books, dolls, antique toys, and what not, is approaching extinction. Hobbies are scarce. It seems to me that collecting anything was a cultural product of the 1900s, particularly the 1950s, when a stable home-base was desirable, yet time was available for leisure activities and travel was expanding via the auto and the airplane.
Today, everyone seems to prefer having the ability to move to new jobs, new states, new lives. Collections, however, are hard to move and take up space. Possibly the thrill of collecting is disappearing given how easy it is to pull up what you want on the internet and order it in seconds and have it on your doorstep in a few days. Books, music and movies are also available via technology.
Although the internet has reduced the price of all collectibles to the lowest denominator, and private sellers have been driven from the market and small neighborhood shops closed, I remain encouraged by the number of readers and book collectors who come to The Eclectic Reader. They can benefit from these older boomers and the younger nomads who release their collections by the boxful.
I manage to post some of these collections. Often they are gone within a week. Such happened with the set of original Wizard of Oz books, and the Walter Farley horse books, and the hardback Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. It happened with the rare Stephen King Dark Tower series, the Philip K. Dick material. Most of the vintage horror collection has vanished. Rock climbing, dwindling. The 80 Agatha Christie books have almost disappeared. Still have Joan Didion, Perry Mason by Erle Stanley Gardner, Dorris Lessing, Jim Harrison, Winston Churchill, Princess Di, and mountaineering. And, amazingly, I still have hundreds of Little Golden Books left out of those 2,000.
The moral of this story is this: If you are a serious collector, and you don’t plan on moving soon, leave your name on file here.
I put out 500 new titles every month and almost every single day new books walk in the front door. Ya never know what you’re gonna get.
The Eclectic Reader 