Peanuts ornament book
- By : Nat
- Category : Classic finds, Reviews
When I first heard about the Peanuts Collectible Ornaments book, I put it down fairly low on my priority list. It wasn’t cheap (thirty bucks), and while it qualifies for the AAUGH.com Reference Library, books of pictures of stuff are a relatively low priority. However, the author is selling off copies for $10 plus shipping on eBay. Add that to the fact that some friends had recently come to me with questions regarding Peanuts Christmas ornaments, and I reckoned it was time to get it.
The book is self-published, and frankly that fact is emphasized by its very existence — it costs a lot to produce a 432-page full-color hardcover, particularly printing in the US. This isn’t the book from a publisher doing wise business, who would’ve gone for B&W printing for most of it, or would’ve insisted on smaller pictures to keep the page count down. A publisher would also have insisted on it being a price guide, because that will give people a reason to buy the book. I very much respect the decision of the author (Thomas Bednarek) not to do that, which he says was due to the shifting values. Price guides are by their nature misleading and tend to warp the markets they cover.
By publishing himself, I suspect that Bednarek did not make money… but I also believe he made exactly the book he wanted to make. There are color photos of ornaments numbering in the thousands, some details on each of them, and information on each of the various manufacturers. If you want to figure out what you have, give it a name and get inspired toward other things you might want to find, this is a book for you. It’s got ornaments from the usual suspects – Hallmark, Determined Productions – as well as unusual suspects like Long John Silvers and Pepsi.
It this book sounds interesting to you, then use the eBay link above.
Meanwhile, if you want to order Christmas gifts and take advantage of free shipping, get it done today to make sure the gifts will get there on time. Couldn’t someone on your list use a copy of the $75 Celebrating Peanuts, costing you a mere $40.50, gift-wrapping available? Or today’s “deal of the day”, on a Flip MinoHD digital camcorder for $119.99 – someone got me one of these as a present a couple years back (only not the high-definition one), and I find it so handy. I can take video of, say, my four-month-old smacking his lips and have it up on YouTube ready for various grandparents to see within minutes – it has the software for PC and Mac built in for getting everything ready and online. Easy to carry, easy to use, it’s just one of those things that works. (Suggestion: as a present, this is an “unwrap me first” thing… that way, you get video footage of the rest of the presents being opened!)
