Book Offers Help In Collecting Costume Jewelry

BOOK REVIEW

Collecting Costume Jewelry 202, by Julia C. Carroll, offers the basics of dating costume jewelry made from 1935 to 1980. It is a 2007 Collector Books publication.

Six basic methods are given. In summary, these are using the maker’s signature; using patent information; reviewing period advertisements; considering the style and design of the piece; using books and the internet; and provenance. Each of these methods is discussed in detail.

Two companies, Coro and Trifari, with their design patent numbers and accompanying detail, are discussed very thoroughly (about 100 pages each.)

Dozens of additional companies are covered in lesser detail, in alphabetical order, from Accessocraft (1930-1998) to Yves Saint Laurent (from 1959 to the present.) A helpful appendix lists all the manufacturers and the different marks each used.

Collecting Costume Jewelry 202 is priced at $24.95 and includes a value guide. It is available from your local bookseller or from Collector Books, PO Box 3009, Paducah, KY 42002 or online at www.­collectorbooks.com.

Donna Miller 

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Operation Bullpen Chronicles Autograph Scam

 by Ron Miller

If you are a collector of signatures of the famous folks, you might not want to read a new book by Kevin Nelson called Operation Bullpen.

Your Mickey Mantle autographed baseball, or your Mark McGwire signed photograph, or your Certificate of Authenticity for a Muhammad Ali rare signed photo will take on a different significance.

The best you can hope for is a wonderful collection of fakes, unless you were there and watching when the signing took place, a highly unlikely occurrence.

Operation Bullpen is a fascinating look at one of the most highly successful, although ultimately unsuccessful, forgery rings to ever enter the collecting marketplace.

Thousands, and perhaps millions, of  near perfect but purely fake signatures flooded the marketplace in the late 1990s, as the collecting public was enthralled with every piece of historical memorabilia that appeared to be signed by its  favorite baseball player, movie star, boxing great or any other star of the American celebrity scene.

Millions of dollars changed hands as dealers sold to dealers, who sold to other dealers and who ultimately sold to the collecting public. The demand was so great that it created a new career for many signature copying entrepreneurs.

Operation Bullpen is a publication of South­hampton Books and can be found at bookstores or by visiting the books’s official website: www.operationbull-pen.com.

It includes “exclusive interviews with forgers and counterfeit dealers,” in which Nelson tells how a “colorful band of southern California crooks—‘the flip-flop mafia’—hit upon a simple but brilliant scam: forging the autographs of sports stars and celebrities.

“Led by a pot-smoking master forger and his scheming partner, they formed a national racketeering enterprise that ripped off the American consumer for more than $100 million while leading a high-flying lifestyle of drugs, parties and gambling, before being busted by a three-year FBI undercover investigation.”

Nelson is the author of 17 books and currently lives with his wife and children in the San Francisco Bay area.

If you’re like me, you’ll come away from reading Operation Bullpen with the knowledge that the penalty doesn’t fit the crime. While ripping off the collecting public as they lived an unbelievably high life style, the perpetrators ultimately spent very little time in jail.

How the forgery scheme developed and who participated in the scam is well documented in the book, as is the FBI effort to track down all the players and close out their operations.

Collecting signatures on the secondary market will never be the same.

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TV Lamps A Utilitarian Product

BOOK REVIEW

By the 1950s, almost every middle-class  home in America had a television set. They were black and white sets, and most of the first ones had a fairly small screen. People tended to turn off all the lights and watch them in the dark. In the first place, it made the picture easier to see; in the second place, it was what people were used to having when they visited the movie theater, and this was just like going to the movies in their own home.

Then came a scare. Sitting in the dark, looking at a small screen, which was all too frequently filled with "snow" or flickering light, could ruin one's eyes.

Enter the TV lamp. These figural lamps, with only a small bulb at the back, could be set on the TV, and provide just enough light to protect the eyes.

By the 1960s, TV sets had improved. It was easy to watch them without sitting in the dark; furthermore, people had realized that there was little danger in ruining their eyes from watching television. The TV lamps disappeared from the store shelves, remained as fixtures on some TV sets for a few years, and eventually disappeared from home decor - until they resurfaced a few years ago as a collector item.

TV Lamps to Light the World, by John A. Shuman III, is a recent Collector Books publication featuring these interesting lamps. It is based on the collection of Bob and Peg Parks.

Lamps are grouped by theme - horses, deer, jungle, Oriental, western, etc. Interspersed throughout the text are informational pages. One page lists television lamp manufacturers; another is an entire page of colors used; still another gives lists of ideas for decorating with TV lamps.

There is a "Television Timeline" page and a listing of 1950s television personalities and popular shows. ("I Love Lucy," "The Smothers Brothers," "Your Hit Parade," "What's My Line," my after-school favorite, "Captain Video," and the original exercise show, "Jack LaLanne." are just a few included in the list.)

Histories are given for several of the makers of TV lamps. Among the more well-known manufacturers were California Originals, Gonder, Haeger,  Treasure Craft, McCoy and Maddux.

This is an excellent reference book for any collector of TV lamps and a fun trip down memory lane for anyone over 50!

TV Lamps to Light the World is priced at $29.95. Check with your local bookseller or contact Collector Books, P. O. Box 3009, Paducah, KY 42002 and online at www.collectorbooks.­com.

Donna Miller 

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