Wish list of magazine, catalog, and publication names that we can look for in our ad search

Submitted by William Smith on January 16, 2012 - 6:46pm

I'm spending some time looking for old ads.  I'm mostly interested in 1910 through 1940, but won't ignore more recent finds.
Can members give me, of the tops of your heads, publication titles (and maybe timeframes if you have a spicific for which you are looking)? 

This may be useful to all of us to share and can narrow a very wide search. I've come up w/ partial publication titles. Some sources are national, some are regiospicific. Some are "online" (so they claim). 

If you see one in my list which you feel would be a waste of my time, please let me know that too. 
My partial list includes:

Albert Pick
Alden's
American Airlines
American Magazine
Barnum and Bailey's Circus Programs
Bellas Hess
Billboard                                                                                                                              Bulova (weekly?)
Buttler Brothers
Eaton's catalogue
Hutzlers
J.C. Penny
Johnson Smith
Life
Look
Lord and Taylor
Monkey Wards
National Geographic
Popular Mechanics
Sat Evening Post
Schwarz
Sears
Spiegel's
Steiger's
The New Yorker

I looked through the ads on site, and some of the forum posts.  Some as recent as 20 Dec 2011, like:
http://www.mybulova.com/node/3443
I also see plainsman found stuff in 1947 Popular Mechanics...  & Billboard Magazine of the early 1948. and later down mentions a "big Bulova magazine that came out weekly" and "Sears, Montgomery Wards, Alden's, Spiegel's are the ones to look in for the majority.  Now there are some other ones... early Barnum and Bailey's Circus programs have some."
http://www.mybulova.com/node/2830
I see another ad http://www.mybulova.com/1938-Bulova-Watch-Ad-2046 which I'm guessing is from and American Airlines magazine or ???.
I "went" here http://www.ecrater.com/search.php?keywords=bulova+ad&perpage=80 and looked for pub names...but try to get the pub soruce name from this example...
http://www.ecrater.com/p/10257919/1963-vintage-ad-bulova-watches-no?keywords=bulova+ad#
On some, they source the publicaion  e.g. "the American Magazine"  here
http://www.ecrater.com/p/3849675/bulova-ambassador-watch-ad-1929-presentation?keywords=bulova+ad
but most do not, and they usually crop off the source like below.

or


or


 

I just purchased a lifetime membership from:
http://forrestflanderscentral.typepad.com/old_catalogs/
Online digital scans available for a membership fee. It's $10, that's pretty cheap, considering I've spent an hour doing this post. I don't care if it's not more recent than 2009, as long as what ever they had in their members secret access site works for old stuff. The good news here was the site logged me as a visitor from Honolulu one minute ago...so it's at least functioning. If the folks who scanned these in used current OCR software when scanning, some of the text could be searched by key word, but I doubt they did. For $10, I'm gonna find out though.

Also saw http://www.wishbookweb.com/  for free catalogs...I think from mybulova member shooter??? and am searching there.

My local library has lots of stuff, much will be on microfish or microfilm from 1910 through 1930, but there are lots of hard copies back to 1900.  I don't know how difficult microfish/microfilm is to "search", quality of what I can find, nor if I can capture the microfilm findings digitally or with what resolution etc.... But I may be able to find the particular publication and issue which we can search for in other ways....

I'll put your suggestions /wishlists into one file and can repost or give to admin or how every you think this info would be helpful.

I have some good old stuff now - PM me your private emails and I'll send you a link to my FTP site with what I have to date. Some of them have half a page Bulova and other old watches which may not be appropriate to put in the ad database here, but I am not gonna cut out small sections for just Bulova ads quite yet.  I have included pub source and year when available, others ads are just fodder.

P.S.  Don't tell my wife I'm considering doing this....she would rather think I'm at the local pub having a brew and shooting pool at 8am than in the library at the microfilm section.
Thanks

bourg01
Posted January 16, 2012 - 7:08pm

Try Alden's dept store as well. My focus has been ads from 1950 to 1955 as there is a clear gap in ads for that period. Buluva may have really toned doen their advertising after the AA fiasco but stores catalogues seem to show what Bulova did not openly advertise.

simpletreasures
Posted January 16, 2012 - 7:45pm

Saturday Evening Post and Life Magazine off the top of my head.

William Smith
Posted January 16, 2012 - 7:58pm

I'v got oddles of partial page stuff like this.... Sears Xmas catalog 1952.  Lots in the ad database anyway, ...and I don't see many partial page or mixed brand ads there- and rightly so since it's not "all Bulova"  But I'm gonna do some cutting and organizing....

mybulova_admin
Posted January 17, 2012 - 3:23am

Will, I will always be more than happy to do the cutting and pasting of any ads I can get access to.

I am sure there is a bucket more ads out there that we don't have on this site.

William Smith
Posted January 17, 2012 - 11:32am

Thanks Admin

You have your hands pretty full now w/ this site growing so fast, and I really need to organize some of this stuff a little more.  I don't think it will take me that much more time to do this, and it refamilarizes me w/ the ads.  Most are not full page or great quality, or I would have sent them to you already.  I'm also going to library this week to check for hard copy of some stuff and archives (unfortunately microfilm in many cases).  The microfilm things will be the challange, as I'm not sure about image capture/quality.  I'll get to you soon.  Example-One PDF is ~110 pages of ladies watches c1912-1936, with only one page dedicated to Buloa.  I don't want to dump all this stuff on you to sort through...but I don't want it to sit on my hard drive for another three months either. 

 

OldTicker
Posted January 17, 2012 - 1:00pm

Old Jewlers Catalogs like this hardbound 1923 350 page John V Farwell Co are hard to find, but well worth the $$ when you do...This one has 25 pages of mens & ladies wrist & pocketwatches, watch chains, fobs, cases & movements...No Bulova's but just about everyone else.

I did go around to the local watch/jewelry stores asking for any information, the problem that I ran into is that most have changed hands in the last 20-30 years and any old catalogs that were sold with the store got filed in the garbage...I did manage to get a 2002/2003 120 page Bulova collection catalog from one nice owner, so if anyone wants to scan this, let me know.

William Smith
Posted January 17, 2012 - 4:53pm

In reply to by OldTicker

Thanks OldTicker  Agreed old jewelry stores have often changed hands twice or more.  I'm holding out hope for microfish/film records in the library.  Not necessarily my local "the library" but w/i the greater world library system, as I have access to microfilm from around the world via research request.  It would help to have title names of these catalogs, as I'm running into difficulty being able to find microfilm/fish "...for old watch or jewelery catalogs from the 1920's" (let alone the resolution issues or how to digitally capture what ever I may find).  Once I find one, it may be easier to know how to look for others.  We are pretty sure this stuff is there, it's a huge world of microfilm out there... and my day job supplies me with "the gold card of library cards" so I have help from the research library staff here to look (your US tax dollars at work for you!  :) ).   

I have tried research request via NAWCC, and spoke w/ librarian there 3-4 years ago, but we went too specific on Bulova 1926 -1928, which may have excluded or limited some sources which had only one or two pages of Bulova stuff out of the entire pubs, or missed other years completely.   ... I asked the wrong question, and after two weeks of their research, NAWCC suggested I visit mybulova.com website for more information.  ...and I was probably logged on to mybulova while talking to them.

I may try to refine my request and go through NAWCC again...I'm not that good at ID'ing old Bulova watches....but I can kinda find my way around the library, and with a little direction, may be more useful to this site doing that.