Polaroid Land Camera 1000 and Polatronic 1 flash

A great auction find - a box of polaroid cameras!

This is a true retro icon and goes on my wall of best buys. The clever - if at first confusing - bit is the battery. As it uses the SX-70 film cartridges, it gets it's power from them, thus no need to buy batteries!

LNER Uniform buttons

LNER Uniform Buttons

These brass buttons turned up in an old button jar I found... A nice example of "railwayana".

KAN-U-GO

 Vintage KAN-U-GO The Crossword Card Game by Jarvis Porter Ltd.

"For two to seven players"

"Also KAN-U-GO-ALONE (crossword patience)"

This is a really nice condition edition of this popular vintage card game. This is a great little charity shop find. I now have two of these sets... Does this make it a collection? 

Philips "Photoflux"

Just quite like them... they are rather aesthetically pleasing I have to say!

Anti Gas Eye-shield

This is an original anti gas eye-shield. The design is primitive but in the times of WW2 cost was everything and this was the cheapest and most cost effective protection. This eye-shield was given to me by a family friend just a couple of weeks ago. There's some quite interesting instructions on the back of what to do in case of emergency. During the war the Medical Research Council stated;

"no special visor in any material was required other
than the present anti-gas eye-shield."

The opposing opinion was that a pair of goggles, invented by Sir Richard Cruise, was a more suitable option. However this was never adopted by the war office claiming that they were more likely to damage the eyes in the off chance that the goggles shattered.

Anyway here is the pictures;

Field Service Post Card

This is  bit of a cheat... I never bought this but I did find it hidden in a family post card album. This is a great of example of secrecy in the first world war. Nothing could be written on the card apart from selecting what is written for you. This dates back to times when contact was difficult... could you go to war and not be able to write home? I know I couldn't!

Smith Premier Chum Portable Typewriter...

Typewriters... I just can't resist them! I now have three typewriters, this been one of my favourites. For those of you who don't know anything about typewriters, here's a little lesson...

The Smith Premier Typewriter Company was founded in 1896 by the Smith brothers. The important thing to know about Smith Premier is that they were the first typewriter to have uppercase and lowercase. They can be found in plenty however the 'chum' portable is a bit rarer! The chum portable was a British variation of the Remington Portable no. 3 made between 1929 and 1932.

I suppose I bought it because it has a slightly different name!

Thanks for reading! I will be posting my other typewriters in the coming weeks...

Vintage Poster...

This is perhaps one of my greatest finds. I was once buying a briefcase of sheet music and when I got it home I emptied to the case to find a scrunched up piece of paper. I was going to throw it away until curiosity got the better of me! On un-scrunching and unfolding it I found this marvellous poster. Unfortunately there is no date however I believe it to be around the war years. It does say at the bottom "In aid of the welfare fund... corps and St Johns..." It's a shame there a bits missing but hey ho! I haven't been able to find anything out about the performers but if you know anything please post a comment! This now takes pride and place on my wall...

Mine Magazine edited by Stephen King-Hall

"A magazine for all who are young..."

I stumbled across three of these curious little magazines in a table top sale a couple of weeks back. There is little mention of them on the web but there is quite a bit about Stephen King-Hall...

His true title was Sir William Stephen Richard King-Hall, Baron King-Hall of Headley. He was a British playwright, politician and journalist. His articles were featured in many popular magazines and newspapers. His first true success was Mine magazine as chief editor. In his latter years he wrote books on nuclear defence etc. which was quite the career change!

There are some marvellous editorials and fantastic picture plates. Quite a joy to have in my collection...

13th March Table top sale...

Had quite a productive shop at a table top sale today.

Bought two really interesting books from around 1950. "The Modern World Book of Motors" is apparently quite common but I think the cover is an iconic style which I really like.

The other, "The Book of Railways" is apparently quite rare with little or no information about it on the internet. I think I got a good buy there!

New Blog

Hello everybody and welcome to my new blog,

As the summer begins so do the car boot and antique fairs...

On this blog I will document and tell you a little bit about what I have found in the week. There should be some interesting little articles over the coming months so please tell your friends!

Thanks for reading!