By Maribeth Keane and Brad Quinn (Copyright Collectors Weekly 2010)

Alyce Cornyn-Selby runs The Hat Museum out of a historic, 100-year-old house in Portland, Oregon. In this interview, she talks about collecting men’s hats and clears up some popular misconceptions about cowboy hats and other headwear. She can be reached via the museum’s website, www.thehatmuseum.com.

We have more than a thousand hats here at The Hat Museum. It’s the largest hat museum in the United States, and has twice as many hats as the Hat Works museum in England. Our collection comes from private collections, vintage clothing stores, estate …

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When “Iron Man 2” opens this weekend in Australia and the U.K. (its U.S. release is May 7), fans of the first film will likely get a healthy dose of Robert Downey, Jr.’s trademark self-deprecating irony, which is hardly a stretch for the actor and suits the character of Tony Stark to a tee. Special-effects aficionados will be similarly prepared for the new generation of getups and gizmos that Stark has devised for himself, but here’s a little tidbit that even the most avid “Iron Man” fan might not know.

Remember the …

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By Maribeth Keane and Brad Quinn

In this interview, Colonial Coin Collectors Club president Ray Williams talks about early American coins. Along the way he looks at the differences between type and die-variety collecting and explains how the first mints were designed to be moneymaking ventures in more ways than one. Williams can be contacted via www.colonialcoins.org.

I started collecting coins at age 11 when I earned a Boy Scout Coin Collecting Merit Badge. I collected cents, nickels, and dimes, placing them in the blue Whitman folders. Like most other boys in the late ’60s, I got interested in girls …

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By Maribeth Keane and Brad Quinn (Copyright Collectors Weekly 2010)

Photographer and video producer Gina Garan has published a number of photo books on Blythe, the big-eyed Kenner doll who failed to take off in the early ’70s but became a collectors’ phenomenon at the turn of the 21st century. In this interview she talks about how Blythe’s clothing style varies from East to West and explains how some Blythe collectors modify their dolls to create works of art. Garan can be contacted via her website, www.thisisblythe.com.

I collect dolls. I’ve got 2,000 dolls crammed into a studio in New …

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By Maribeth Keane and Brad Quinn

In this interview, David Dansky talks about Lionel electric trains, as well as model trains made by other manufacturers that didn’t survive the Depression. Along the way, he also offers a rundown of common train gauges and looks at some rare items, such as Lionel’s ill-fated, but highly collectible, pink-and-pastel train set for girls. Dansky can be contacted via his website, Toy Train Heaven.

The first train I ever played with was during World War II in New York City. At the time we had blackouts because officials were worried about German submarines lobbing shells …

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By F. Newlin Price

This article discusses the introduction of garden furniture in the 18th century, which was fueled by the new view of the garden as an outdoor living area, and notes the evolution from wooden furniture to wrought-iron pieces. It originally appeared in the June 1941 issue of American Collector magazine, a publication which ran from 1933-1948 and served antiques collectors and dealers.

An Englishman’s house may be his castle, but his garden has long been first in his affections. In fact, according to John Parkinson who laid down the principles of garden planning in the early 17th Century, …

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By Carl W. Drepperd

This article discusses the life and craft of Jacob Bachman and his family and compares his work to that made by other notable craftsmen in the 16th and 17th centuries. It originally appeared in the October 1945 issue of American Collector magazine, a publication which ran from 1933-1948 and served antiques collectors and dealers.

For a considerable number of years, the discriminating antiques collectors of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, have noted the occasional appearance of a secretary desk, secretary bookcase, tea table, bow-front corner cupboard, or tall-case clock of very fine workmanship and quite unusual …

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By Kurt M. Semon

This article discusses hausmaler, individual German painters who worked on fayence or porcelain, noting some specific artists and their designs. It originally appeared in the November 1945 issue of American Collector magazine, a publication which ran from 1933-1948 and served antiques collectors and dealers.

This is a province of Germanic art not known to many of us. If there are no awe inspiring peaks and no big rushing streams it is nevertheless a pleasant landscape. Of course hausmaler, literally house painters, are a far cry from the evil Adolf. They were home painters, individuals seeking realization of …

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By Elinor Emery Pollard

This article on pepper shakers discusses the materials used, the various design patterns, and the value of pepper in 16th century, describing some specific examples of pepper pots. It originally appeared in the August 1941 issue of American Collector magazine, a publication which ran from 1933-1948 and served antiques collectors and dealers.

Early American pepper pots, or casters, or muffineers (and they are all one) present an elusive quest. But their charm is great and their history interesting, for they played an important part in the daily lives of our early forebears.

There is an old painting called …

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By John Gibbons

This article describes how to determine whether a piece of porcelain is hard- or soft-paste, noting the differences between items produced by a wide range of potteries throughout the world. It originally appeared as a two-part series in the January and February 1942 issues of American Collector magazine, a publication which ran from 1933-1948 and served antiques collectors and dealers.

Illogical though it may seem, few of the thousands of American china collectors know how to distinguish between hard- and soft-paste china. Yet the ability to make this distinction is probably of greater importance in recognizing kinds …

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By Harold Donaldson Eberlein and Cortlandt Van Dyke Hubbard

This article discusses the life and work of Heinrich Wilhelm Stiegel, noting his experiences working in the iron business, his switch to glass, and his eventual bankruptcy. It originally appeared in the November 1937 issue of American Collector magazine, a publication which ran from 1933-1948 and served antiques collectors and dealers.

The average collector is apt to think of Stiegel only in connection with his glass and the apocryphal stories about him. Bar-iron, pots, kettles and cast-iron apparatus for sugar-refining, window-panes, common bottles and cast-iron stove plates and stoves, even when …

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By Ruth Webb Lee

This article describes cup plates commemorating various important figures in U.S. history, such as Major Ringgold, George Washington, Henry Clay, and William Henry Harrison, noting why each was worthy of being featured on the plates. It originally appeared in the October 1948 issue of American Collector magazine, a publication which ran from 1933-1948 and served antiques collectors and dealers.

Over the years since collecting cup plates became a diverting hobby, it was natural that they should have become classified into two groups, known today as “historicals” and “conventionals.” The historicals are, for the most part, those which …

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