Reference Volume 3 for Vintage Halloween Collectibles
The Halloween Retrospect, Volume 3:
An expected release of June 2024 is slated for Volume 3, The Halloween Retrospect reference series (link here to THR blog) and it sits in waiting with new content in an edition mostly about haunted houses, mostly! It is hoped that vintage Halloween collectors will appreciate a deeper review at ephemera collectible (of the haunted house) by such companies as Beistle, Dennison, Hallmark (featured in book with poster), Gibson (on the cover), Norcross, Whitney, and more.Book availability will be announced on the THR website in the near future.
This third time around, the library’s archivist at THR has opportunity to create a double-feature article on the transformation of haunted house imagery in early 20th-century times - and such a survey is not complete without considering the amazing mid-century paper engineering (in Part 2) from the past creative team of Hallmark Cards, Inc. for which help from Hallmark Archive is included...! The resulting double-feature article (including a poster of Hallmark Halloween centerpieces) is all carried out with attention to detail and with sources that you yourself can reference! For more about the book (and others) visit the blog at The Halloween Retrospect - that includes a study of Hallmark Envelopes 1950-1980 in three separate blog entries: Hallmark Halloween: 1950’s followed by Halloween Hallmark: 1960’s and concluding with Halloween Hallmark: 1970’s.
Here are a sneak peek at that poster:
As usual there are some shorter articles tucked in the back of the book, and Vol 3 also contains a small write-up on vintage Halloween vinyl (which actually relates to those about haunted house). As well, there is a short article that reviews the different types of audiences original to certain catalogs. These final articles might seem tiny, but content in this book is for those obsessed with finer details, so content is short research-emphasis articles for puzzlers who enjoy hearing more about the past.
Gibson pop-up card (litho in Japan) marked as gifted in 1968.
These low-cost editions cram a 6"x9" 32-page booklet with text (for word lovers), visuals (for image lovers), and sources (as main point of the series) so readers get transparent unbiased results. And THR now refers to about 525+ catalogs in its own archive library to companion other sources, like Hallmark Archive in the the latest edition. Anyway, for more, please visit the latest blog entry at The Halloween Retrospect and those that recently study Hallmark envelope design 1950-1980 by way of three separate blog entries: Hallmark Halloween: 1950’s followed by Halloween Hallmark: 1960’s and concluding with Halloween Hallmark: 1970’s.
I hope as author, editor, collector, archivist, librarian, artist, designer, publisher, and seller of The Halloween Retrospect that you too enjoy the type of publication I wanted to see and share. To learn more about The Halloween Retrospect see this About page, and keep an eye on the THR website, particularly the Publications page.