Collectors Corner is a free, public resource from The Manuscript Society for collectors (of all types.) This section of the website will include resources, tips, quips and information in the world of manuscripts.
Our first offering is a list of known facsimiles—items which look like real autographs and manuscripts, but which are in fact realistic (and sometimes not so realistic) copies. To the right is one of the most famous, a letter from England’s George V welcoming American troops during World War I in April 1918. Courtesy of Catherine Barnes. If you’d like to submit a facsimile, please click on the link below.
Check back often to find out what’s new in the Collector’s Corner!
Recent Collectors Corner Posts
Autographs and Manuscripts: A Collector’s Manual
Autographs and Manuscripts: A Collector’s Manual Edmund Berkley, Jr. Editor Herbert E. Klinghofer and Kenneth W. Rendell, Co-editors (New York) Charles Scribner’s Sons, (1978) xviii, 565 pages [including, Bibliography, Notes on Contributors, Glossary, and Index] ISBN: 0-684-15622-9 Cloth, Dust Cover [new] This classic manual now out of print is once [...]
How to Preserve Ancient Manuscripts
Manuscript Preservation is always a challenge Paper does not last forever. One of the most significant challenges is acidic degradation. Libraries and archive collections are a valued resource for our history and culture, containing the wealth of human knowledge and artistic expression. They contain some of the earliest writings ever [...]
How to Weed Your Attic: Is it History or Junk
How to Weed Your Attic Elizabeth H. Dow At the closing dinner of the Manuscript Society’s most recent annual meeting, trustee Elizabeth H. Dow gave us a capsule version of her latest book, How to Weed Your Attic: Getting Rid of Junk without Destroying History, coauthored with Lucinda P. Cockrell. [...]
One Really Bad Egg and a Visit to Calling Cards
Book Reviews: It is all about education. Whether you collect books or autographs or both, the educated collector is the savvy collector. Just ask Bill Butts. Every year a stream of reference works, how-tos, exhibition catalogs, bibliographies, and memoirs useful to collectors come on the market. Few receive scant attention [...]
Lost: Lessons from the Carnegie Library Theft
Lost: Lessons from the Carnegie Library Theft Michael J. Dabrishus “They are only sorry that we discovered what they did,” said Mary Frances Cooper, director of Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. She was speaking as a witness at the June [2020] sentencing of Gregory Priore and John Schulman. The sentencing testimony [...]
Americana is a Creed & Celluloid Paper Trail, reviews
As Bill Butts says, “It is all about education." The educated collector is the savvy collector. Each year reference works, how-tos, exhibition catalogs, bibliographies, and memoirs useful to collectors are published. Unfortunately, they receive little attention in the media. Bill takes the time to review 3 to 6 books in [...]