Memorabilia - Militaria - Japanese Swords

Ancient Japanese swords were straight and two-edged. During the 9th century, the "modern" style of sword, which has a single-edged curved blade, was developed. From this time on, sword making flourished in south-west Japan.

During the 11th and 12th centuries, widespread civil war created a great demand for swords. The samurai warrior caste arose during this period. The samurai carried a pair of swords, one long and one short, called a "daisho". Merchants and others could carry a single sword but wearing the daisho was an exclusive privilege of the samurai.

The Emperor Go-Tuba, who reigned from 1183 to 1198, was a connoisseur of swords. He encouraged swordsmiths to develop their art and his reign was a peak in the history of the Japanese sword.

Between 1250 and 1350, swords were made by three swordsmiths, Goro Masahune, Toshiro Yoshimitsu and Go Yoshihiro, who are regarded as the greatest of Japanese sword makers.

In Medieval times, swords were tested by highly respected, expert testers. These tests were carried on on condemned criminals or corpses. Some twenty tests were prescribed ranging from severing a hand to cutting through the hips. An expert tester with a first class blade could cut through three bodies at one stroke.

Edo Period sword

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Memorabilia - Militaria - Indian Daggers

Traditionally, in India the dagger indicated the background and status of the wearer. Maharajas vied with each other, commissioning the finest craftsmen to make the most beautiful and valuable weapons, decorated with precious metals and rare jewels. At the same time, plain steel daggers were used by ordinary men in the battlefield.

There were many different types of Indian dagger. The most common were the Katar. This was a dagger designed for thrusting; the blade was almost always made of steel and was usually broad and double-edged; the tapering blade gave the dagger a triangular look. It has a unique H-shaped handle. One version has two extra blades that spring out on either side of the main blade when the handles of the hilt are squeezed.

Kata

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Memorabilia - Edged Weapons (European)

The first bronze swords were made about 2,000 BC. Two types of bronze swords were made: a cutting sword with a broad leaf-shaped blade and a thrusting sword with a longer, narrow blade. The Assyrians are believed to have introduced the sword as a weapon of war.

Iron swords were used by the Greeks from the seventh century BC. Because of rusting, very few iron swords from before the 15th century have survived although older bronze swords are relatively common.

The modern Nepalese Ghurkha kukri is a shortened adaptation of the Greek kopis, a slashing sword used in the 5th century BC.

The main European source of iron ore was Styria, in present-day Austria, and the cities of Innsbruck and Passau produced the best blades for knives throughout the Middle Ages.

In the 8th century, the Vikings revolutionised sword making with their discovery of the process of carbonising iron by repeatedly folding and beating the heated metal. This allowed them to make tough, hard swords that held a superior edge and did not easily bend. The Japanese developed similar techniques some centuries later.

Viking sword

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Memorabilia - Militaria

The term "militaria" is used for military collectables excluding weapons. Firearms and edged weapons are, of course, collectible in their own right. Types of collectible militaria include uniforms, headdress, badges and medals.

Relatively few uniforms from before the 20th century have survived; not only were they usually subject to extremely hard ware but they tend to be very susceptible to moths. 

Headdress has generally survived little better than uniforms. Examples prior to the late 19th century are rare. The British officers’ spiked blue cloth helmet, the "pickelhaube", worn between 1873 and 1914, is the earliest widely available example. The pickelhaube was replaced by peaked caps for the infantry and a variety of small, round pillbox caps for the cavalry. These  were replaced, in turn, by the field service cap and the beret.

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Memorabilia - Corkscrews

At the end of the 17th century, vintners discovered that wine matured better if it was taken from the cask and stored in a glass bottle sealed with a cork. Ever since a great deal of ingenuity has gone into devising the best way of removing the cork.

The earliest surviving corkscrews date from the beginning of the 18th century. They have a very short worm with a circular or ovoid handle. In many of them the worm can be folded back into the handle. By the end of the 18th century, the familiar T-shaped corkscrew had become the standard.

In 1795, Reverend Samuel Henshell added a metal button between the worm and shaft. This gripped the cork and turned it in the neck of the bottle, making it easier to remove. Henshell’s "Button Screw" began a flood of new inventions with over 400 designs being registered or patented in the 19th century.

Most 19th century corkscrews were fitted with a small brush and many also had a small ring at the top from which the corkscrew was hung for storage.

Victorian Thomason corkscrew

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Memorabilia - Laundry Equipment

Clothes wringer (1900)Many implements used in the laundry before the electric washing machine are becoming rare and collectable. These include the washing dolly, which was a long stick with base resembling a wooden stool and a crossbar at the other end. The dolly was held by the crossbar and thrust up and down to agitate the washing. The posser was a similar device except that the wooden "stool" was replaced by a perforated metal cone.

Another important implement was the corrugated washboard, made of wood, glass or metal. It was stood at the side of the tub, or sometimes incorporated into the tub, for scrubbing clothes.

The first laundry machine was the box mangle, invented in the 17th century. This was a massive device, up to two metres across, consisting of heavy wooden rollers around which wet clothes were wrapped and a box filled with heavy stones which was moved back and forth over the rollers to squeeze the clothes dry.

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Memorabilia - Kitchen Utensils

The invention of the cooking range in 1780 changed the nature of cooking pots and pans. Prior to that, cooking was done over an open fire as it had been for thousands of years. Over the fire was a spit for roasting, a round-bottomed cauldron for stewing hung over the fire and a flat-bottomed "kettle" with a lid (the ancestor of the modern saucepan) stood at the edge of the fire on a metal tripod, called a trivet.

19th century copper kettleThe first cooking ranges had an open top but these were gradually replaced by an enclosed fire topped with a "hob". At the same time mass produced cooking utensils began to be produced, replacing iron items made individually by the village blacksmith or tin items produced by itinerant tinkers.

One of the first new types of kitchen utensil to become popular early in the 19th century was the copper kettle. Tea drinking had become fashionable in England in the previous century but was expensive and confined to the rich who used silver kettles for both boiling the water and serving the tea. As the price of tea declined, the less expensive copper kettles were used by the poorer classes for boiling the water. A variety of shapes were introduced, including low flat kettles which boiled the water quickly but were awkward for pouring. The now traditional copper kettle shape quickly became established. At first they had metal handles as many people still suspended them over an open fire but, as this practice diminished, wood and bone handles came into use.

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Memorabilia - Australian Rules Football

Various games resembling modern football have been played at least since Roman times and probably long before in various countries around the world. However, it wasn’t until the 19th century in England that serious attempts were made to standardise the rules.

Ball games, sometimes involving hundreds of players with goals kilometres apart had been played in England since the thirteenth or fourteenth century. Edward 111, Richard 11, Henry 1V, Henry V111 and Elizabeth 1 all tried to ban such games.

Australian Rules Football originated in Melbourne in the late 1850s from an idea of Thomas Wentworth Willis for a winter sport for cricketers. The first game was played on August 7, 1858 between schoolboy teams from Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar. This led to clubs being formed in Melbourne in the early 1860s. The game was introduced into New South Wales in 1866 and slowly spread to the other Australian states, reaching the Western Australian goldfields in 1883.

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Memorabilia - Rugby League

Rugby League was an offshoot from Rugby Union by players who felt that they should be paid in the same way as players in the British Football (soccer) Association. The Rugby League was formed in 1895.

Initially, the rules of Rugby League were the same as those for Rugby Union but, almost immediately, the administrators of the game began making changes to make the game a better spectator sport.

Rugby League is played on a large scale only in England, France, New Zealand and Australia and is more popular than Rugby Union only in Australia.

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Memorabilia - Rugby Union

Various games resembling modern football have been played at least since Roman times and probably long before in various countries around the world. However, it wasn’t until the 19th century in England that serious attempts were made to standardise the rules.

Ball games, sometimes involving hundreds of players with goals kilometres apart had been played in England since the thirteenth or fourteenth century. Edward 111, Richard 11, Henry 1V, Henry V111 and Elizabeth 1 all tried to ban such games.

In the early 1860s, a game resembling modern soccer, with eleven players on each side not being allowed to touch the ball with their hands, was being played at various centres including Oxford, Cambridge, Sheffield, Chester and Nottingham while rugby was played throughout much of the public school system. In October 1863, an attempt was made to create a single code from the two games by the establishment of a Football Association. The result was the irrevocable splitting of the two codes with the "soccer" group accepting the rules of "Association Football" while the rugby group formed their own "Union". 

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Memorabilia - Football (Soccer)

Various games resembling modern football have been played at least since Roman times and probably long before in various countries around the world. However, it wasn’t until the 19th century in England that serious attempts were made to standardise the rules.

Ball games, sometimes involving hundreds of players with goals kilometres apart had been played in England since the thirteenth or fourteenth century. Edward 111, Richard 11, Henry 1V, Henry V111 and Elizabeth 1 all tried to ban such games.

In the early 1860s, a game resembling modern soccer, with eleven players on each side not being allowed to touch the ball with their hands, was being played at various centres including Oxford, Cambridge, Sheffield, Chester and Nottingham while rugby was played throughout much of the public school system. In October 1863, an attempt was made to create a single code from the two games by the establishment of a Football Association. The result was the irrevocable splitting of the two codes with the "soccer" group accepting the rules of "Association Football" while the rugby group formed their own "Union". (The word "soccer" is a contraction of "association" and "rugger" and was first used at Oxford.)

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Memorabilia - Football (Soccer)

Click here for the main Football article.

Continue for internatioal football memorabilia.

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Memorabilia - Tennis Collectables

Tennis originated in the monasteries of France in the 10th and 11th centuries. Many of the terms used in tennis stem from these French origins.

The original game ("real tennis") was played in a huge indoor court with angled walls and galleries at various points.

Lawn tennis was developed as an outdoor version of real tennis but was not viable until rubber balls were invented in the middle of the 19th century. (The real tennis balls were made of cloth which would rebound off stone or brick walls but not a grass lawn.)

Lawn tennis started to become popular from about 1873 when several people claim to have devised the game. By 1874 it spread to America when Mary Outerbridge saw the game played by Englishmen in Bermuda. She introduced the game to her brother who was on the board of the Staten Island Cricket and Baseball Club. From there it quickly spread to clubs along the east coast of the United States.

Fred Perry's tennis raquet

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Memorabilia - Golf Collectables

The game of golf was devised in Scotland in the 14th or 15th century. In 1457, the Scottish Parliament banned golf and football for fear that they would interfere with archery practice. Mary Queen of Scots was educated in France and introduced the game there. The young men who attended her on the golf course were known as "cadets" which became corrupted to "caddies". The game was popularised in England by Mary’s son, James V1 of Scotland when he became James 1 of England, and by James’ son Charles 1.

The first golf club was established in Edinburgh in 1744, followed by St Andrews in 1754. Outside Scotland, the first club was Royal Blackheath, near London, established in 1766. Outside Great Britain, golf spread through the British Empire. The first club outside Great Britain was established in Bangalore, India in 1820. Australia’s first club was in Adelaide in 1870 and South Africa’s first club was established in Cape Town in 1885. The first club in the America’s was founded in Montreal in 1873; the first in the United States was established at Yonkers, New York in 1888. By 1900, there were over 1,000 golf clubs in America. Golf became enormously popular in Japan from the period of American Occupation after the Second World War.

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Memorabilia - Cricket Collectables

Cricket probably began with the Celts in south-eastern England. The curious numbering system used in cricket, based on eleven (eleven players in a side, a 22 yard pitch and so on), was used in northern France and parts of England.

The first known use of the word cricket ("criquet") occurs in the "Archives de France" dated 1479. The French word criquet comes from the Flemish krikstoel, a long, low stool for kneeling in church, which is similar in appearance to the wicket used in the game at the time. Alternatively, the word cricket may have derived from the Anglo-Saxon cricce for a shepherd’s crook, which may have been the original cricket bat.

By the early seventeenth century cricket was popular in England, being played on Sundays after Mass. During the Reformation, the Puritans banned all games. Cricket was a particular target because it was regarded as profaning the Sabbath by its association with Sunday Mass. The Restoration of the Monarchy also saw the restoration of cricket as a popular and fashionable game.

Bat & ball used by Bradman in 1931 world record test score of 221 against the West Indies

Originally, the wicket used in cricket was wide (up to six feet) and only a few inches high. The bat was curved like a hockey stick and the ball was bowled underarm, as in lawn bowls.

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Memorabilia - Coca-cola Collectables

Coca-Cola was created in 1866 by "Dr" John S. Pemberton, a quack from Atlanta, Georgia. His drink consisted of a syrup mixed with water or soda water. It was claimed to be a "brain tonic" and to relieve headaches. The syrup, which was 99% sugar, contained fifteen ingredients including coca leaves, cola nuts, caramel, phosphoric acid, fruit flavours, spices and a secret ingredient called "7X".

Initially, Coca-Cola was not a success and Pemberton died penniless in 1888. Asa Griggs Candler bought up all of the shares in Pemberton’s company, dropped the medicinal claims and began a concerted advertising campaign. As early as 1890, this included giving away clocks, scales and fountain urns inscribed with the Coca-Cola logo. By 1909, Coca-Cola was the most heavily advertised product in America.

Coca-Cola had some success as a syrup which was mixed with soda by an attendant at a soda fountain. But it really took off when, in 1899, two men approached Candler seeking the rights to bottle and distribute the drink. Candler agreed and Coca-Cola became the first popular soda drink sold pre-mixed in a bottle.

Pre-1915 Coca Cola bottle

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Memorabilia - Disney Cartoon Characters

First Appearances of Disney’s Cartoon Characters

  On the Screen In Print
Mickey Mouse Plane Crazy (1928) Lost on a Desert Island (1930)
Minnie Mouse Steamboat Willie (1928) Lost on a Desert Island (1930)
Goofy Mickey’s Review (1932) Newspaper daily comics (1933)
Pluto The Chain Gang (1930) Pluto the Pup (1931)
Donald Duck The Wise Little Hen (1934) The Wise Little Hen (1934)
Huey, Dewey & Louie Donald’s Nephews (1938) Newspaper Sunday comics (1937)
Daisy Duck Mr Duck Steps Out (1940) Newspaper daily comics (1940)
Scrooge McDuck Uncle Scrooge and Money (1967) Christmas on Bear Mountain (1947)
Chip ‘n’ Dale Private Pluto (1947) Walt Disney Comics #69 (1946)
The Three Little Pigs The Three Little Pigs (1933) Walt Disney Comics #54 (1945)

 Continue to learn about individual cartoon characters …

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Memorabilia - Disney Watches

The first Mickey Mouse watch was designed by August Shallak and manufactured by the Waterbury Clock Company under its Ingersoll brand for sale at the 1933 Progress World’s Fair in Chicago. There were two models - a children’s wristwatch which sold for $3.75 (later reduced to $2.95) and a pocket watch which sold for $1.50. The watches featured Mickey with gloved hands indicating the hours and minutes and a small dial with three tiny Mickeys indicating the seconds; the wristwatches had a leather band decorated with an image of Mickey.  Although they were quite expensive for the time (the middle of the Depression), 900,000 watches were sold during the first year, saving Waterbury from bankruptcy.

Mickey Mouse watches have been made by a variety of manufacturers ever since 1933, although for a period during the 1960s only the words "Mickey Mouse" appeared on the dial.

Production Cel from Pinocchio

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Memorabilia - Disney Toys

The first successful Mickey Mouse cartoon, Steamboat Willie, was released in 1928. Walt Disney quickly began seeking merchandising opportunities for his cartoon characters, The original Mickey Mouse Club began in 1929 and, in 1930 Disney contracted a leading doll manufacturer, the George Borgfeldt Company, to produce Mickey and Minnie Mouse toys. 

Borgfeldt had been distributing a Micky (with no "e") Mouse toy for the Performo-Toy Company since 1926. The two toys co-existed until 1931 when  Disney sued Performo-Toy claiming that they copied their Micky from Disney’s. Despite Performo-Toy having patented its "animal toy" in 1926, Disney won and the small Performo-Toy Company went out of business.

 

 
Performo-Toys Micky Mouse

Micky Mouse

 

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Memorabilia - Disney Buttons & Pins

1930 Mickey Mouse Club button

In September 1929, less than a year after Steamboat Willie, the first successful Mickey Mouse cartoon, was released, the first Mickey Mouse Club was formed by the Fox Dome Theatre in Ocean Park, California. Disney quickly saw the potential of such a Club and supplied theatre managers with starter packs containing a manual, song sheets, badges and so on. The original Mickey Mouse Club reached its peak around 1932 and buttons from this period are highly collectable.

The first Disneyland theme park opened in July 1955 and The Mickey Mouse Club TV show, originally intended to promote the amusement park, began in October 1955. Buttons and pins featuring Disney characters, TV show cast members, Disneyland and its attractions were produced in large numbers. Many different Disneyland pins and buttons continued to be produced through the 1960s and 1970s. Disney cast member buttons are among the rarest and most valued from this period.

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Memorabilia - Disney Posters

By the late 1920s, when Disney’s cartoons first appeared, theatre owners were provided with a full array of promotional material for new movies. "Legitimate" collectable movie posters are those which were part of this material which was made as for theatres and not intended for sale to the public. This material was on loan to the theatres which were supposed to destroy the posters or return them to the studio. 

All types of theatre and promotional material is collected but the most valuable category is "one sheet" posters usually measuring 27" x 41". (Posters are made in sizes up to 12-sheet for large billboards and down to small handout sizes.)

"Original issue" posters, which are issued before the movie is released, and "original release" posters, issued at the time of the movie’s first release, are the most valuable. Each time a movie is re-released, the "re-issue" and "re-release" posters are considered to be less valuable. Sometimes the poster for the re-release is the same design as the original poster. 

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Memorabilia - Disney Figurines

Hagen-Renaker Donald Duck

Figurines of Disney characters have been manufactured since the early 1930s. Early figurines are usually of Mickey and Minnie Mouse an, a little late, Donald Duck. Many of these have been of poor quality but the ceramic figures from two periods are of particular interest to collectors.

In the late 1950s, Disney licensed a variety of miniature ceramic figurines of its cartoon characters. These were manufactured between about 1955 and 1960 by Hagen-Renaker.  The first figures were from Disney’s then current Lady and the Tramp. These were followed by figures of characters from the Alice in Wonderland, Dumbo, Bambi and Cinderella movies and cartoon characters, including Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto and Huey, Dewey and Louie. Some of these were later re-issued and a set of Fantasia figurines was produced in 1982.

In 1992, Walt Disney Studios began producing fine animation art figurines itself. These are made from a special low-fire porcelain, often enhanced with another material such as crystal, glass or a precious metal. Each figurine has a back stamp with Walt Disney’s signature and a symbol indicating the year in which it was made.

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Memorabilia - Disney Comics

The first Disney comics appeared in 1930 when Walt began writing, and Ub Iwers drawing, a Mickey Mouse strip for the daily newspapers. The first comic books containing these strips were published in 1935 as Mickey Mouse Magazine. Disney’s characters sometimes appeared in a series of comic books called Four Color which contained a variety of newspaper strips. An all-Donald-Duck issue of Four Color was published in 1940. Shortly afterwards, Mickey Mouse Magazine was transformed into Walt Disney Comics and Stories which featured all of the Disney characters. From 1941, Walt Disney Comics and Stories began to include new material rather than just reprinted newspaper strips. From the late 1940s, Donald Duck comics outsold Mickey Mouse.

A distribution change in 1962 signalled the beginning of a long decline in the quality and popularity of Disney comics. Publication in the United States ceased entirely between 1984 and 1986.

As well as comics, it is possible to collect comic strip art. Generally, comic strips drawn by Disney artists were sent to a syndication company which produced the plates from which newspapers printed the cartoon strips. The artwork was then returned to Disney. 
  

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Memorabilia - Disney Animation Cels

The premium Disney collectable is the animation cel. "Cel" is film industry jargon for the celluloid on which each frame of a cartoon was painted (in the days before computer animation). Disney cels were sold as works of art by the Courvoisier Galleries as early as 1938. They were sold at Disneyland once it opened in 1955.

The earliest cels were made of cellulose nitrate. As this is a highly flammable material, cels were not stored but were either washed and re-used or destroyed. In 1940, during the making of Fantasia, Disney switched to more durable cellulose acetate cels.

As well as the original production cels, used in making the actual animated film, Disney produces hand-inked limited-edition cels, xerographic cels and serigraphic cels for collectors. The limited-edition, hand-inked cels are produced by tracing a cartoon drawing onto an acetate, colouring it by hand and adding a lithographic background layer. Xerographic cels are similar except that the cartoon drawing is reproduced onto the acetate by a xerographic process rather than being hand-drawn each time. Serigraphic cels, or "sericels", are produced by transferring a painting of a character to acetate by a screen-printing process. 
 

Production Cel from Pinocchio

 

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Memorabilia - Disney Collectables

In September 1929, less than a year after Steamboat Willie, the first successful Mickey Mouse cartoon, was released, the first Mickey Mouse Club was formed by the Fox Dome Theatre in Ocean Park, California. Disney quickly saw the potential of such a Club and supplied theatre managers with starter packs containing a manual, song sheets, badges and so on. (These are now highly collectable.) The Clubs usually met before the Saturday matinee and had quizzes and competitions for various prizes. By 1932, over 800 theatres were participating and there were over a million members of the Club. As well as promoting Mickey Mouse, the Club created an interest in collecting Disney items.

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