Back To School Collectibles
 

By: Robert Reed

As seen in The Antique Shoppe Newspaper, September, 2005

Just about every time the school bell rings it has meaning for collectors as well as the nation's children.

Treasures from the classroom reaching into both the 19th and 20th centuries are now sought by everyone from professional educators to those with just a school desk full feeling of nostalgia.

The favorite back to school collectible for some are those Dick and Jane readers from the 1940s and 1950s.

"The two true icons of American culture in this century were not Lucy and Desi, Tom and Jerry, Reagan and Bush, or Masters and Johnson, but Dick and Jane," observes the recently published Paper Collectibles, The Essential Buyer's Guide (Wallace-Homestead).  "Growing up with this amazing fictional family in elementary school left a lasting impact."

For a time in the 1980S, collectors could find the classic Dick and Jane reading textbooks for $30 to $60, but in recent years they have all but disappeared.  In connection with one major exhibit in 1994, Associated Press talked with James Keeline, manager of Prince and Pauper Collectible Children's Books in San Diego, California.

Keeline said the materials which included Sally as the little sister and a dog named Spot were produced in the millions but only a fraction survive today.  As a result, originals sell for $75 to $300, according to Keeline, depending on condition and how prominent a role Dick and Jane themselves play in the stories.

Actually, a great number of the things of elementary school from the 1940s through the 1960s are rapidly rising in status in the paper collectibles world.

Black and white elementary school class pictures are among them, along with listing of the day's lunch, thank-you notes, School Safety Patrol membership cards, Weekly Reader newspapers, workbooks, notebooks, test papers, printed copies of the Pledge of Allegiance, and even grade-school report cards are showing up in shows, antique malls, and in price guides.  One recent national price guide listed a 1944 General Zoology lab manual at $10.

Meanwhile decorators are growing more and more fond of 19th century school books, wood-framed writing slates, wooden pencil boxes, and school desks of all types for the look of yesteryear.

School books from the late 1800s like Swinton's Language Lessons printed in 1877, Town's Speller and Definer from 1863, Wentworth's Plane Geometry dated 1889 were once considered worthless.  Now they are attractive decorator items.

Back in 1980, Marian Klamkin wrote in her book, Collectibles that "old school desks, abundant during the school-building boom of the 1960s, are now becoming scarce and expensive.  Within two decades, those metal-based, wood-topped desk with holes for inkwells have passed from the realm of unwanted used furniture to valued relics of the past."

Now the lists includes teacher desks, wooden chairs, and even more recent desks.  One leading flea market price guide includes a 1950s student's desk with Formica top, metal legs, and a lifting top, although the price is modest.

Teacher's classroom bells have a familiar ring as well nowadays.  The old hand-held bells of brass or other metal and bearing a wooden handle have been collectibles for some time.  However the more recent charmers are desk-type tap bell, rung by the palm of the hand, seen on teacher's desks as recently as the 1960s.

Still other back to school collectibles popping-up in guides and as well as collector's minds are wooden rulers, large duster erasers for blackboards, colorful back-to-school posters, pencil boxes from the 1950s and before, hand-cranked pencil sharpeners, and those pull-down geography maps which decorated every classroom.

In addition there are both floor and table model world globes, certificates, framed diplomas, and Bakelite wall intercoms once hung high on the classroom wall.

Even the metal boxes which held the stark white blackboard chalk are today considered pleasing classroom collectibles of the past.

"Curiously," notes Steven Heeler author of the absorbing book School Days (Abbeville Press), "memories of one's school days tend to be either overwhelmingly good or bad; no one is indifferent to that period in life.  Which accounts for why so many of us return decade after decade to their class reunions, of why so many keep souvenirs and mementos of school days forever."

Suggested reading on back to school collectibles:

Flea Market Trader by Bob and Sharon Huxford, Collector Books.

Price Guide to Flea Market Treasures by Harry Rinker, Jr., Wallace-Homestead Book Company.