Collecting Geographically.

There are many collecting areas to choose from for billheads. From collecting geographically, to business types, and to date ranges. I have scoured ebay and the internet looking at different collections of billheads and I am going to take the next many posts touching on collecting area.

First, lets start with geography. That is, collecting from a certain country, state, city or town. Here is a simple breakdown of collecting billheads geographically:

I. Country
A. USA
1. 50 States
a. Counties / Parrishes
1. Cities
2. Towns

B. United Kingdom
1. England
a. Counties
1. Cities
2. Towns

2. Scotland
a. Cities
b. Towns

3. Ireland

C. European Continent
1. Spain
2. Germany

D. Cuba

When collecting anything, the narrower you can make your collecting area the easier it is to collect. It might make items harder to find; however, I can spend more money on the rare or seldom scene items because by narrowing my field, there is less out there for me to buy. The broader the field the more that is out there. However, there is also an exception to this as certain counties or cities might not have produced a lot of billheads simply because of the lack of business in those areas. As for billheads, the bigger the city, the chances are you will find more billheads to collect. Take for example New York City. Lots of business and merchants here, lots of printers, and lots of billheads pop up for New York.

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Australian Billheads

As promised from by last post, here are some examples of Australian billheads I found on the website Print and Printmaking Australia Asia Pacific . Based on the Australian print collection at the National Gallery of Australia there is free online access to over 22,000 images. The databases can be searched by artist, subject or print techniques such as etching, woodcut, wood-engraving, linocut, lithograph, screenprint, monotype and other print related processes such as posters and artists books. Index to online information on printmakers, print workshops, print publishers, print galleries and public and private collections.

CAPEWELL HORSE NAIL COMPANY

I regularly purchase goods and paper at a local online auction. In December, I noticed that a lot of random estate / household goods also had a small pile of what looked to be calendars. I won the lot and sure enough it included many advertising calendars. Many of those were for the Capewell Horse Nail Company of Hartford Connecticut. These calendars were damaged, but the color and graphics were still very bright. Last week, I happened on a lot of paper through ebay that included a billhead for the company. Attached are photos of all for your enjoyment.

Rubber Goods

The rubber industry in the United States can hardly be said to have had any real and tangible existence until the discovery of the process of vulcanization in 1844 by Charles Goodyear. The first rubber ever imported into this country was brought into Boston in the year 1800 and came in In that same year a patent was granted to one Jacob Hummel, of Philadelphia, for a gum-elastic varnish; of which, however, there seems to have been no further mention. Some ten years later, in 1823, a Boston sea-captain, coming from South American ports, brought with him a pair of gilded rubber shoes which excited the greatest interest. Two years later, 500 pairs of rubber shoes, made by the natives along the Amazon, were brought into Boston, this time without the fantastical refinement of gilding. They were exceedingly thick, clumsy, and unshapely shoes, and yet they sold readily, bringing from $3 to $5 per pair as they were found that they were a secure protection against dampness. This was the e...

THE EPHEMERA OF BUSINESS

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