Book of Mystery

Several years ago, we happened to be at a local thrift shop.  Well, not your regular sort of thrift shop, but I wouldn't really call it a antiques shop either -- somewhere between those two.  They sell a lot of vintage collectable stuff, but most of it not in the best shape.  Not really what true collectors would want.

Anyhow, I had walked all around the shop and not found anything and just as I was about to leave I spied this book in a case.  I was attracted to it because of the beautiful leather cover and had someone get it out of the case for me.  Although, a glanced through it a bit I really bought it for the cover and because it was only $25.  Really in my quick glance through it didn't seem very interesting.  I remember looking through it when I got home and thinking there were a few interesting things in it, but then it got put in a book case with my photos and scrapbooks and I hadn't looked at it since.

Yesterday, after receiving some cool vintage trading cards from a friend of mine I decided to look through it again and see if there was anything similar.  Wow!  I don't know what I was thinking the first time I looked through it, but it is full of all kinds of interesting stuff.  Something I hadn't realized is that each page is built up in layers, so what is on top is only part of what is there.  I still think I have only scratched the surface of what is in there, but there are lots of esoteric related things.  The earliest item I have found is from 1909 and latest from 1977.  However, much of the news clippings and other items seem to be from the 1930s and 40s.  You would think there would be a lot of war related stuff, but I didn't find any.  Nowhere that I could find was the name of the person (or maybe persons, I had a thought that it might have been passed on through generations and different women added to it) who created the scrapbook.  Whoever she was that did the bulk of work on it seems to have grown up around Chicago and later, probably about 1940, moved to NM.  I say she because mostly women do scrapbooking, but also there are fashion related items and lots of cute animal items.

I thought it would be fun over the upcoming days to post some photos of the esoteric related items here.  So if you are interested keep checking back. :-)