While Mod Betty is busy going through the thousands of photos she’s taken these past few weeks on the road, I wanted to make sure you kids had something nice and vintage to keep yourselves occupied with – like the vintage Christmas catalogs from WishbookWeb.com!
This site is a labor of love, with catalogs from the 1930s to the 1980s.
And not just a couple of pages, but every danged one of ’em, scanned flat and nice and clear so you can see everything!
I’m thinking this is a great resource if you want to see the toys you so dearly coveted as a kid. Or perhaps you want some vintage holiday inspiration? Or vintage fashion tips? It’s all in there! Enjoy!
UPDATE!
Because some folks have inquired, the Wisbook web site is a labor of love from Jason Liebig (a Flickr pal of mine) and my new Flickr pal Wishbook who has more views of vintage Christmas catalogs on his Flickr page .
If you think this resource is something you’d like to help with, here are some ideas that I’ve reprinted here from there How Can I Help part of their website:
Want to help??
Obtaining and scanning catalogs can be an expensive and time-consuming endeavor.
If you enjoy the site and would like to contribute to the efforts of WishbookWeb.com there are a few ways to do it.Make a catalog donation. If you have a catalog you’d like to donate for scanning, get in touch with us and we’ll be happy to accept it.
Just drop us a line here, and we’ll be happy to discuss how to proceed.Scan your own catalog, and donate the digital scans to the site.
We’ve got lots of tips on effective scanning that we’ve learned through trial-and-error, so please get in touch with us here, before you start.
Right now, the site is all about Christmas catalogs, but looking forward, we’d like to add all sorts of catalogs and circulars. At anywhere from 1,000 to 1,500 pages, the Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter catalogs are intimidating scanning projects, but eventually we’d like to add them, too.
Do you have vintage sales circulars that are interesting? Other smaller vintage specialty catalogs? We’d love to see them, and eventually create a place on the site for them, as well.
Gunnar
November 27, 2012 at 5:13 pmThis site is amazing. My God, who had the time to do all that scanning? I have a couple of Montgomery Ward catalogs from 1974-75 that were in my Mom’s house, but not the Xmas one. I think that was the most deliciously awful era for wretched 1970s excess…polyester, shag carpet, beanbag chairs , eight-track players. Ah, the good old days.
Mod Betty
November 27, 2012 at 7:24 pmGunnar – Isn’t it amazing? Yes, this is definitely a cool resource from some dedicated folks – Wishbook and Jason Liebig to be exact! I updated the content of the post to give them a bit of a shout out, as they certainly do deserve it!
roadsidewonders
November 27, 2012 at 5:14 pmTimes have changed; but I haven’t … I still picked the same things from the catalog that I would have then 🙂
Mod Betty
November 27, 2012 at 5:17 pmI could pretty much pick out my faves too – even tho we never got the catalogs when I was growing up – went over the neighbors to drool over it!
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