Customer Reviews

Coast to Coast: The Best of Travel Decal Art (Recollectibles)

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Up until 2000 or so this was probably the only book about a totally inconsequential bit of Americana. As the Intro points out collecting travel decals hasn't seemed to catch on in any significant way though Schiffer have published two books on the subject but they tend to be expensive and extremely dull looking so Dyer and Benedict's book still might be the only worthwhile one despite being mostly about travel.

I don't know how many decals are featured, a rough estimate suggests over eight hundred and they are all scattered over the pages. This does make the pages look a bit scrappy and it certainly would have helped if each colorful decal had a drop shadow to give the pages a lift. The country is divided into sections: East Coast; East of the Mississippi; The Great Plains; the Rockies; West Coast and these chapters are further divided into individual states and attractions like Military, Museums, Hollywood and more. Virtually every decal is related to a place even if it's visually showing a plane: it could be Atlantic Flight Service, Atlanta or Los Angeles International Airport. Even the page on Gas has `Michigan Travel Club, Conoco' or `Native States Gasoline, San Diego'.

Individually, of course, these little bits of graphic art have their own down-market style and there isn't one that looks in any way designed. Why should they when they were stuck on the insides of car windows or luggage and mostly forgotten about. Maybe their simple crudeness and being stuck on something was enough to deter collections. I imagine all those in the book came from the printers.

If you like Americana this exuberant looking book on decals deserves a place in your library.

***LOOK AT SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.