Customer Reviews

Collecting Little Golden Books: A Collector's Identification and Price Guide

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I really enjoyed reading the history of Little Golden Books and Western Publishing that begins this useful and fascinating guidebook.
This book covers the numbering system of the Little Golden Books, the changing prices, how to determine editions (more complicated than you'd think), and how to determine value and condition of a book. I shows pictures of each of the Little Golden Book covers and lists them by book number, the new numbering system, Disney titles, and activity titles. The other members of the Golden Book family like Big Little Golden Books, First Little Golden Books, Little Little Golden Books, as well as promotional titles and foreign titles are included. This guidebook also contains Ding Dong School Books, Eager Reader series, Giant Little Golden Books, and Little Golden records. It includes Elf Books, Wonder Books, Treasure Books and Tell-A-Tale books, too. It tells how to date a book by the spine design and shows back cover designs through the years.
Some people have found the indexing of this book to be awkward but I did not. I was easily able to find all of the books and information I was looking for. I collect Little Golden Books for my own private use and not for resale and I love this book because it has all the front covers pictured and tells the author and the illustrator. It rekindles the old memories of titles from my childhood that I then search out to share with my nieces and nephews. I especially love Eloise Wilkins' and Garth Williams'numerous Little Golden Book illustrations and this book helped me to discover so many that I wasn't aware of before. It comes with me to many, many garage sales and has been helpful in protecting me from highway robbery that some flea market sellers would have liked to commit! The information it contains about value and how to tell what edition a book is has brought many an inflated flea market price down to a reasonable level for me. I also use it to mark off the books and editions that I have in my collection and I make notes in the book about the quality of the copies I have, so I avoid duplication and I know when an upgrade is a good idea for a purchase. Steve Santi has done a super job of compiling the data on these national treasures and I recommend this book to one and all. This is splendid Americana and is filled with lots of happy memories. You'll like it.

If you are a bookseller, collector or have any interest in Little Golden Books, Elf or Wonder Books ... this is a must for your library. Covers are in black and white, but that is what keeps the price reasonable.. You can clearly see various changes in the different covers for various editions. I find the references helpful.. since a lot of my customers know a title but not if is a a little golden book, an elf book etc... Santi also lists the illustrators so if someone is looking for a book by their favorite illustrator it is easy to find! Fairly priced, and very useful! Also new to this edition is a section on Whitman Tell a Tale Books. This is definitely the reference book for all your childhood board books!

I eagerly awaited my copy of Collecting Little Golden Books, but was disappointed when it arrived. Yes, it was certainly fun to look at pictures of the old book covers, which brought back many memories. However, I was puzzled at the author's omission of page numbers in the indexes. What is the point of having pages and pages of indexing with no page numbers? If you want to look up a particular title, you must thumb through the entire large book and hope your eye falls on it. Also there were quite a few typos, and anywhere in the text that the author refers you to a particular page, the page number has been inadvertently left out. I consider that to be very sloppy editing, particularly in a 4th edition. Has no one else noticed these mistakes?

The brand new, year 2000, 528 page softbound book contains more than 3,500 black and white photos of these great collectibles, complete with year 2000 values. There is a very nice history of the popular collectible, with information on the Numbering Systems, How to Determine Value and Condition, Promotional and Special Little Golden Books, Products Marketed Using Licensed Little Golden Book Characters, Foreign Books, Dating the Books,and Back cCver Designs Through the Years. Every type of Little Golden Book is included, ranging from Disney, Ding Dong School, Elf Books, Wonder Books, to Treasure Books and Tell-A-Tale Books. Locating the books is easy, with the Numerical Index, Company Products and Corporate Characters Index, Illustrator Index, Master Book Title Index. The index is so comprehensive it runs for 49 pages !! A super reference. You wonder how anyone is able to develop such a comprehensive work. It's a walk down memory lane, too. Add it to your reference library.

Book has same prices as 4th edition updated three years ago. It also drops the guide to other children's books (Wonder, Tell-a-Tale, etc.). Hard to find any useful new information. Sad, since we were looking forward to a real update.

This book has many book lists and pictures (in black and white) but it is very difficult to find one particular item you're looking for. Since there are many indexes throughout the book, it would have been pretty simple to cross-reference page numbers so this book could go from a 3-star rating to a 5-star rating. I also thought the explanations for the different numbering systems used by Little Golden Books could have been much clearer. I don't regret buying it but I think it could have been much more user friendly.

The information in this book is extensive. You will find just about every golden book ever published. The problem is the indexing. It is extremely difficult to find the book you want. For a book that could have been so great as a referance, this one problem makes it fall far short of the mark.

Now in a comprehensively updated fifth edition, and knowledgeably compiled by Steve Santi (a personal collector and professional dealer of Little Golden Books), Collecting Little Golden Books: A Collector's Identification & Price Guide features 3,750 black-and-white photographs, and offers 4,500 listings of author, date published, page count, and physical dimension information, as well as approximate current prices to help collectors identify and properly value a mass selection of treasured Little Golden children's books published in the past century. A no-nonsense, easy-to-use resource, Collecting Little Golden Books is very strongly recommended as an informational resource for collectors and dealers with its new sections on Golden Library of Knowledge, See Saw Books, Tintin, A True Life Adventure, Golden Stamp Books, Golden Story Books, Goldencraft Library Bound Books, and more.

This is a great book. The illustrated covers are enormously fun and are helpful in identifying editions. The indexing is awkward to use, however, as rather than page numbers it directs you to sections, so you basically have to read the index, then go back to the table of contents to find the right section. The extra challenge is that the books within the sections are not all arranged the same way; some are by number, some by title, etc. The author explains why he did it this way, and I was able to understand his rationale, but it is hard to figure out what's going on unless you read the text. It still seems to me a small price to see covers in chronological order wherever possible.

This book is more than a catalog of photos of little golden books, it is packed with useful information. The information in this book has made it easier for me to determine a price for little golden books, and it has helped me know which little golden books to look for. I've already listed and sold some collectible little golden books at the prices given in this book, and I was surprised by how quickly they sold.