Customer Reviews

The Definitive Guide to Colorful Insulators

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Extremely well put together book with excellent pictures, research, values and general information. If you are looking for a book about insulators, then this is the book for you.

Wonderful photographs and extremely informative. The book itself is a wonderful addition to anyone's collection! Highly recommend!

So many people have antique insulators in their basements and attics but don't know what they are worth. Most insulators aren't worth much at all ($1-$5 a piece), but the rare few are worth hundreds to thousands of dollars to serious collectors. Before you get rid of the "old junk" in your attic make sure you know what its worth. This book is the definative authority on collectible insulators. Otherwise you'll never know if you have a "diamond in the rough" or just a box of junk.

I own this book and wish I hadn't bought it. It is basically just a collection of pictures of pretty colored insulators, with prices. There is NO ORGANIZATION WHATSOEVER!

The insulators are not arranged by color, manufacturer, style, age, embossing, or anything else! It's completely random-- and there is NO INDEX so there's no way to find a particular piece except to page through it. This is very, very bad-- I've never seen a randomly arranged, indexless reference book before. That's because it's not a reference book, not a "guide"-- it's just eye candy.

Which might be OK, but the photography is not good! The colors are not accurate-- often they are too saturated-- and the shots were up taken from far too close so the insulators all suffer from major barrel distortion.

Definitely do not recommend this book.

Great book at a great price. Full of good pictures of insulators with clear descriptions and prices. Good for the beginning collector of Insulators.

I bought this for my son who is an avid collector of insulators. He is thrilled with the book, the quality of the pictures, and the information it contains. I would recommend it for any serious collector.

When we started buying insulators we had no clue how to tell what colors were what and so on this book has great pictures and information about the insulators pictured.

This book is great for the REALLY nice color photograghs. But it just didn't go far enough to be called a 'definitive' guide.
1. What about an index?
2. Or at the VERY least, group and order? Well you did group by North American and Canadian.
3. By grouping and order I mean the major manufacturers and either chronologically by number or even by date of patent, design or manufacture date. Or even the design groupings. This would be an IMMENSE service. If you think about the novices that may want your book for actual research, not the collector that already knows what you put in there.
4. Plus a little more 'definitive info', ( i.e. the picture upper left page 11,)-- 'Pyrex carnival glass colored insulator.'. This is just is NOT definitive, information yes, but not `definitive.
5. If you included the clear and tinges thereof, straw, amethyst, etc.
6. A color example of design categories. Or contrast the different designs to one another.
7. List of manufacturers and dates they were in business.
But these might be an upgrade for the second edition, it has been nearly 12 years.

As my title indicates, this is an excellent coffee table book... colorful and full of information. To the avid collector however the book lacks the quality of a reference book. Without a index one has to page by page thumb through an entire section to find specific items.

This is a really beautiful book for any insulator collector to own. It wasn't as informative as I had hoped. I need to purchase the Mcdougal book now. But, as far as being a great book with lots of beautiful pics and neat info on some cool insulators this one is wonderful.