Customer Reviews

The Goebel Collector's Guide: Volume One

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I purchased this book to try and identify/price a collection of madonnas by Goebel/Hummel that I recently got from my grandmother. The book gives a fair amount of background on Goebel ceramics, including detailed information on the many permutations of "the bee". The photos are large and clear, as well as well organized. Using the guide, I was able to identify most, but not all of the figurines as well as get a ballpark estimate of what they're worth for insurance purposes. Since this book is titled "Volume One", I assume that there are more to come (if they are not already on the market).

My only problem with this book is that I couldn't figure out why the authors included what they did. There was certainly a large section of madonnas, but then there were also pages of Norman Rockwell Hummels, as well as several other collections by various artists produced under the Goebel label. I realize that the Goebel company produced literally tens of thousands of different figurines, but to my way of thinking, wouldn't it have made more sense to organize these books either chronologically, thematically, or by artist? The only plausible explanations I can come up with are: 1) the authors chose the figurines they did because they are models that the authors are particularly fond of ... or 2) the authors chose to include a little of this and a little of that in order to encourage collectors to buy all of the books in their series.