Customer Reviews

Royal Doulton Animals: A Charlton Standard Catalogue (4th Edition)

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The Charlton Standard Catalogues are the standard references for collectors and dealers in Royal Doulton toby mugs and figurines. All of them are excellent sources of information on specific figurines/tobies: the designer, period of manufacture, varieties of glaze and color, backstamp variations, etc. Each entry contains a black and white photo and a price guide. The downside: with four to six entries per page, the photos are often too small to make out details. Trying to figure out whether the figure you are looking up is the same as the one in the photo can be tricky. (Of course, the proper way to look up a Doulton figure is by series and number. But the older figures had their identification numbers written on them by hand, and it is often hard to tell whether you are looking at a 2, a 3, a 5, an 8, or a 9. It takes some time to eliminate possibilities and find the proper listing, and the small, sometimes dark photos do not help.) There are several sections of larger, glossy, full-color photos. But the subjects for the color photos are not always chosen for helpfulness. Do we really need six pages of color illustrations of flambe glaze? The Introduction to the book is minimal. It contains a tiny history of the production of Royal Doulton animal figures, tips on collecting, and an excellent list of clubs, dealers, and suggested further reading, much of which is out of print or published by Charlton. The more the reader already knows about Royal Doulton, the easier the book is to use, and the more helpful it will be. This is a REFERENCE book, and not an introduction to the history or appreciation of Royal Doulton. It does what it does very well. A NOTE ON THE PRICE GUIDE: Like most price guides, it is best used to COMPARE values of similar items. An item which books for $125 is worth less than one that books for $550, but neither item is likely to be sold at the book price. Common items will usually sell for below their book value, and uncommon and rare ones may sell for over their book price.