Antiques & Collecting Newsletter for May

[grasswire]

(¯`·.¸¸.-> IN THIS ISSUE

MINIATUR WUNDERLAND
TRADING CARDS FEATURE SCAMMERS
THE FINAL REEL
THREE OR MORE


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MINIATUR WUNDERLAND
http://www.miniatur-wunderland.com

Twin brothers Frederick and Gerrit Braun have turned their boyhood
passion for model railroads into a lucrative private museum in Hamburg,
Germany called Miniatur Wunderland. It's the the largest miniature
railroad in the world snaking along eight miles of track. Set on three
floors in an old warehouse, Miniatur Wunderland features realistic
replicas of parts of Scandinavia, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and the
U.S. Figurines about a half-inch high represent people in all walks of
life.

Video of Miniatur Wunderland Hamburg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN_oDdGmKyA

Related:
The Life-Size Toy Train Set
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B_5SRg7oHc

An Iowa man built his train set on a life-size scale. He spent 5 years
laying the half-mile of track around his property. The next 15 years
were spent adding to it.

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TRADING CARDS FEATURE SCAMMERS
http://www.topps.com

The Topps Co. Inc. says jailed Wall Street financier Bernard Madoff will
be featured this summer in a set of trading cards dubbed the "world's
biggest hoaxes, hoodwinks and bamboozles." The cards show scoundrels and
villains such as Enron, D.B. Cooper and Charles Ponzi. Topps has also
gotten into the political arena with a series of trading cards
celebrating President Obama.

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THE FINAL REEL
http://www.vmresource.com

In December Fisher-Price stopped making View-Master scenic disks
depicting tourist attractions. Many of us are mourning the passing of
one of our first childhood memories. View-Masters were introduced at the
1939 New York World’s Fair and became an overnight sensation. Those
little 3-D "slide shows" on a white wheel amused us with picturesque
scenes of tourist attractions and landscape scenery. The boxy
binocular-style viewers remain; but the circular reels that brought
three-dimensional images of the world to millions have now been cut back
to a handful of children’s titles. Those were the days long before the
Internet, color television, video games and movies on DVD, when a
hand-held plastic viewer with a lever that snapped us from one picture
to the next was all we needed to fuel our imaginations. Popular
View-Master reels were the ones that showed little claymation-type
vignettes that brought fairy tales to life, as well as those that showed
us exciting faraway places such as the Grand Canyon, the Empire State
Building and Carlsbad Caverns. In decline since the '60s, a few reels
will still be made -- Dora the Explorer, Shrek, and a few other animated
favorites. But the magical travel reels are a thing of the past and
placed in the archives of history. If you didn't save yours, you can
still purchase them online but you need to be quick as they are
disappearing. Interestingly, the gutting of the View-Master comes just
as 3-D is experiencing a renaissance on film and TV.

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THREE OR MORE
http://www.threeormore.net

Last month we directed you to a new blog launched by our friend Reyne
Haines called Three or More. On April 18, we caught Reyne on The Early
Show where she did a Trash or Treasure segment with tips on collectible
Barbies, Action Figures, comic books and more. You can read the text of
her interview here:

http://tinyurl.com/cu5a4g

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FEATURE ARTICLES
http://www.collectingbuzz.com/articles.html

Over on our website we have a selection of feature articles about
antiques and collecting. The list is growing so take a look and
hopefully you'll find something of interest.

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