How to Collect Vintage TV Memorabilia...

The early days of television were perhaps more fascinating than even the early days of the Internet. The television industry was initially populated by personalities that were colorful, creative and often slightly bizarre. Television's impact is still being debated because it has become so all pervasive. All of these factors makes the collecting of vintage television memorabilia not only interesting but evocative as well.

1. Purchase a history of early television to use as a guide to your collecting. In addition to your own memories and specific interests, this will add direction to your collecting.

2. Decide if you want a theme for your collection. Possible themes could include television comedies, variety shows, live dramas, sports events, quiz shows, news shows, science fiction, specific television networks, or specific television stations.

3. Explore your local area first you will be surprised what you can find locally.

4. Some of the general websites devoted to television memorabilia. Do some "window shopping."

5. Explore the major auction sites like eBay and look through the general category of television memorabilia.

6. Focus on specific television shows. For example, pick a show like "I Love Lucy" and check out Internet sites that specifically sell memorabilia related to that show.

7. Explore the category of old televisions themselves. There were some unusual looking models of "the tube."

8. Add episodes from the era of vintage television to your collection of memorabilia. There is an ever increasing library of commercially available DVDs and tapes of early television.

Vinyl Comeback...

As counterintuitive as it may seem in this age of iPods and digital downloads, vinyl -- the favorite physical format of indie music collectors and audiophiles -- is poised to re-enter the mainstream, or at least become a major tributary. Talk to almost anyone in the music business' vital indie and DJ scenes and you'll encounter a uniformly optimistic picture of the vinyl market.

Pressing plants are ramping up production, but where is the demand coming from? Why do so many people still love vinyl, even though its bulky, analog nature is anathema to everything music is supposed to be these days? Records, the vinyl evangelists will tell you, provide more of a connection between fans and artists. And many of today's music fans buy 180-gram vinyl LPs for home listening and MP3s for their portable devices.

"For many of us, and certainly for many of our artists, the vinyl is the true version of the release," said Matador's Patrick Amory. "The size and presence of the artwork, the division into sides, the better sound quality, above all the involvement and work the listener has to put in, all make it the format of choice for people who really care about music."

Because these music fans also listen using portable players and computers, Matador and other labels include coupons in record packaging that can be used to download MP3 versions of the songs. Amory called the coupon program "hugely popular."

Portability is no longer any reason to stick with CDs, and neither is audio quality. Although vinyl purists are ripe for parody, they're right about one thing: Records can sound better than CDs.

Although CDs have a wider dynamic range, mastering houses are often encouraged to compress the audio on CDs to make it as loud as possible: It's the so-called loudness war. Since the audio on vinyl can't be compressed to such extremes, records generally offer a more nuanced sound.

Another reason for vinyl's sonic superiority is that no matter how high a sampling rate is, it can never contain all of the data present in an analog groove, Nyquist's theorem to the contrary.

 

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