Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Nancy Drew Old Clock Printer's Block

Last night I was scrolling through completed listings on eBay in order to find some auction results to mention in this blog when I stumbled across this extraordinary item.

Vintage Letterpress Printers Block Nancy Drew Old Clock Item #390074397730


From the seller's description:

Offered here is a vintage printers block for the
book, The Secret of the Old Clock,
the first book from the Nancy Drew Series by Carolyn Keene.
It is metal mounted on wood.
It is 9.5 x 6.5 picas or 1-1/2" x 1-1/8."

The printer's block sold for only $55.00, apparently because most of us never noticed the auction. Argh! I know why I missed it; I restrict my search to the books category and then search outside of books manually. I did not do that when this item was active. Even if I had, I'm not sure that I would have clicked on the "Business and Industrial" category to look for a Nancy Drew item.

I'm not sure why most others missed it. It could be that for some people searching all of eBay for Nancy Drew that this item might have been dropped from the search results. That has been known to happen as I have mentioned in past posts. It also could be that more and more people have had it with eBay and are no longer searching like they once did. This supports my argument that eBay is no longer the fine marketplace that it once was where people can always get top dollar for their items.

Now what this item has to be is a printer's block used to make the illustrations that appeared in the old Grosset and Dunlap advertisements from the 1930s. How neat!

The seller also had a Bobbsey Twins printer's block.

Vintage Letterpress Printers Block Bobbsey Twins Ranch Item #390074397748


The Bobbsey Twins printer's block sold for $20.50.

1 comment:

Lenora said...

Oh, that's awful! I would have missed it for the exact same reason. I do well to keep up with the books section.

I love the other printer's blocks, though. I'm trying to convince myself not to get one of the staplers, the pencil sharpener, the desk calendar, etc. for display on my desk.