Souvenir Buildings: A Collection of Identified Miniatures Book

The books which started it all. Souvenir Buildings : A Collection of Identified Miniatures. Author and collector Dort F. Brown wrote a 152-page green-colored paperback in 1977 and then added a second volume in 1979. Ah, those were the early days of souvenir building collecting. Before the SBCS, before eBay. When collectors scoured flea markets and antique stores in search of buildings…and back then, could actually find some. Dort describes in the books how she and her husband came to begin their collection – by discovering a dust-covered Commercial National Bank replica in a second-hand store. This became their “Alpha” and a collection was soon born. For the book, she researched information on both the building replicas and the real buildings. Its fun, yet a bit maddening, to look through her books and read about the very low prices she paid for some great souvenir replica buildings...especially when many now command such high prices. I must confess in my early days of collecting in the mid 1990’s that I passed over a few buildings priced at $20 which I then deemed ‘too pricey.’ The two volumes prove a great resource for every building collector.