A Page Of Examples Of Example Pages

It's amazing what one can gather up in the name of a hobby over time. You start looking through old files and photos with the intention of doing a little housecleaning, and you see things that you cannot for the life of you remember why you saved them. Still, it's fun to go through some of them and see what's there. I did that this last week, and I noticed something specific that I seem to have a knack for collecting. The problem is that I never actually use them. Let me explain.

I was actually looking for a specific thing that I thought would make an interesting blog post, and while I never did find it, I did come across several examples of the thing I talked about above. See, I'm an "all-the-information-in-one-place" kind of guy. Spreadsheets and charts and graphs and lists - those are my bread and butter. It does leave me at a disadvantage when talking to fellow chronologists, though, because my knowledge can often be limited to just those black and white stats. Luckily we have others who think much, much deeper than I do about our beloved subset, so I can be drawn back onto the right path, as it were. But, on to that thing I have so many of.

It seems I have a love for example listings. (There might be a better term, but I can't think of one.) The one above is an advertisement for different types of headwear for men. For some reason I didn't record where I found it, nor what year it's from, but it's almost obviously from the 1880s or 90s. Chances are I didn't think I would ever have to use it, so I just stuck it in a folder with a generic title. The one below at least has that missing date and publication included.

From there we go to another familiar territory - modes of transportation...

I even have one that makes no sense to me at all...

All of these were at one time, I'm sure, meant to be able to be used to help date a case or cases. I think the whole thing started when I read about Holmes and Watson discussing Henry Baker's hat in 'The Blue Carbuncle' (BLUE). Holmes says that the hat is three years old. He added, "These flat brims curled at the edge came in then." My guess is I started looking for info about hats to see this for myself, and an obsession was born. (I have several about chapeaus, by the way.) So, I likely began a journey of gathering such data with the belief I would employ it at some time. Problem is that I never really have. Still, I'm very attracted to these types of comparison or advertising sheets. And that goes for anything. If someone has taken the time to compile different examples of something in one place, I'm in! I find it fascinating, no matter the subject. Heck, I even did a paper in high school where I compared all the ways Elvis styled his hair througout his career and how it changed over time. Again, no matter the subject.

I don't know if anything like these would be helpful to the cause anymore. The best it could hope to do would be to correct an error, but Sherlockians have studied every word of the Canon - there's almost nothing left to examine. Still, it's interesting to have this stuff at my fingertips. And there are so many more to gather up. Sheets can be found that compare just about anything, and with access to the world wide web it seems one can be made for almost anything. Maybe there's a cottage industry in this.

You know how much I love it when you get this far down the post. It means everything to me. Reminds me of why I do this. I'll see you next month. Be good to yourself, and as always...thanks for reading.