Primarily Petroliana Shop Talk Forums Shop Talk Petroliana Forums General Petroliana Discussion Gas Collecting Books

If you were to reccomend the best book on collecting Gas Station related items, what would it be??

Wife's CHECK BOOK!

I'd save your money and educate yourself thru auction results and ebay sold items, attend shows and talk to others. Many of the books contradict each other and can get you in trouble if you follow those prices.

good one DB and i agree. It really depends on what you are wanting to collect. Lets make it easy and say globes if thats the case then buy both the globe books that Scott Benjamin and Wayne Henderson wrote. If its pumps then it would be the gas pumps identification price guide by Jack Sim. All can be bought here on the site in the bookstore. Hope that helps

AS FAR AS I KNOW THERE ARE NO CURRENT PRICE GUIDES GIVING CURRENT VALUES. EVERYTHING OUT THERE IS 3-4+ YEARS OLD.

FROM WHAT I'VE READ ON HERE, CANS, SIGNS AND PUMPS ARE STRONG. BUT GLOBES ARE SOFT....DEF A BUYERS MARKET ON GLOBES.

One of the newest books is copy right 2005

And it Warman's Gas Station collectibles good pictures identification and price guide a little bit of every thing related service station related, Just gives you a good idea what to look for. But there are mistakes in these books also. Best advice like KZ1000 said :

Now that is funny!!! And the truth!!!

i am just looking for one that shows the Pumps, signs, and items from the different oil companies

Thanks!

Since I first started writing about petroleum collectibles almost 25 years ago I have advised our publishers NOT to put any pricing in any kind of collectibles books. Several reasons; number one, the pricing is obsolete before the ink is dry; number two, it is often only the writers opinion; and number three, there are all kinds of temptations to distort pricing to your own outcome. We never voluntarily put pricing in our books, but the publishers insisted on them, believing that the books would not sell unless they were price guides. On our self published books, Guide to Gasoline Logos and Guide to Gas Pump Restoration, we had much more lattitude and both were written as historical reference documents. Both cover their specific subject matter well.
But to answer your question, I agree with the others. Watch ebay for pricing, and for reference, the best books are our globe books from 1998 (badly out of date, with replacement digital version in the works) and Jack Sim's pump book. The logo book and our pump restoration book are good options, as well, but long out of print.

Wayne Henderson
PCM Publishing
Kernersville, NC

Heard there is a Value book due out in August w/ pictures/descriptions.

i really want that guide to gas pump restoration book. any idea when it will be out on cd?

Truthfully, there is no difinitive "Best book ". I like Wayne here have been in this hobby back in the early 1960's collecting what appealed to me . Course too, when I got in , people were still giving stuff away . I never heard about someone really taking Petolina seriously until I met the late Mitch Stenzler of Webbers in early 1980. By that time , I already had enough to do a book of my own . However , due to conflicts with publishers , the material is stil safely stored in a secure location . My idea was to do a Political Science text which I may do so still....... Ed Shaver

I think every person who is thinking of buying or selling a gas pump should have Jack Sim's Illustrated Guide to Gas Pumps. It can help you avoid selling too cheap or buying too high, saving more than the cost of the book in the process. It can also help identify pump models so you are on the same page as a parts vendor or a pump seller who is far away. Don't leave home without it!

Since you have dealt with publishers..do you think the publishers honestly believe the books wouldn't sell or would you say it's a ploy to put a self imposed shelf life on it thereby making it neccessary to go back and write/print another book which = more profit for them?

I guess I've always wondered why price guides are pushed so heavily in the publishing world..you see it in other collectable fields as well.

Thanks for your contributions to the hobby.

I collect Sinclair and have about 10 gas pumps. I have about 25 books on the hobby. I do not collect Texaco but I have the book, helps to be aware of what is out there and hopefully keep you out of trouble with repos and fantasy items. I got a lot off of eBay. Plus they are interesting to page through on a rainy day

It's good to have catalogs from the vendors to as it shows a lot of the repo signs/globes. Also check the vendor sites for other items that are being made and not listed in catalogs.

When Scott and I did our first published book with Motorbooks, the original globe book, selling the concept was so easy that it really surprised us. Unknown to me or Scott at the time Motorbooks editors were being encouraged to get into the "price guide" market, since it seemed to have a larger potential audience that books that were strictly historical. So that was the one criteria they gave us, that we put pricing in there. The next book was "Gas Stations" which, by its nature, could not be a price guide and although they published it, it was never promoted the way it should have been. Motorbooks, in short order, sponsored us to do the sign book, the old pump book, and some of the others, but since it was their concept they wanted them to be price guides. I thought it was a bad concept, particularly for the pump book, but you seldom win arguments with your publisher. If the theory was to sell a price book and then rewrite it again a year or two later, they never followed through, never asked us to do a rework of an existing book, and in fact, lost interest altogether. When we switched to Schiffer, that was the one criteria they had, that the books had to be price guides. Some of those books are still in print, with prices that were reasonably acurrate in the 1990s but way out (to both ends of the spectrum) in 2011. But again, it was the compromise we were willing to make to get our information in the hands of the hobby. On the flip side, in 2004 I wrote an incredible gas station photo book - over 800 pictures, more than half in color with color that dated back to 1939, some of the oldest color gas station photos known to exist. Over 200 brands represented, some incredibly obscure. I shopped it to all the major publishers and to this day the work remains unpublished, because they can't make it a price guide. I intend to self-publish it some day, when I can afford to, and then not only will the book be what I want it to be, but I might actually make some money on it. In comparison, for example, all of the royalties earned on the two book set of globe books (two books, another argument I lost) after 12 years of sales amount to less than $1,000. Not that I wouldn't do it again, given the options we had at the time, in order to get the information we had out to the hobby, but it sure has never been worthwile.
Anyway, I do have a book coming out this fall, American Truck Stops, written with Guy Kudlemeyer, that contains hundreds of old truck stop photos, and we are sorting through nearly 30,000 globe photos trying to lay out a new globe book in a PDF format for use on your computer. Some folks don't care for the format, but to do a globe book in print, and do it right, using publishers formulas would result in a 1000 page printed book that would have to sell for $300-$400. A cheap laptop and the PDF document would cost less and weigh less than a printed book.
As for others comments, I understand that Dan Matthews does have a book coming out this fall that shows items (and results) from his auctions; and we have considered re-releasing some of our earlier books as PDFs, as well. In the meantime, watch PCM each month for results from shows and sales, history, ads, and more.

Wayne Henderson
PCM Publishing
Kernersville, NC

Hi Toonman,

From your original question,I'm not sure whether you are after price guides or books of general interest regarding the hobby.

The other guys have responded to the price guides issue quite well,so I'll give you some thoughts to consider from the other angle.My advice is to buy anything you can find,there are several good ones,and go over them all looking at pictures of all the stuff available to collect.See what "catches your eye"so to speak.Also,even though the prices are far out of date,in many cases they can be of use in decideing what you want to collect.

I think many of us don't even try to do it all because we have learned from experience what appeals to us the most and tend to specialize in that area.A few books may shorten the learning curve for you.I'll tell you from experience that it can get expensive to change direction oncr you are overcommited in one area.Good luck.

Thanks Old Iron. I am not really after price guides, i am after the general collectible book. Still, if I could find any I would buy them!!!

The pair of globe books by Benjamin and Henderson are the best. Pricing is way out dated but the company history and affiliate info is very useful.

The gas pump resto book also by Benjamin and Henderson has a lot of very good info.

The pump books by Sim are great for identifying pumps, but values can be off. Especially on the newer pumps.

Of the books dedicated to a single brand the Esso book by Macintyre, and the Sohio book by Miller & Sonewald are among the best.

Matthews Auction website and Aumman Auction website are useful for seeing what things have brought in the past (but keep in mind some items sell at wholesale prices at auction).

Ebay becomes less relevant as time goes by so I wouldn't place much faith in using it to determine values of petro items.

Of the general petroliana books Gasoline Treasures by Bruner is pretty good. Summers & Priddy as well as Pease had some good gen-petro books too.

There's no substitute for experience. Go to as many shows and petroliana auctions as you can.

I'll buy the first copy!

I found a local book dealer and picked up the following:

Gas Station Memories, Witzel, published 1994,
Gas Station Collectibles, Stenzler & Pease, 1993,
Value Guide to Gas Station Memorabilia, Summers & Priddy, 1995, Pump & Circumstance, Margolies, 1994,
The American Gas Station, Witzel, 1992, 1999 edition,

They were like new so i bought them all. Even though the Value guides are out of date, they stiil work for identifying items.

Being new to this and trying to gather quality info as fast as possible, I had the same question. Jack Sims "Gas Pump ID and Price 2nd edition" has been fantastic to help in identification, and gives a relative value as to how different models were valued when it went to print. Henderson and Benjamin "Guide to Gas Pump Restoration" is fantastic as to what color, pump models, and time periods were used by various gas companies. I choked when I saw what that book was bringing, but a member here offered me an extra he had at a fair price ( Thanks Lee!). I have found the best source has been all of the experts here. Extremely knowledgable and quick to come to a newbies aide! Good luck.