It all started with a ton of old digital photos from the early days of consumer digital photography – around 2000. I was given the opportunity to photograph thousands of antiques and collectibles, and own the rights to the images.

That was in about 2001. Five years later, I had photographed probably 15,000 items and was nearing the end of the contract relationship with the client. The images, all burned to CD-ROM (or worse, on Zip and Jaz drives), were stored away and moved with me from place to place. 

Fast forward to today. Print-on-demand publishing has been around for a number of years, and the quality gets better and better. I decided to go through all the images and give them a new life in the public eye – both in book form as well as digital downloads. 

And so, Antique Americana was born. 

I’m intending for this to be a wide-ranging series that relies on this image collection from the early 2000s. The archive covers toys, advertising, coin-ops, country store items, petroliana, breweriana, door stops and much more. 

My goal is to release at least 3-4 books a year under the Antique Americana banner, each one focusing on a collecting category drawn from the image collection. 

In nearly all cases, I am also making the images available for licensing at very reasonable costs, in the hope that they will find additional new lives elsewhere, with others’ projects.

Having worked around antiques and collectibles for a large part of my professional life, I know a fair amount about a lot of categories. But I also rely on the work of experts, and credit them wherever my research takes me. After all, they are the respected elders from each collecting interest, and deserve all possible accolades for having pioneered these areas of collecting.

If you have suggestions, corrections, or comments, please use the form on the contact page. I promise to read and get back to each note. If I’ve missed something about an item, or are wrong, please don’t hesitate to reach out – I will update the book files immediately so future editions feature your provided correction.

Thank you for visiting the site and most important, thank you for being part of the worldwide community of collectors who help keep our wonderful American past alive.

Jim Bunte