In lieu of Mundane Monday, this Monday I’m presenting these fine vintage office supplies.

Call me silly, but I think this is pretty cool. It’s a mini-office supply bookshelf. It contains gummed labels, transparent mending tape, thumb tacks, gummed reinforcements (for 3-hole punched sheets), pins, dry gum eraser, paper clips, photo wafers, key tags and postage stamps. Or, rather it once contained those things. Most of the boxes are empty.

But, the neat thing is that it looks like a bookshelf and all the office supply boxes look like books. Pretty nifty! They were also available in a version for the kitchen (which contained many of the same items). You can see an example of the kitchen version here. The boxes are the slide-out type (like old matchboxes), so nothing (should) fall out of the boxes when standing upright as they do.

It was made by Dennison (now known as Avery Dennison, after their merger in the early 1990’s).

I’m not sure how old this is. There is nothing on it to indicate age. I’m guessing between the 1940’s and 1960’s. If anyone knows a more accurate date, please speak up! Here’s another version, with an estimated date of 1950’s - 1970’s.

The typewriter and phone are paperweights. Not very heavy paperweights, mind you, but I guess giving them a function makes them easier to sell than just calling them knick-knacks. Oh, and the typewriter will hold two or three business cards; the telephone will hold none. But, I just like that they look old and take up less space than an actual old telephone or typewriter.

Popularity: 3% [?]

According to Practical Points in Nursing, here are the items a nurse in private practice should carry in her bag:

• A clinical thermometer
• A pair of surgical scissors and forceps
• A bottle of brandy
• A hypodermic syringe
• A fountain syringe
• Two glass catheters
• A flexible catheter
• Small bottles of corrosive sublimate tablets
• Carbolic acid
• Permanganate-of-potash crystals
• Oxalic-acid crystals and washing soda
• Rubber tubing
• A razor
• Large and small safety-pins
• Needles and white thread
• One-ounce graduated minim-glass
• A medicine-dropper
• Temperature and nourishment charts
• Gauze sponges of various sizes
• A small ice-pick
• Matches

Just wait until some of the later chapters when we learn what some of these things will be used for. And Dr. McCoy thought the 1980’s were the dark ages of medicine!

Popularity: 5% [?]

Since day one of this blog, I have had an “Antiques” category. Mind you, it’s never shown up in the listing because this is the first post in the Antiques category!

And, now, it doesn’t fit into this blog’s theme anymore. So, rather than occasionally try to shoehorn antiques posts into a “Believe. Act. Achieve!” blog, I will do it as a separate blog. Yes, I am getting dangerously addicted to setting up new blogs. Not that this is a new thing, as I used to set up lots of websites all the time back in the Web 1.0 days.

Now, I need a name for this new blog. Consider that my interests aren’t confined to a single era either, but “Old Stuff that I Like” is somewhat of an uninteresting name. And, I’m not too sure about giving it a name with “Antiques” in the title either, as I’m not sure stuff from the 1980’s (or even 1990’s) can really be called “antique” or even “vintage” for that matter. Maybe “vintage 1995″ or something, but that only seems to really work for electronics, which age faster than something like, say, a chair.

Actually, checking Wikipedia, an antique is something 50 to 100 years old. Some things, like cars, can be considered antique if they are 25 years or older. Some electronics can also be considered antique even if less than 25 years or older.

In other words, my new blog will cover things that are antiques plus things that are just old but not yet qualifying of the “antique” label.

So, what would be a good name for this new blog?

Yes, I am asking you. It’s not a rhetorical question.

I’m liking “retroyears.” What do you think?

Popularity: 4% [?]