131 STATI f
VOLUME 7 NUMBER 1 FEBRUARY 1999
y
this sounds like a dream come true to some, it soon becomes a very lonely existence away from home (I have a wife and 2 daughters) for 5 out of 8 weeks. Locating and perusing bookshops in every city visited became my relaxation and what better books to buy than pop-ups! It sure made for some heavy bags by the end of a trip, so | had a self imposed limit of 10 books per trip (not always reached or adhered too!).
What Pops-up Down Under?
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Charles Duke Christchurch, New Zealand cduke@cardinal.co.nz
Let me first define Down Under: the jewel of the South Pacific, New Zealand, comprising two main islands (each with a total land area about the same as New York State), and a total population of 3.5 million.
Even in these highly mobile times, it is very expensive to of their get items to New Zealand, and books, because also books to no are recently Up exception. weight/size incurred a heavy duty which exacerbated the cost issue. As an indication, a book in NZ costs roughly 3 times its RRP (recommended retail price) in the USA! This in a country where the average wage is 50% that of the USA!
During the course of a year as few as 3 to 5 reasonable (and by that I mean pop-ups that have some technical merit) become available in New Zealand, and then in very limited quantities. Not one pop-up as far as I am aware, has ever been published or produced in New the market is too small and to remote. Zealand Similarly I know of no other pop-up collectors in New Zealand. -
So given these conditions, how did I become a collector? Well it started when an old girl friend gave me, in 1984, a copy of The Ultimate pop-up cocktail book' Now I enjoy a drink 4 "as much as any man, and this book was fun! A quick check around home and I discovered a couple of other . pop-up books belonging to my daughters and thus a i collection was started' From that point on I began keeping an eye out for other pop-ups whenever I was in any Christchurch (the main city of the South Island, population 350,000) bookshop. a
By 1986 I was traveling extensively all over the world (40+ countries and about 200,000 miles per year while supporting and presenting computer software) and
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Now remember that this was all before 'The Net' was in common usage, and thus one had to have alternative methods of locating information. I wrote to all the publishers in New Zealand and Australia asking for updates and publication lists. A waste of time! I wrote to all leading bookshops in NZ. A much better result with a number who still contact me whenever a new popup title is available.
So
this
was
how
things continued until the early 1990's when three unrelated events occurred that made for book buying nirvana! 1) the NZ government started on an ambitious deregulation program (duties, and import controls were lifted), 2) I gave up traveling (well almost!), and 3) the Internet was easily accessible (and online bookshops appeared).
The bulk of my pop-up research, book location and me this purchases are now achieved through the web. For
is both fun and challenging. Knowing how and where to look is the challenge and finding books, comments and articles about them is
the 4
fun.
I
use
www.amazon.com for the bulk of searches, but find that www.books.com offer better price and freight costs. As a matter of interest it takes between continued on page 2