Maps - Antique and New

I like to collect antique maps. These things are surprisingly easy to find. Usually, somebody will get their hands on an antique atlas and razor out all the pages to make a profit by selling each sheet as an 'antique map.' It's tough to find an intact atlas because of this, but the maps are fairly cheap for what you get, and they are easy to find on eBay. I like to buy a map, have it matted and framed and give it to someone as a gift. Usually I'll find a map of their home state, or a place where they grew up. The ones I collect are usually around 100 years old and have been removed from a larger collection.

I'll include some photos of the finished products when I get them taken. There are some really beautiful hand drawn maps that I wish I could afford, but most are at auction houses or private collections. Most that I have were hand watercolored on a print made from the original woodcut or lithographed. The expensive ones are not necessarily the larger maps, but the ones with the most intricate line drawings, elaborate border art, and the reputation of the publisher. There are certain mapmakers from 19th century America that I can't come close to collecting. Then others from the same era are very reasonbly priced.

I guess I started getting interested in maps at a young age. Both my grandfathers love maps. I have one grandad who would shade in all the roads he had traveled on an atlas. The other would see a world event reported on the evening news and would find the location on the globe he kept in the living room.

My career even involved maps, sort of. I work with digital mapping systems and spatial analysis, so I guess the map bug hit me pretty hard. The funny thing is that I have almost no sense of direction. I can get lost in the town I've been living in for 12 years. I think I'm lacking some microscopic compass that we're supposed to have. So I guess it's good that map appreciation is something I picked up early on.

Anyway, I thought it would be cool to keep an inventory of the maps I've collected, so that's why this page is here. Hopefully I'll get some good pictures up soon so that there will be something to look at.