Gambling Manufacturer Catalogs

I am interested in original or reprints of catalogs produced by companies manufacturing gambling equipment. These catalogs were typically small and soft covered (paper back) with as few as 10 pages or as large as 100 or more pages.

The Kernan Catalog pictured above measured 5 1/2" X 8 1/2" and totaled 64 pages.

The Longworthy catalog measured 5 1/4" X 7 3/4" and has only 10 pages.

The K C catalog is a reprint that measures 6" X 9" and has 65 pages.

If you have catalogs like these tucked away somewhere and are interested in selling them send me an email at gamblerlukeshort@yahoo.com

Call to Arms, well sort of ...

Calling all like-minded people. If you have an interest in the Old West, Frontier Gambling, Mining Camps and Cattle Towns, you are the person I am looking for. Come join this blog and share your knowledge, ideas and interests in the Old West

I buy and sell items from the period 1865 to 1899. If you have such items and are looking the sell contact me at: gamblerlukeshort@yahoo.com

If you are looking to buy Frontier items check out my web site at : www.oldwestantiques.biz

If you know of similar sites selling similar items send me their link.

Search Engines

Getting off subject i.e. the Old West, Old West Gambling, Old West Items and Old West Movies. I am wonder out loud, why are search engines like Yahoo and Google such a failure? Why can't Bill Gates build a search engine that works ? Oh hell, Gates can't even build a good operating system so disregard that last question.

If searching the World Wide Web is like looking for a needle in a hay stack and search engines are suppose to be the proverbial magnet that makes finding the needle easier, why do they fail time and time again. As an example, when I search for Old West Antiques, my business, on Google, why doesn't Google find it? Google finds, Cody Old West Antiques Show and Auction and Old West Cowboy Antiques andTrappings. After that, it's all downhill. Even if I put quotation marks around Old West Antiques, Google fails to find my site. Yahoo does a better job in this instance but far to often the results are no better then Google's.

Is it that the basic approach to building search engines is flawed ? Is it that no one understands the enormous size of the " Net" or is it me ?

I know about keywords, meta tags, the importance of linking and blogging. So what am I missing ? Oh, I also know about positioning via paying for it.

Uncle George on Draw Poker

Over the years I have managed to find an antique book on gambling here and there and then one day I struck gold. I am sure I felt just like those old gold prospectors did when they struck that main vain. I could not believe my luck so I did a double take. Nothing changed, the main vain was still staring me in the face.

That day my collection of old, out-of-print, hard to find, rare books on gambling grew to a total of 51 . Some of the titles I found that day included: Uncle George on Draw Poker - 1883, Kid Canfield - 1910, The Gambling Games of the Chinese in America - 1891, Mason Long, the converted Gambler - 1887 and Carp-Sharping Exposed - 1882.

These and many more of those books can be found at oldwestantiques.biz

Stop by and look over the collection, check out the daily calendar and read a little history.