Montana: A Paper Trail. A Review

Recently I received a heavy package that contained a copy of Thomas Minckler’s book detailing his collection of Montanaiana. It is large in every respect; 10.25” x 12.25” x 1.5”, 440 pages with images on more than 80% of them. It weighs 6+ lbs. And oh yes, he has 12,000 items relating to his magnificent obsession of which several hundred are contextualized and explained. Welcome to collecting nirvana!

<-------- Click on these images and they become a full size slide show!!

Over the years I’ve received a thousand or more dealer catalogues and umpteen auction catalogues. Anymore, most arrive via the Internet where the recipient experiences the virtues of electronic presentation and tend to forget the power of the printed form.

Great printed catalogues still occasionally arrive, invariably suggesting or announcing their contents worthy of your consideration. Often the scale of presentation is commensurate to dollar value and such mega-catalogues are riveting to read.

Yes, a few dealers create such presentations as their magnum opus and such efforts are noteworthy and memorable. Much rarer are comparable collector efforts. Mr. Minckler’s volume about his Montana collection sets the bar very high at the very time such focused and determined collecting can be pursued long-term via dedicated software on the internet.

Mr. Minckler’s collection, an almost 50-year effort, bridges the last few decades of the pre-Internet, the advent of the Internet and today’s Internet enabled intensive personally focused collecting. If his book sourced many of his important finds, that would mean we could see first-hand how a consummate collector revised his approaches over the past 50 years.

And he did that.

That makes Montana: A Paper Trail, the most important book about collecting paper that has appeared since Thomas Streeter’s 7 auction volumes in the 1960’s.

All this said, now I’ll talk about this book.

His Montana is a shooting star, that traces its first appearance in print in the 19^th century, probably derived from the Spanish word montaña and montañoso for mountains or mountainous. In time this term became the place name for that portion of Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase, bounded by the Dakotas, Wyoming, Idaho and Rupert’s Land.

The stage set, Mr. Minckler then began to pursue every scrap of its history, to understand its economic, social and political development.

What emerged was an American territory, in time becoming a state, being used, abused and despoiled by those who came to become rich. Native Americans and the buffalo who had made it their home from time immemorial became barriers to those who arrived believing Montana was their manifest destiny. In time his collection began to capture that tectonic shift between virtue and greed.

Montana would become much more than its rocky past and Mr. Minckler’s volume also provides continuing contemporaneous perspective into the 20^th century.

Not much has been ignored. Government both before and emerging. Justice and injustice. Transportation; on foot and by litter, by boat, by rail and eventually by car. It’s minerals driving development that sometimes twisted the state into moral untenability.

How did he do this?

Collectors acquire relevant material; consummate collectors acquire every scrap of it. When that approach was used in the pre-Internet era it was based on legwork and luck. With the Internet, with what he earlier learned, he was in a unique position to see relevance that few others appreciated when access broadened.

And he was not a snob. Early on, he bought from the storied dealers, visiting them and read their fresh offers, followed the trade publications, grazed the upcoming auctions, later searched the online listing sites, and pursued eBay listings. His interest was relevance and saw and sometimes simply sensed connections and significance others did not.

The outcome is his collection of 12,000 items and his remarkable book.

Taken together, now 75, he is sharing his observations, arguably the best collector’s perspective on what collecting has been, what it has become and what it will be. It has the feeling of an instant classic.

As to what will happen to his collection? Some disappear into institutions. Others are purchased by dealers and occasionally by well-heeled collectors. The most memorable outcome go to auction.

Should that to be the case, his volume will impact outcomes and we’ll learn something.

Net-net, this is the best documented collection I’ve encountered in years. If others agree, the next generation of serious collectors may find themselves employing what will be called the Minckler methodology.

Please note that as you have been reading this article, a dozen images from his text have been randomly appearing.

Here is how you can buy a copy:

Montana Historical Society

https://app.mt.gov/shop/mhsstore

https://app.mt.gov/shop/mhsstore/montana-a-paper-trail-by-thomas-minckler

If you would like to contact him by email, here is his email address: tminckler7@gmail.com