07 August 2015

Free For All Friday No. 351 - by Anita

An interesting question was asked by Rose on Facebook the other day - 'if you were given an unlimited giftcard for Filofaxes and the like (this does include alternatives such as Gillio and Van der Spek etc.) what would you buy? Would you start a collection? You can even have a discontinued item - and there is no limit on the number of items you may have!'

I admit that at first I started daydreaming about the possibilities (like you do):

And then it occurred to me that nowadays I would actually give the giftcard away as I'm pretty content with what I already have - my vintage Mulberry, oxblood Winchester and A5 Hamilton.
If anything, I am looking to reduce what I have as my Hamilton will be rehomed soon and I may sell the Winchester as I am so content with the Mulberry.

Have your tastes changed over time and what would you buy?

As always as this is a Friday, please feel free to discuss anything Filofax or similar ring bound planner related. Have a great weekend.

9 comments:

  1. That question alone makes me melt into a wailing, homicidal mess, questioning the bane of existence forevermore. But I am interested in reading what others answer. Anything more lucid.

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  2. I'm too scared to let my brain loose on what I would do with an ulimited gift card but I do love some of the rarer leather Filofaxes (Janet Carr's Snakeskin springs to mind). I might pay Filofax to make me a Personal Portland Grand in Purple though.

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  3. Yes I wonder about the relevance of still owning a lot of mine yet I'm rarely going to use them. I have become content with the ones I use on a regular basis and I could easily now reduce the number of organisers in my collection without it having a big impact on my ability to write about them and compare them for reviews etc.

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  4. Anita, I would think long and hard before getting rid of your Winchester. They are the best Filofax ever made in regards to both material and workmanship, and are getting increasingly hard to find, and when you do find them, they don't come cheap.

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  5. Oh yes, hold on to that Winchester.You absolutely drooled over Josh's red one. Now that you have one, don't let it go You will have a very "physical" seller's remorse.
    Now, to answer your question. I've only been using Filofax since November 2014, so I'm not too familiar with the vintage models. However, looking through the 2004-5 catalog Mr. M posted a couple days ago, I think I'd ask for a Personal Bloomsbury in Wine, then pass it on. (There was no mention of IT being non-transferable.)

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  6. Oh yes, hold on to that Winchester.You absolutely drooled over Josh's red one. Now that you have one, don't let it go You will have a very "physical" seller's remorse.
    Now, to answer your question. I've only been using Filofax since November 2014, so I'm not too familiar with the vintage models. However, looking through the 2004-5 catalog Mr. M posted a couple days ago, I think I'd ask for a Personal Bloomsbury in Wine, then pass it on. (There was no mention of IT being non-transferable.)

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  7. Knowing my tastes today, I regret returning my first ever personal size filofax after using it for only a week. From 1992 to 2002 I only owned one Filofax - a green pocket kensington. Our local shopping mall included a beautiful octagon-shaped Filofax retail store that I would always browse in and I fell in love with a personal tan Bridle.. The texture, the double popper, the double pen loop...absolutely stunning. However, before I could get comfortable with changing to a personal size within a week later I found out I needed surgery and being a single mom my immediate fear were bills building up on top of the medical bills so I quickly went back to the Filofax store and returned my tan bridle....Fast forward a few years later (after discovering Philofaxy) I only use a personal size... If I had kept that tan Bridle it probably would have been my Unicorn today!

    So my question, when Filofax and Van Der Spek say "Italian Leather" would you think they're the same quality?

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  8. The Mulberry that you remodeled looks nice. I have more binders than you but I feel the same about wanting to keep only the ones that I use.

    The insert that I designed for my Franklin pocket binder has been the major change for me. You can click on my Google account to view my month page. I drew the calendar of the current month at the top of the page. Underneath it I numbered and lettered the days of the month in a linear format. The third column is for shading. The photo shows only the days from 1-20 in this section and is blurry. A photo of the entire page is more out of focus.

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  9. It's interesting, I feel so settled and rarely drool about other binders. If I could find a bright red 5/4 Winchester I'd snap that up in a second. But I am not sure if they even ever made such a thing! I have seen other red Winchesters but never the bright, cadmium red that mine is. It must have been a very limited run. Tim Edwards told me that when sales were starting to lag in the late 1980s that Filofax started offering brighter colors. Mine dates to 1989.

    I have admired many binders over the years. I recall a chocolate Finchley in personal at the local shop, which always seemed particularly smart. But I don't think I'd ever use it!

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