Why go back in time?

What is the attraction of looking at old catalogues and price lists and any brochures from Filofax in the 1980s?

I have been asking myself this question and a few others in the last few weeks after receiving a large packet of documents from a reader in Australia. 

Back in the mid to late 1980s when I had become a Filofax user there was no internet so paper catalogues and visiting shops in London such as Chisholms in Kingsway and DeVille in Villiers Street were my only source of information about the brand and the inserts. 

Like a few others I suspect I had received a paper catalogue with all of the inserts listed, but how do you know the difference between one address insert and another?  

I think I've mentioned this before but I stopped using my Filofax from about 1993 to 2005, I went electronic, first with a Casio Digital Diary and then with a Psion 5Mx and briefly with an HP iPaq. For me there was a vast gapping hole in my knowledge of what went on in those years. 

By 1993/1994 we also got the internet at home, but in those early days finding information could be a bit hit and miss, and I wasn't searching for Filofax things back then on Altavista (pre-Google days!) using Netscape. 

So in a way the paper catalogues work as a reminder for me, filling in the gap in my knowledge, helping me learn what I missed out on! 

I'm still working my way through the box of items received from Australia, There are some duplicates of what we have already in the archive, but I'm scanning in some again because they are better quality than the ones we have already.