Here is a very cute eBay find: a 3 x 5″ Collegiate notebook that I would guess is maybe from the 1940s-1950s or maybe earlier given that the price is only 10 cents. Cool cover design and excellent brown pressboard cover. For sale on eBay as of this writing for $9.99 or best offer. After wallowing in my own collection of spiral notebooks, I’m tempted by this one, but I’m trying to save my pennies so I think I’ll pass!

I couldn’t remember seeing other examples of the Collegiate notebook brand. Searching online, the only image result was the one below, from the Smithsonian Museum. The link led to a collection of papers belonging to an archaeologist named Ernst Herzfeld, who died in 1948, but there were no additional images of this notebook as far as I could see. The branding looks a little different and there is no price on the cover, so it’s not all that helpful in establishing a timeframe for this brand, other than that it existed before 1948. The logo below looks more art deco to me, as if it were from the 1920s-1930s, and that seems to be consistent with the dates when Hertzfeld was actively doing field work. If that is the case, the Collegiate notebook below could be one of the earliest examples of spiral binding, as spiral notebooks were introduced around 1934. I wonder what they mean by it being a “combination theme and note book.”