I just can’t seem to resist a certain kind of vintage notebook on eBay. I have bought several over the years, from various brands, in varying conditions and with various contents.
This one is quite adorable. It’s also quite fragile– the cover material (some sort of faux-leather material) is not very flexible, and the edges of the spine where it bends seem like they may be wearing out. Every time I open it, I’m afraid I’ll tear the cover off. Inside, it came with a set of alphabetical index tabs and some paper, but unfortunately all the pages are blank. I’m sure someone used it as an address book or notebook for quite a while, though, as it shows lots of wear and tear.
On the inside back cover, you can see the Marquette brand name, and the model number 1-126.
Interestingly, this is the exact same model number as the other old Marquette looseleaf I wrote about in this post. But I didn’t remember having a notebook exactly like this one. I had to dig out the other Marquette notebook to figure out why: these notebooks have different ring sizes, one being about 11mm and the other being about 15mm. The other Marquette notebook is thicker, and slightly wider to accommodate paper sticking out a little further from the larger rings.
Another difference between the two versions is the inside cover material. On this thinner notebook, it has a beautiful textured pattern, but on the other one it’s just plain black. One one, the logo is red, on the other it’s green. The thin one says “patented.” That and the textured endpapers make me think it must be older. The thin notebook has tabs for opening the rings at both ends, but the thicker one only has one tab at the bottom. Both notebooks’ ring mechanisms still work!
I guess Marquette either changed the design of the notebook at some point, or they offered the same model number in two different ring sizes. It reminds me of the mystery of my two Filofax Chelsea organizers!
There’s not a whole lot else to say about this one. It’s a charming little notebook, even if it doesn’t have any fascinating contents.
If you’re interested, check out some of my posts about other Marquette brand notebooks and vintage looseleaf notebooks, including a decorator’s notebook, and a very tiny Wilson Jones notebook.