A name for the hobby.....

[Pabs]

Hi,

I have, completely out of the blue, started to collect Antique/ Decorative keys on ebay mainly from France and UK. My Q's are:

1. Is there a name for the hobby of collecting keys?
2. Are there any forums dedicated to key collecting?
3. Are there any books on the subject of keys, history etc?

I am a newbie to this sort of thing and this is the first and only site I have managed to find on the subject, at least I am not alone :D

Pabs

[sparkyskey]

Hello there Pabs - welcome to the forum ... in part answer to your questions I can offer the following:

1: never heard key collectors referred to by any other name. I'd be interested if there is a specific name - if you find out pease post your findings.

2: none that I have found although several have some good pages. Check out the links noted on the form index, as well as http://www.deabath.com, an interesting story about the Blue Peter keys if nothing else.

3: there seems to be a lot of books about - check out Ebay's French site and you'll see a few nice glossy paged books there. I have not been fortunate enough to see any of these up close but they look interesting even if I can't understand the text. The two books I have are: "Keys their history and collection" by Eric Monk and "Locks and Keys throughout the ages" by Vincent Eras. Both can be found on Ebay after a while.

I'll keep watching your post to see if anyone else has further information to add - I'd be keen to find out more as well. Good luck with your collection - cheers for now Sarah

[TurnKey]

Hello Pabs - have you found the following website yet? It provides a very informative history of locks and keys and lots of images of early keys:

http://www.nokey.com/ankeymus.html

I have the Eric Monk book but found it a bit of a tedious read. The website above includes a link to The Lure of The Lock by Albert A. Hopkins which might be better?