Chuck said
Clarence is the Lyman Journal worth buying?  I would like a reference book on Lyman sites but most catalogs I have found are lacking.

  

Absolutely!  My principal reference other than my Lyman catalogs.  I was fortunate in obtaining one of the rare hardback eds. prepared for Lyman execs.

Chuck said
Thanks, I see the paper backs for sale.  I have an 1889 repo catalog and am not impressed at all. 

  

Well, by ’89, the product line was just beginning.  My earliest original (those Cornell reprints I greatly dislike, though I have a few) is about 10 yrs older, almost a hundred pages, & very interesting, I think.  Wouldn’t you like to have a Lyman shooting box?  What I once very seriously wanted was a pair of Lyman bow-facing oars, as I used to be a rowing enthusiast.  Once in an antique store, I found a single oar, but had to pass for the obvious reason.  But they stayed in production almost 50 yrs.

Chuck said

The Cornell items I just bought are not the quality of the stuff I bought years ago.  If I were to buy Lyman catalogs which would give me the most reference data?  I really don’t want to read page after page of testimonials.

In the Victorian period, prospective customers really must have been impressed by testimonials, because almost all catalogs featured them.  The ’74 Winchester (mine is a quality reprint) is filled with them, & what’s esp. interesting to me is that many are written by guides & hunters in my immediate vicinity, at that time a hunter’s paradise.

The 1910 Lyman is still the pocket-sized format containing testimonials, but sometime between then & 1914, the format changed to 5 x 6″ with an embossed cream-color cover & few testimonials, used up to the late ’20s, I think, after which the larger & more common format with black covers was introduced.  I like those from the ‘teens & ’20s best, but of course they won’t contain later sights.  Best thing to do might be to create a saved search on ebay for “1920” or “1930” catalogs & see what turns up, but you have to put some limitation on it or you’ll be swamped by modern cats.