Just Curiosities

Click here to view our new gallery of images

Hello and welcome to our website. We are Mardi and Stan Timm, novelty historians. We are proud to finally bring you a gallery of images from our collection. We have been collecting items that were sold in the Johnson Smith & Company catalogs for over 35 years.

Several years ago when we created this website we intended to write a book about two amazing companies; Johnson Smith & Company and H. Fishlove Company, Inc. Unfortunately life intervened and we were never able to complete that ambitious objective. We went on collecting and have now added many more items to our collection.

So here we are now, in 2024, and life has inserted itself once again. Although we have been collecting novelties and novelty catalogues for more than thirty-five years we are now reaching the end of our collecting days and are actively looking for a buyer for our collection. We have divided our collection into two distinct collections: a Johnson Smith & Company collection; and an H. Fishlove collection. We will be selling each collection individually. Currently our gallery consists of only the Johnson Smith collection. Eventually we will add the Fishlove collection in its own gallery. If you have an interest in purchasing either collection please contact us.

Thank you for visiting us.

Please browse our website and enjoy it. We hope you will have some fun and maybe even learn something. Happy browsing!

On December 17, 2023 Mardi was a participant on an episode of History Channel program “The Toys That Built America” entitled “The Prank Toy Race”. She was selected because of her expertise in the novelty industry and because of Mardi and Stan’s extensive collection of novelties — including tons of pranks! You can view this show on historychannel.com or on Prime Video. I hope you take the time to see it. Let us know what you think!

We were saddened to hear that Howard Fishlove passed away on Saturday, October 20, 2012. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family and loved ones. He was a remarkable man. He will be missed.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/15908586-418/howard-fishlove-actor-and-head-of-novelty-company-dies-at-age-76.html

Check out the new article that was just posted yesterday on gag boxes. This is a real blast from the past. Be sure to check it out! http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/how-your-grandpa-got-his-lols/.
Oh, and while you’re at it, check out the other articles in CollectorsWeekly.com about our collection. You can find the entire list of articles and other articles about and by us in the Media section of this website.

Hi all. We are happy to announce that we will be appearing on an episode of a new reality show on the History Channel called SOLD! It is an auction format and we will be selling a very interesting item from our collection. The show will air on May 9, 2012 at 8:00 PM Central Time. If you watch the episodes for the next couple of weeks, you will probably see another item from our collection as well — the girlie glasses. We were not present for this sale but I assure you it will be a show worth watching. We don’t have the date of that show but it should be airing very soon.

We had a wonderful time working with the production team from Evident Entertainment and hope to work with them again on a future project. They are a fantastic creative and professional team.

We hope you will take the time to watch the show. It is really fun and engaging and — we’re on it!!!