LEGO Dealer Catalogs and Ads

[jamesster]

Hello all!

Me and my partner recently got our hands on a whole bunch of LEGO dealer catalogs. As far as I can tell, none of these particular catalogs have been scanned and put online before - in fact, barely any LEGO dealer catalogs at all have been. So, we've begun the slow process of scanning and uploading them for y'all to read. I think the plan is also to submit them to Brickset's catalog repository. Anyone else can feel free to reupload these scans too or otherwise do what they want; we don't mind.

Being aimed at storeowners, rather than consumers, these tend to be a bit more dry than the usual catalogs, but often have information and pictures not seen elsewhere - like details on suggested set prices and wholesale case prices (some of which I think had been lost to time until now?), recommendations and pictures of how to set up aisles and displays, unique set descriptions, occasional pictures of prototype sets and video games, release schedules, and general promotional images/dioramas/etc sometimes not seen elsewhere. The exact formatting and what's included in a dealer catalog changed a lot over time, but there's usually at least something interesting in any of them.

Scanning these will be a slow process, and we'll also need to get a bigger scanner to handle quite a few of them, so check back in. I'll update this post as we go.

Oh, and there's also a lot of very cool print ads/comics/etc spanning many years I'm including in this post too. 

SCANNED:

Print ads/comics, assorted years
1985 Large US Dacta - The LEGO Educational System - Bricklink entry
1995 Dealer Large US - Bricklink entry

Not scanned by us, but already available on Brickset and worth checking out:
1982 US Dealer Large - Bricklink entry

TO BE SCANNED/UPLOADED:

1979 Dealer Large US - Bricklink entry
1988 Dealer Large US - Bricklink entry
1989 Dealer Large US - Bricklink entry
1990 Dealer Large US - Bricklink entry
1996 Dealer Large US - Bricklink entry
1998 Dealer Large US - Bricklink entry
2001 Dealer Catalog German - Bricklink entry
2002 Dealer Large - Bricklink entry (ours is French)
2003 Dealer US Large - Bricklink entry
2004 Dealer Large UK - Bricklink entry
2005 Dealer Large Canadian - Bricklink entry

[FrightFlight]

Awesome stuff! Glad you're taking the effort to archive all this, it's important work!

[1963maniac]

Very interesting, thanks for sharing.

[nicodex_]

Having occasionally scanned catalogs myself, it's a surprising amount of work.  Thank you for taking up this project!