Weil-Ptak Ephemera Scale - Collecting Community Reacts

Since debuting the Weil-Ptak (WP) scale, a tool designed to measure the nature of how ephemeral printed material relates to one another, I've received an number of outstanding and thoughtful replies and comments. Most notably, two well-respected blogs, Exile Bibliophile and Things and Other Stuff, have put the WP scale to the test in impressive fashion. Ben Clark at Exile Bibliophile and Cliff Alpereti at Things and Other Stuff did an outstanding job of applying the scale to a number of pieces in their respective collections. Their thoughtful analysis and suggestions are most welcome and greatly appreciated by this blogger.

In his post, Ben Clark wrote: "This scale is really wonderful and it is certainly evident a lot of thought and consideration has gone into it. I think it will be a helpful tool, especially to people who do not deal much with ephemera, to understand what makes a piece special. It could also be very helpful to collection managers and archivists to help quantify the scarcity of ephemera in museum and library/archive collections."

In his post, Cliff Alpereti wrote: "Collectors crave information, a scale brings organization to a growing but largely unorganized hobby...The Weil-Ptak Scale, if implemented correctly, is going to help collectors in the end, as it’s going to help in organizing the hobby."

I know I speak for John Ptak, when I say how much we appreciate the ephemera community's experimentation with the WP scale. The feedback we've received has been exceptional. It is a delight to know that the WP scale is being embraced by the wider collecting community, and we certainly look forward to the day when this tool becomes the defacto standard for the classification of ephemera.