Featured Tomlinson Furniture binder of Sketches and Blueprints

I found this at a local Community yard sale and thought the furniture people might like to see it.There must be over 50 of these, some with notes. All from 1962.
How does one figure a starting price sor something like this assuming it has some value?
Mikey

 

Isn't that interesting? Love the mimeographed comments.

Debora

 

Love Beck's comment "too far out." So 1960s.

Debora

 

here are some more @Bookahtoo

 

Great find, love the notes, and definitely has some value for furniture collectors. Unfortunately, Tomlinson didn't have any big-name designers, like a George Nelson or Edward Wormley, that would make them more valuable. I'd try contacting some auction houses like Wright/Rago and Los Angeles Modern Auctions and see if they have any interest. Are there any sketches of their modern designs, such as the Sophisticate Collection?

 

All of them are by design numbers. I didn't find any design names. Good thing is I was way off on the number of pages. I counted 142. There are a lot of revisions but there are about 100 different pieces.
@mark737 You really think auction house worthy?

 

Looking into these a little more I am finding Sophisticate.
One i posted previously is Sophisticate East.
Here are a couple more.

 

Hard to say if auction houses would be interested, but no cost in sending out some emails. You do see old catalogs come up for auction that sell for decent money, but they tend to be the bigger names like Herman Miller and Knoll. There are only a few designers you see named with Tomlinson, like John Lubberts & Lambert Mulder, not very well known names, and mostly in the 50's. Without a known designer attached to the sketches, the value will be lower. But the nice thing about a catalog or sketchbook is the shipping costs are pretty low so you're not out a lot of money up front to send it to an auction house. Or you can always try to sell yourself on EBay and see how it goes. Also, Tomlinson is still in business in North Carolina, so you could try contacting them to see if they might be interested in buying it.

 

As an example of something similar, this binder of Dunbar meeting minutes with handwritten notes and sketches by Edward Wormley was sold by Rago for $800. Wormley is one of the titans of modern American furniture design, so this gives you an idea of the ceiling for something like this.

 

Hate the furniture but love the "book." Very cool.