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When I first began building the site's information, I had all my sources organized in folders by year. Each folder would have ~50 images, and I'd have to go through each one to find a mention of the set I was looking for. Then, if I was looking for information like part counts, I'd have to keep going or restart entirely for something else like RRP.

For things like newspapers or catalogs, originally I only had them featured in their own articles, chronologically wherein I could point to each and what they show. This approach, however, was not reliable or searchable. It was very easy to confuse what I'd already checked or miss something entirely.

All that changed when I initially formed the site's gallery, as that only made research more inconvenient. Having 1,000+ images to sift through without metadata was not easy.

Which lead to the creation of what is in my opinion a gold standard for a LEGO research tool, something that doesn't(but should) exist elsewhere. This archive is not meant to be a BrickLink or Brickset, where you quickly reference something like a year of release and take it on faith. Instead, it is "here is all the tools/evidence, possible ideas, and then, and only then, my conclusion".

All that requires no faith, as you can do instantaneous research here.

Which page should I use in my research?

The site has three different pages for research:

The Gallery - best for quick reference, requires knowledge of how metadata onsite is structured.

Advanced Search - a much more user friendly search, allowing for easier set search as well as OCR search of the site's assets (note that this is a new part of the site and has not been fully implemented.)

Books - Samsonite ephemera excluding items published by third parties (i.e. ads in newspapers or magazines). Generally this is where any material that requires more than one scan is listed (i.e. a double sided card), organized by release year and form number. Note that everything on this page is still accessible in the Gallery and Search Pages.

Using the Gallery

The gallery is currently the single most useful resource onsite. It will take some adjustment to understand what some of the tags mean, which is what I hope to streamline here.

First, you must select the category you wish to search within. US LEGO Samsonite is what you're likely interested in, though the site also hosts Canadian LEGO Samsonite as well as pre-1973 Samsonite materials dating back to the late 1920s. When a category is selected, it will show all tags for all selected categories. So if you are looking for something specific, you should deselect all unrelated sections of the site.

The main way I use the gallery is by searching a set number. Every image is tagged with the sets that appear within the image(any unidentified/ambiguous sets are tagged with unknown). The set number will not correspond to other catalog sites, but instead will usually be the assigned number or the piece count when a number is absent.

Say you want to know everything there is to know about the 004. Just search "004".

You are now viewing all references(boxes, advertising, dealer catalogs, instructions, brochures, inventories, etc.) to that set. Adverts are tagged with a year, meaning you can at a glance view the general dates a set was available.

It is a little misleading for retirement dates, as say if I searched "905", I'd get references all the way to 1969. It was legitimately still for sale then, but it actually retired from production in 1965. But that's a good thing to learn how to navigate, as it would be very easy to implicitly assume if it still appeared for sale, it was still being produced. That's not how newspapers work.

If you're looking for adverts, say catalogs, just search "004 catalog". Then you have every appearance of an 004 in a catalog. Or if you want newspapers, "004 newspaper".

You may be looking for a specific date, say you want images of the 1965 905 Doll Set variant. Search "905 1965". Or, if you wanted references without results from 1965, search "905 -1965".

My favorite feature, the one I dreaded adding but I so welcome now, is that every newspaper ad and catalog have retailers tagged. So I can search up a set (say the 080 Ambassador Set, as that one is always assumed to be more limited than it was) via "080", and instantly I have a list of retailers that carried the 080 (though of course it's not comprehensive): Troutman's, FAO Schwarz, Jordan Marsh, M&F, Marshall Fields, May Co, and Polsky's. In the same search, I have the years it was available: 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972. As well as discounted examples, images of the box, and even sets it sold alongside.

Of course the tagging system isn't perfect yet, as I've found a couple that missed or mistagged sets. The vast majority of the time, however, that isn't a problem and more of them are being corrected overtime. There is a small issue with later Canadian sets sharing the same set number as older LEGO Samsonite US sets, say the 695 Formula Racer, that can be resolved by unchecking the Canadian section, which will exclude all Canadian materials.

The site's gallery is not limited to sets either. You can search up a retailer to see all their adverts, you can search "catalog" or "newspaper" or even "1961 catalog" to find exactly what you're looking for. This also goes for pamphlets, brochures, and idea books.

It should also be noted that Canadian materials should NOT be treated as synonymous with US materials (release dates, distributions, designs, assortments, etc.). That market is its own thing entirely.

The site's gallery also contains pamphlets and brochures, all of which are sorted (relatively) chronologically by release in the Books section of the site. The gallery includes them as most materials reference a set in some way, to separate them out would make it more difficult to find things. So if I search "004", I not only get all appearances in newspapers, but also LEGO catalogs, idea books, and brochures.

I really like having that crossover, wherein you don't have to sift through all the pamphlets/brochures/idea books in order to find what you're looking for, it's all tagged and searchable.

Is it really that useful though?

Beyond the few errors that I've made but not caught just yet, I do want to attest that I've built the site to accommodate my research. It was built to be used, referenced, and updated.

Consistently, while proofing articles and the like, I will check the sources held on site against what is presented, just to make sure I've not missed anything. And time and time again, as the site's information has grown, I'm less and less prone to misattribution or misidentification. That makes it sound like its a closed system, but even going back to Google Books or newspaper archives, or finding completely unknown new sources, I find the original claim holds up.

Such as earlier today, I searched "004 Canadian" in the gallery and the only years that came up were 1970-71. I wanted to make sure the 004 Master Builder Set actually didn't appear anywhere else prior to 1970(in Canada specifically), so I double checked all older catalogs I had and made a few searches on newspaper archive sites. The result was that the first appearance was in 1970. Of course this all depends on limited ephemera, but I can't know what I don't know.

Through the organization of this site, I've been able to streamline research via a tool that hasn't existed before in the LEGO sphere, and I hope it serves anyone else who might need it just as well as it has me.

The important part for me is that you have access to all the resources I did. That's why I show exactly how each fact presented onsite is known/concluded as well as signposting what I don't yet know. My hope is that you will use the resources provided here along with your own research to fill in those gaps or to refine what is presented here.

LEGO Samsonite is a seemingly impossible mystery, a history that was never recorded and rife with confusion, but not all information is lost forever. It just requires diligent work, and part of that diligence is relying on what we know to answer our questions, not assuming what we cannot know. An oddity is not necessarily proof of a conclusion, nor should that conclusion be based on guesswork. That is where the "FAO of the gaps" fallacy comes from, wherein any LEGO Samsonite sets that do not appear in normal catalogs are assumed to have been FAO exclusives, when evidently none actually were.

When you guess your way to a conclusion, even if based on loose facts or observations, the entire system will inevitably fall apart when new evidence surfaces, accomplishing nothing but confusion. That is the severity I treat Samsonite's history with, that is why honesty with limitations of sources and making clear the line between facts and guesses is so important. Speculation is a necessary evil, but it should never be presented as anything more than what it is.

The price of quality research is time and organization, of course, but the most vital cost is pride.