Ok so now I know all those that were bidding against me on EBAY!

I bought my first one in 2000 only because I was helping my sister plan her wedding and thought the stuff in there was cool. I didn't start making cakes till fall 2006. Since then I have been on a hunt and find mission. I check all the garage sales, good will stores, thrift stores galore and still can't find anything... I know I've seen these at yard sales before I started collecting. So I have a few from the mid 80's but, I actually started collecting the class books. Seems they would change them every 10 years or so.
My Aunt is retiring from cake decorating (why I started) so she says when she passes on I will inherit her things but not until I would love to get my hands on her books. She has a walk in closet filled with books.

I've never heard of Mailbox, Celebrate, and the Encyclopedia cake books.... They must have been before my time.

Get this: One of the old Wilton yearbooks given to me has a price on it of $1.75.... I picked up the new 2009 yearbook the other day at Walmart, and it was $10.99. It went right back up on the rack. Won't be buying that one unless we use a Michael's coupon.

(Thanks for the help on quoting people. Maybe I will be able to do it... In all my years of teaching, I still find that I am somewhat computer illiterate... )

Celebrate! III is copyrighted in 1976, but it includes pictures and information from books copyrighted in 1927, 1919, 1947 and 1910.

Thanks for posting those pictures! The cakes from the 50's seems so 'frilly'. I bet you can find some interesting ideas in all those old magazines and just be creative to bring them up to current times. Very neat to see. Thanks again.
suz

Hey PJ37, my mom's friend found the 1970 book in their old stuff and gave it to me....Lots of fun to see the styles....and reading all about Wilton etc...
Lorene

My oldest book is the 1972 hardcover Wilton Yearbook.

Funny story - my mom took the entire Wilton courses in the early 1970's, so she had the 1972 hardcover book. She never did much decorating, but as a child I *LOVED* flipping through that book. I'd do it for hours on end.

Fast forward 30 years, and now I'm a decorator. Someone at church mentioned that she had some old decorating stuff - books and tips - that she didn't use anymore, and offered them to me. Wha'dya know, one book is that SAME 1972 hardcover yearbook . I felt as though I rediscovered an old friend.

Every so often I get on ebay / craigslist / freecycle asking for older yearbooks. I've been able to find 1983-1985 and 1997 so far.

1968-I picked this up at a library sale

OMGoodness rwarhank...that's my book!! I thought it was a 1972, but apparently it's a 1968. I adore that book .

I was probably one of those people you were bidding against on Ebay.. lol.

My collection starts with one of the ones someone posted a picture of. It's the 1954 edition of the Homemakers Pictoral Edition of Modern Cake Decorating with Wilton.
From there I have all the Wilton Way of Cake Decorating books (1-3) from the seventies... the Celebrate books (1-3) from the seventies. Then I have a Holiday 1988. Yearbooks from 79, 06,07,08, and 09.

Some stuff that's NOT Wilton but definately cake, is a book my grandmother gave me called the "Chefmaster: ' Now you can make Roses' Cake Decorating for Beginners" from 1952. She said it came with tips and a pump action metal decorator.

Well, I went online and found one that's almost exactly like the one she had, only it's a 1950's Atecco Cake Ornamenting Tool. It's a silver pump action decorator with removable tips. (This one was put in a glass wall mounted case in my kitchen)

I think it's awesome to be able to look back and see not only how far we've come in the cake decorating world, but also to see that we still use some of the most basic techniques after all these years.

The students in my Wilton classes absolutely LOVE looking through all the old books, because then they compare the books to their course books. I take about ten minutes out of the end of each class for them to look through books, and they love it.

I have never been a fan of the Wilton way of cake decorating. I do have the encyclopedia though from 1974.
I also have the 65 Buttercream Flowers by Richard Snyder first published in 1957. I have "Magic in Frosting" by John McNamara published in 1975 and 5 of Roland Winbeckler's books from 1983 to 1990. I have loved figure piping from buttercream from the beginning. These books were my only source for learning decorating, no CC, no DVD's, no cake classes.

My oldest is the 73 yearbook, I have a few others but have never gotten around to getting more. I keep meaning too because they bring back memories, my mother bought one every year when I was a kid and we wore them out.


I don't care for the wedding cakes, they're too frilly for me but some of the kids cakes are awesome.