c/collectors-of-weird-maps

My old globe habit made me miss a fake map for a week

I used to only check flat maps and atlas pages when I got something new from estate sales. Last month I bought a 1962 school globe and almost tossed it because the continents looked normal. Then I spun it upside down and noticed the equator line was drawn through Norway, not Africa. The whole thing was a prop from a local TV studio in Cleveland, someone hand painted all the countries wrong. Anyone else got a piece that only works if you look at it the wrong way?

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umab35•1d ago

Got lost using a 19th century rail map of London, turns out I was reading the 'planned' lines as real ones

Last week I followed a Victorian map from a 1893 atlas trying to find a pub near what I thought was a station, and when I asked a local they laughed because half those tracks were never built, so now I check the map key for 'proposed' before I trust anything, has anyone else been fooled by doodle lines that were just someone's dream?

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tylerr29•3d ago

TIL the hard way: that '17th century' map of California as an island was actually a 20th century reprint

Picked up what I thought was a real 1650 map from a flea market in Boise for $80. Took me 6 weeks and a lot of squinting at watermarks to figure out it was a 1980s reproduction. The paper felt too smooth and the ink smelled like a modern printer. Now I always bring a cheap magnifier and check the chain lines. Has anyone else gotten burned by a sneaky reprint, what did you look for?

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coleman.jade•3d ago

Spent 4 Hours Hunting a City That Only Existed on One Map

Back in March I found this beautiful 1880s map of a town called Bexley Junction in central Kansas, complete with train tracks and a church and everything. I drove out there on a Saturday with my GPS and printed copy, ready to take photos of the old foundations. After FOUR HOURS of driving back and forth on dirt roads, I finally stopped at a farmhouse and asked the owner. He laughed and said Bexley Junction was a railroad company advertisement town, it never got built because the rail line bent south at the last minute. I checked the Kansas Historical Society online later and yep, it was a paper town, pure fiction. Honestly the map was so detailed I still want to frame it, but has anyone else chased a map to a location that turned out to be totally fake, and how long did you waste before giving up?

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harper_gibson2•6d ago

Hit 214 fake maps in my collection and that's when it got weird

I counted the imaginary places on my odd map shelf last night, everything from Atlantis to a 1700s island that never existed, and 214 was the number that made me realize I have a problem. Anyone else pass a random count and suddenly question their whole hobby?

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jade_grant95•10d ago

Found a 1923 map with a town that never existed

Tbh I bought a box of old postcards at an estate sale in Peoria for $8 and a folded map fell out. The map showed a town called 'Ashford Junction' on the Illinois river that I could not find anywhere online or in any current atlas. Turns out it was a planned railroad stop that got scrapped when the line rerouted in 1925, so the mapmaker just left it on there. Has anyone else stumbled on a ghost town that only exists on paper, not even as ruins?

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mason_ward•12d ago

My dad's advice about map projections finally clicked at a yard sale

He always said Mercator is fine for navigation but terrible for showing size, and I never really got it until I found a 1963 classroom globe at a sale in Des Moines for $8. The globe made Greenland look huge, but when I measured it against a Peters projection map I had at home, the difference was wild. It hit me that every map is a lie someone chose to tell, and that globe had been teaching kids the same lie for decades. Anyone else have a moment where a map just suddenly made sense after years of staring at it?

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ninag10•15d ago

My hand-drawn fantasy map self-destructed after 40 hours of work

I spent two months sketching a city map for a novel I'm writing, complete with tiny market stalls and a river that I drew with a blue ballpoint pen. Last Tuesday I went to erase one small pencil mark and the ink from the pen had bled into the eraser, smearing blue streaks across three entire districts. Has anyone else had a drawing tool fail on them mid-project, or do I need to find a better technique for fixing mistakes on old paper maps?

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nora535•16d ago

Stop calling those old sea monsters just decoration

I keep seeing people post maps with those big creatures in the corners and say they're just for looks. But they actually marked real dangers, like the kraken off Norway around 1539 on the Carta Marina. If you're collecting, you should read the labels next to them, they tell you where ships actually went down. Anyone else notice this on their old nautical charts?

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the_skyler•17d ago

A cashier at a thrift store laughed at my vintage map of a city that never existed

She flipped it over and said 'this is a waste of 3 bucks' so I bought it just to prove a point, but now I'm wondering if she was right about some of these fantasy maps, has anyone else had a stranger trash their collection and somehow make a valid point?

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parkerkim•20d ago

The 1908 map that had a lake where my hometown's airport now sits

Found an old Sanborn fire map from 1908 in a flea market in Boise last fall, and it showed a big lake smack in the middle of where the airport terminal is now... no wonder my grandfather always said they built the runway on a marsh. Has anyone else found a map that just flat out contradicts the current geography of a place you know well?

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daniel511•21d ago

The National Geographic map of Nantucket has the ferry landing 2 blocks off

I went to Nantucket last June and used that map to find the ferry, walked 15 minutes in the wrong direction past a clam shack, and now I question every fancy old atlas that claims it's accurate, so who else found a glaring mistake on a supposed 'official' map?

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flores.tessa•21d ago

Blew $60 on a 'treasure map' from an estate sale, total scam but worth it

I found this hand drawn map at an estate sale in Dayton that promised a buried cache of old coins near the river. Spent 60 bucks on it because the seller swore it was from the 1880s. Spent a whole Saturday digging around by the old mill and found nothing but rusty nails and a weird jar lid. Honestly the map itself is hilarious, the guy drew a sea monster in the corner and wrote 'beware the mud spirits' so it's framed on my wall now. Anyone else ever buy a fake map that was more fun than a real one?

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xenar14•21d ago

That wall of maps at the garage sale in Tucson still bugs me

A guy in Tucson had a whole wall of old road maps from the 1970s, all hand-annotated with routes to places like 'Camp Ironwood' that don't show up on any current survey. He swore they were from a secret mining operation that collapsed in the 80s, but every single one had the same parking lot circled with a smiley face. Why would someone fake a whole set of maps just to mess with one curious buyer, and has anyone else run into a 'collector' who's more about the story than the paper?

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maxm50•21d ago

A guy at a flea market told me my map was 'wrong' for 20 minutes

Stopped at a stall in Portland last summer, guy kept insisting my 1880s rail map of a ghost town was fake because the tracks curved left instead of right on his copy. I pulled out my phone and showed him the actual survey records from the county, he just shrugged and walked off. Anyone else run into someone who's so sure their version of a map is the only truth?

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nora535•21d ago

My thrift store find turned out to be a 400 year old map of a city that never existed

I grabbed a rolled up parchment at a garage sale in Portland for $12 last month, and after cleaning off the grime I realized it shows a detailed harbor town called 'Asteria' that isn't on any real coast, so has anyone else stumbled across a fake historical map that was almost too convincing?

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reese_perry6•24d ago

Hit 75 antique mall maps today, most from towns that no longer exist

I was just counting my collection for insurance and realized 75 of them are from ghost towns or places that got swallowed up by bigger cities. My favorite is one from 1923 showing a whole street grid where there's now just a soybean field. Anyone else keep track of how many of their maps show places you can't actually visit anymore?

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oscarcooper•25d ago

The 1906 map that has an extra state, was it a joke or a mistake?

I found a 1906 railroad map in a Denver flea market that shows a 'State of Absaroka' between Montana and Wyoming, 30 years before that name was used for a proposed state. Do you think mapmakers back then were being playful, or did they just copy a rumor without checking? Anyone else run across a map that predicted a place before it officially existed?

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sethanderson•25d ago

The 1782 map of a phantom island that took me 3 years to disprove

I had an old nautical chart from a flea market in Norfolk that showed an island called Buss Island in the North Atlantic, marked as 'verified' in gold ink. For years I kept it framed, thinking it was some lost land that just sank or something. Last month I finally dug into the Royal Navy logs online and found it was a cartographer's error from 1578, copied by every mapmaker for 200 years because nobody wanted to be the first to cross it out. The fun part is that it appeared on official charts until 1820, and there were even two fake 'sightings' that kept it alive. Now I'm hunting for other phantom islands, and I found way more than I expected, like Sandy Island near New Caledonia that was on Google Maps until 2012. Anyone else collect maps with fake geography that's been debunked, or do you prefer the ones that are still technically unverified?

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williams.robert•26d ago

Found a 1923 map of a lake that never existed in Ohio

I was digging through a box of old county records at an estate sale near Dayton last month and came across a folded map dated 1923. It showed a big lake called Lake Winfield covering about 14 square miles, with docks and a ferry route marked in. I looked up the area on modern satellite views and there's just farmland and a few creeks. Turns out the map was part of a real estate scam back then, they sold lots for a lake that was never dug. I paid $8 for it and now it's my favorite piece in the whole collection. Has anyone else found a map of a place that was pure fiction?

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the_phoenix•28d ago

TIL my 1962 map of Atlantis was actually a real Navy chart

Last week I was organizing my shelf and found this old folded map I bought for $8 at a garage sale in Akron. I always assumed it was some fun fantasy atlas from the 60s, but when I actually looked close, the grid coordinates and depth markers matched a real ocean survey off the Azores. Turns out some cartographer just redrew a Navy chart and slapped "Atlantis" on top as a joke. I was stuck choosing between keeping it as a silly fake or cataloging it as a genuine naval document. I went with the fake route since the joke is way more interesting than the boring real thing. Has anyone else found a so-called fake map that turned out to be based on something real? How do you label those?

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joseph448•28d ago

Why does everyone call that 1930s Chicago map a transit map when it's clearly a fantasy rail plan?

I keep seeing this 1930s Chicago map posted in auction listings and even on here, always labeled as the city's actual elevated rail system. But I've compared it to the 1938 CTA records and the routes shown don't match anything that existed back then, the south loop line goes straight through where the old Stockyards were, which never happened. It looks like someone's fan fiction drawn on a real street grid, and now collectors are paying $200+ for it thinking it's historical. Has anyone else come across this specific map and figured out where it actually came from?

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skylerg17•28d ago

My uncle's 1987 gas station map was a total lie, and that's why I love it

Tbh my uncle swore this old Shell station map he gave me showed a road that cut straight through the Ouachita National Forest. I looked it up on geodata last Tuesday and that road never existed, it was just drawn in with a red pen, probably by some bored clerk. The paper has coffee stains and a fold that splits the state border right down the middle. Honestly now I keep it framed because it's the best kind of fake, a map that tells you what someone wished was there. Anybody else got a map that's wrong on purpose but still feels more real than the accurate ones?

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grantthomas•29d ago

The 1800s map that shows a city that was never built, found it in a library archive in Cleveland

I was killing time at the downtown library last month, digging through their local history section for something else entirely, and I found this folded up map from 1888. It showed a whole street grid and neighborhoods on the east side of Cleveland, with names like 'Prosperity Park' and 'Grandview Station.' Problem is, I looked it up later and none of that ever existed. No records of the land being sold, no construction permits, no mention in any newspaper from back then. Just this one detailed map, drawn by some guy named H. R. Feldspar, who apparently vanished after making it. I asked the archivist about it and she said they've had it for decades but nobody could ever figure out what it was for. Maybe a real estate scam that fell through? Or someone's personal daydream they had printed for fun? Has anyone else run across a map of a place that just never happened, and if so, did you ever find out why it was made?

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matthewp52•1mo ago

That $600 1600s sea monster map I mocked turned out to be a real printing

I used to laugh at any map with a kraken or whale drawn on it, figured it was just fantasy junk for tourists. Then I spent 30 minutes at the Boston Public Library last month comparing ink lines and paper type with a 1658 Dutch atlas, and the detail matched perfectly. Anyone else ever flip on a map you assumed was fake?

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