Searching through a website like Amazon for books ... written materials are one way, also on our own website, www.waterford.com, there is some information on the history of crystal. But, in general it's not a widely published topic, so it kind of involves a little searching, but if you do look around through various manufacturers and brands you will start to learn about some of the history and the way the product is produced. Crystal collecting is probably more of a gamble in the sense that certain other types of collectables such as dinnerware items have more recognizable patterns, but there is definitely value in collecting crystal, it will always hold its value and particularly if you can locate those pieces that are marked correctly that you can identify, its a great collectable and as I said there is not an huge amount of material out there, but if you pick a particular area to collect such as Waterford Crystal or an American produced crystal, there are publications that will help you do that.
