This is 10 inches by 8 inches and has the card loosely attached to the bottom right corner.

It really does not get any better than this for the true collector.

This book, probably the best known, is in MINT condition and has only been opened to be signed "Barack Obama" in bold Black pen (Felt pen).

One of the many refreshing things about Barack Obama is his self-deprecating sense of humour.

Responding to the unrealistic expectations for his presidency, Obama said "I've been sent by my father from the planet Krypton to save the Earth".

Unfortunately, the irony of this self-comparison to Superman was probably lost on many of his dedicated followers, who clearly believe that – once in office – he can exercise a few super powers and rid the world of all its thronging ills, economic and otherwise.

But as "Dreams from My Father" proves, Obama is no fool and knows the cold realities that face him, even though this intelligently written book is filled with optimism and hope. Which is understandable enough; after all, what else could Obama offer?

The politicians who can actually write may be counted on one hand, but on the evidence here, Barack is among their number (he reminds us that William Faulkner said the past is never dead and buried – it isn’t even past; can you imagine Barracks’ predecessor in the Oval Office quoting Faulkner – unless the allusion was written for him by one of his speech writers?).

In fact the book -- Obama’s remarkable life story – was, of course, written before his destiny was irrevocably changed by his success in the US Presidential Election and it is a striking account of a young man coming to terms with the problem of his identity and issues of belonging in a racially divided country (a racial division that Obama – by the very example of his success – may do a considerable amount towards healing).

The son of a black African father and a white American mother, Obama details the dramatic journey that constituted his parents’ life before his own trip to Kenya to confront the sobering realties of his father’s life.

"This is our moment. This is our time." Barack Obama declared in his victory speech on November 4, 2008.

Such a moment is an opportunity to explore who we are, where we've been and what the emergence of a leader like Obama can tell us about our culture, our politics and our future.

In "What Obama Means", Jabari Asim, author of the acclaimed "The N Word", provides the context needed to understand what the Obama Presidency means to Americans of all backgrounds.

Asim moves easily from the contemporary to the historical, showing how performers and athletes, such as Michael Jackson and Michael Jordan, laid the groundwork for Obama as much as did leaders such as Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. DuBois, and Martin Luther King Jr.

He examines the impact of Sidney Poitier (whose Guess Who's Coming to Dinner could have been the story of the president's parents) and how the actor's navigation of Hollywood was a forerunner for Obama's own path in wooing America's white voters.

Asim places Obama within the history of the black rhetorical tradition, alongside such figures as James Baldwin, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Barbara Jordan.

He also describes how the "Obama phenomenon" grew from the ground up, focusing on the people who caught on even before their leaders did.

If you read nothing else this year, get your hands on "Playing the Enemy:Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation" and read pages 201 to 253.

It won't take long.

By the time Nelson Mandela walks into that stadium, your heart will be pounding, he is wearing Francois Pienaar's Number 6 Springbok Rugby Shirt.

By the time he walks into the Springboks locker room, you'll be in tears.

All because, on June 24, 1995, the South African Rugby team beat New Zealand to win the Rugby World Cup. However, The All Blacks were struck down with Food poisoning 48 hours before the Final and a close aid & bodyguard to Mandela states this was an intentional ploy to help South Africa win???

If you're like most people, you know that Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison -- 18 of them in a tiny cell on Robben Island -- and emerged without hatred, to spearhead a peaceful transfer of power in South Africa. But you probably know nothing about the 1995 Rugby World Cup match. John Carlin's brilliant book corrects that, and along the way, presents a concise biography of a remarkable man.

In these pages, Nelson Mandela is a brilliant politician with a genius for disarming his enemies. To Mandela, everyone is human, everyone can be reached. The only question is how. In prison, he would introduce his lawyer to his "guard of honor" -- and his jailers would find themselves shaking hands with an attorney they loathed. He used his dead time in prison to teach himself Afrikaans, read the Afrikaans newspapers and familiarize himself with Afrikaner History.

Rugby is the favorite sport of Afrikaners, the dominant white tribe in South Africa -- "apartheid's master race. All but one of the 15 players on the Springbok team were white. In a stadium that held 62,000, 95 percent of the crowd would be white. No wonder that blacks saw the Boks as a symbol of oppression.

"Don't address their brains," Mandela believed, "Address their hearts." One direct way to do that was through sports. People love their teams; the connection is purely emotional. If the Springboks could come to engage both blacks and whites, that might end the sense among blacks that sports in South Africa was "apartheid in tracksuits" -- and might make whites more accepting of blacks as equals.

Mandela did not just lay out a goal. He met and charmed the white lords of rugby, then lobbied for the World Cup to be played in South Africa. He invited François Pienaar, the Springboks captain, to visit him and encouraged him to see his sport as "nation building." Soon the team was learning how to sing "Nkosi Sikele," the black national anthem. And, because a storybook fantasy was becoming reality, the Springboks advanced steadily to the World Cup finals.

The most important and uplifting pages begin on the morning of the championship game. One of Mandela's bodyguards got an idea: Mandela should enter the stadium wearing a green-and-gold Springbok jersey. Mandela improved on the idea -- his jersey, he said, should have Pienaar's number on it.

Across town, the players had been staying at a hotel. To calm their nerves, they went out for an early morning jog. As they left, Pienaar recalled, "Four little black kids selling newspapers recognized us and chased after us and started calling out our names -- they knew almost everyone on that team -- and the hairs on my neck stood on end... It was the moment when I saw, more clearly than ever before, that this was far bigger than anything we could ever have imagined."

Five minutes before kickoff, Nelson Mandela walked onto the field to greet the players. To the Springbok jersey, he had added a Springbok hat. "When they caught sight of him," Carlin writes, "the crowd seemed to go dead still." And then the chant -- from the almost all-white crowd -- began: "Nel-son! Nel-son! Nel-son!"

I'm going to leave it there, so as not to spoil the magic of the next pages for you. Just know that what happened in that stadium that afternoon was a crazy quilt of glory: atonement, forgiveness, liberation and celebration. It's the kind of event that happens when people who have known only hatred and fear drop the burden of history and move past their differences. Winning a game? That day South Africa climbed a mountain.

It is a measure of the quality of this story that Morgan Freeman has produced a film based on the book -- and playing Nelson Mandela. Matt Damon is Pienaar, the South African rugby captain. And Clint Eastwood has directed it.

I guarantee you: Audiences will cheer. And weep. And these will be tears of joy, because -- for once -- a national leader had perfect pitch, all of his countrymen knew it and they all got it right. In other countries, including our own, skeptics doubt that this kind of brotherhood can be engineered, even for a moment. It can be. It was.

A vintage collectors plate, showing an iconic image of Sir Winston Churchill.

Made by the Liverpool Road Pottery Ltd of Stoke-On-Trent, this beautiful collector's item comes with a full backstamp.

It is in excellent condition, with no chips, cracks or marks of any kind to the front, the back has a few light marks conducive with age.

A great opportunity to acquire a real collector's item.

Superb piece of History from the 1983 General Election. This Limited Edition Postcard of only 1500 has been made even more unique as it has been hand signed by all the Leaders of the 3 main parties involved - How many of these would have been quadruple signed? - there really can't be many!!!

This one is hand signed by Margaret Thatcher, Michael Foot, Roy Jenkins and David Steel.

The Election, held on 9 June 1983 gave the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher the most decisive election victory since that of Labour in 1945

This is the Lady in chamber at 10 Downing Street seated with the Red Brief Case which was being looked at for the next budget.

It has been hand signed in person by Margaret Thatcher and is a genuine piece of history.

As with all of our rare collectables, we do say that when she leaves us and goes to the great skies above, what will these sell for then?