• Forum Auctions
    Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins
    Part 2
    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Alken (Henry). Sporting Notions, first edition, T.McLean, 1832-33. £800 to £1,200.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Bardi (Lorenzo). Nuova Raccolta delle piu interessanti Vedute della Citta di Firenze…, Florence, Lorenzo Bardi, [c.1840]. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Crawfurd (John). Journal of an Embassy from the Governor-General of India to the Court of Ava..., first edition, 1829. £1,000 to £1,500.
    Forum Auctions
    Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins
    Part 2
    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Dawe (George, engraver). The Life of a Nobleman, first edition, Geo. Henderson, [c.1825]. £1,000 to £1,500.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: [Doyle (John)], "H.B.". Political Sketches &c., 10 vol. including The Descriptive Key to H.B., Thomas McLean, [1829-51]. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Eben (Adolphus Christian Frederick, Baron von) and Nicolaus Heideloff. Modèles de l'Uniforme Militaire Adopté dans l'Armée Royale de Suède, Rudolph Ackerman, 1808. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins
    Part 2
    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Geissler (J.G.G.) and Friedrich Hempel. Mahlerische Darstellungen der Sitten, Gebrauche und Lustbarkeiten bey den Russischen, Tartarischen…, 4 parts in 1, Leipzig and Paris, [1804]. £1,000 to £1,500.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Hunt (Charles). Portraits of Winning Horses...of the Derby, Oaks, & St. Leger, from the Year 1842 to 1849…, Rock Brothers & Payne, 1849. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Kunike (Adolf Friedrich). Zwey hundert und sechzig Donau-Ansichten nach dem Laufe des Donaustromes…, Vienna, Leopold Grund, 1826. £3,000 to £5,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Colour Plate Books from the Library of Norman Bobins
    Part 2
    27th March 2024
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Lasinio (Carlo). [Matrimony], Florence, 1790. £1,500 to £2,000.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Reinhardt (Joseph). A Collection of Swiss Costumes, in Miniature, second English edition, James Goodwin, [1828]. £800 to £1,200.
    Forum Auctions, Mar. 27: Wengen (Gottfried Durst von). Die Öffentliche Maskerade Bamberg am Fastnachts-Montage 1833…, Bamberg, [1833]. £2,000 to £3,000.
  • Sotheby’s
    Modern First Editions
    Available for Immediate Purchase
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Winston Churchill. The Second World War. Set of First-Edition Volumes. 6,000 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: A.A. Milne, Ernest H. Shepard. A Collection of The Pooh Books. Set of First-Editions. 18,600 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Salvador Dalí, Lewis Carroll. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Finely Bound and Signed Limited Edition. 15,000 USD
    Sotheby’s
    Modern First Editions
    Available for Immediate Purchase
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Ian Fleming. Live and Let Die. First Edition. 9,500 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter Series. Finely Bound First Printing Set of Complete Series. 5,650 USD
    Sotheby’s, Available Now: Ernest Hemingway. A Farewell to Arms. First Edition, First Printing. 4,200 USD
  • Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: [RUTH, George Herman “Babe” (1895-1948)]. Signed photograph. Circa 1930s. 191 x 248 mm. $1,500 to $2,500.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: HARRISON, Benjamin. Document signed (“Benj Harrison”) as governor of Virginia, certifying the service of Daniel Cumbo, a Black Revolutionary soldier. $6,000 to $9,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: ONE OF THE FIRST PRINTED ANNOUNCEMENTS OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. $4,000 to $6,000.
    Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: FIRST PRINTING OF LINCOLN’S IMMORTAL GETTYSBURG ADDRESS. $4,000 to $6,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: HIGHLY IMPORTANT MORMON ARCHIVE. ALLEY, George. Archive of 23 Autograph Letters Signed by Mormon Convert George Alley to His Brother Joseph Alley. $10,000 to $20,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: [AVIATION]. [ARMSTRONG, Neil A.] Aviation Hall of Fame Gold Medal MS64 NGC, Awarded to Neil Armstrong in 1979. $2,000 to $3,000.
    Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: NEWLY DISCOVERED FIRST PRINTING OF "WITH MALICE TOWARDS NONE... " FROM THE ONLY NEWSPAPER ACTUALLY ALLOWED TO PARTICIPATE IN LINCOLN’S SECOND INAUGURAL PROCESSION. $4,000 to $8,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: THE MOST IMPORTANT GEORGE WASHINGTON DOCUMENT IN PRIVATE HANDS; GEORGE WASHINGTON’S COMMISSION AS COMMANDER IN CHIEF, 1775, ONE OF ONLY TWO ORIGINALS. $150,000 to $250,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: A VERY RARE ACCOUNT OF BLACKBEARD’S DEATH AND ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT PIRATE ITEMS EXTANT. $3,000 to $5,000.
    Potter & Potter Auctions
    How History Unfolds on Paper:
    Choice Selections from the Eric C. Caren Collection
    Part IX
    April 18, 2024
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: EDISON, Thomas. Patent for Edison’s Improvements on the Electric-Light, No. 219,628. [Washington, D.C.: U.S. Patent Office], 16 September 1879. $2,000 to $3,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: [VIETNAM WAR]. The original pen used by Secretary of State William P. Rogers to sign the Vietnam Peace Agreement, Paris, 27 January 1973. $10,000 to $15,000.
    Potter & Potter, Apr. 18: SONS OF LIBERTY FOUNDER COLONEL BARRÉ ANNOTATED TITLE-PAGE, “WHICH OUGHT TO ROUSE UP BRITISH ATTENTION”. $4,000 to $6,000.
  • Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A RUTH BADER GINSBURG BEADED JUDICIAL COLLAR. $80,000 - $120,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: ONLY KNOWN COPY OF THE ONLY BOOK BY THE REMARKABLE EVE ADAMS. $8,000 - $12,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A COMPLETE RUN OF VISIONAIRE MAGAZINE THROUGH 2010. $6,000 - $9,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: LAW REVIEW OFFPRINT SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY RUTH BADER GINSBURG. $3,000 - $5,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: META REBNER'S WORKING SCRIPT OF THE LOVED ONE. $1,500 - $2,000
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A KATHY GROVE PORTRAIT OF CYNDI LAUPER FOR THE FEBRUARY 1989 DETAILS COVER. $800 - $1,200
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A PLASTIC COAT BY MILLIE DAVID FEATURED IN SOHO NEWS STYLE SECTION, FROM THE COLLECTION OF ANNIE FLANDERS. $500 - $700
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A RUTH BADER GINSBURG JEWELRY BOX. $600 - $900
    Bonhams, Mar. 22 – Apr. 2: A SET OF JONI MITCHELL LYRICS FOR "IF I HAD A HEART." $2,000 - $3,000

Rare Book Monthly

Articles - February - 2017 Issue

The Dealers’ Daughter Revisited

At one time the Antiquarian Bookman was the bible of the book trade.

I grew up in a family where book selling was a well established business. By the time I was a little girl I was drafted into it.

 

From the 1950s through the mid-60s I was introduced to all the traditions of the trade by my two very different parents and earned my spending money working for them. They were specialists and did most of their business by mail. We did not have an open shop.

 

My father was the buyer and the cataloger. He was the person who never met a Goodwill Store he didn’t like and if buying some books there (or anywhere) was good, buying more books (many more) was better. In those days I did not know the meaning of the terms “not enough inventory” or “no new inventory.”

 

There was inventory on every flat surface of our home and shop. The problem was never “Do we have it?” rather, “Do we remember where we put it? Where did you see it last?” Deciding what to buy was my father’s department. His idea of “shopping” was to buy everything that appealed to him.

 

My mother’s job was to apply the brakes. She was the seller, the packer (or rather the boss of generations packers including me). She was the issuer of catalogs and lists (which my father would write) and the schmoozer of librarians. In my youth some of our best customers were formidable people, mainly women, who ran the acquisitions sections of university libraries and bought books for academics and scholars. Our field was South East Asia. When the Vietnam war came along interest in books about SE Asia grew considerably, but that is a different story.

 

I grew up reading the AB - short for Antiquarian Bookman (I read it in the john where back issues were kept. The current issue lived on my father’s night table.) The john was also the location of any stray Maggs or Quaritch catalogs that my dad was done with. It took me quite a while to catch on that some of these catalogs were out of date by maybe 30 or 40 years, so unfortunately it was no longer possible to buy a Rembrandt etching for 9 pounds, but that also is a different story.

 

The AB was the way that book people stayed in touch with each other. We read this digest size weekly magazine. It was printed entirely in black and white, with grainy halftone photos, zillions of little want ads for book sellers and generally an article or two aimed at the trade. We all read it and we all did business through it.

 

What wasn’t done via the AB was done by sending out postcards, known as “quotes” through the US mail, issuing catalogs, taking buying trips to other towns, or attending shows. Not only was there no Internet, but the fax machine had yet to be invented.

 

There was, however, the mimeograph with its gorgeous semi-indelible purple ink that left stains on your hands and clothing that took a long time to come off. Children in the book business were expected to turn the handle of that mimeograph frequently, and also to pack to the standard that would pass muster with their very particular mother, who had a long and specific list on how this task should be done.

 

I packed my way through junior high school, high school and college, standing under a single light bulb working on a board over a wash tub in a basement room shared with jars of homemade pickles that smelled of garlic and dill. The mail carrier (in those days all men) came every day to take the fruits of my labor off into the world. Some of my earliest memories are my mother and her ongoing soap opera with the post office and its employees, none of whom (like me) were quite up to her specs.

 

However, if she is looking down from the great beyond, she will be pleased to read the many and frequent feedback comments on my “superior” packing skills left by satisfied customers.

 

We sold a lot of books that way, enough to put two kids through college, to take regular trips abroad, and to enjoy the lifestyle and camaraderie that went with having a lot of books. But as you probably know, it isn’t done that way any more.

 

I know this because as I start on my taxes for 2016 I realize that though my parents are both dead and I have been in the business myself going on 40 years, what I have to show for this long running enterprise seems like pretty thin soup compared to the time and energy I’ve invested in it. It pays my health insurance, covers some of my expenses but, at best, it is a pale shadow of the robust business my parents had back then.

 

My dad always said it took five generations to make a really good dealer, the first four were to lay in and age the inventory and the fifth to cash in on the good instincts of the earlier members of the tribe. Sitting here at the tail end of the second generation I predict there aren’t going to be too many more of us in that mold, if only because taste has changed so rapidly and the definition of what is valuable or worth having has changed even more.

 

My dad’s favorite book was “Jurgen” by James Branch Cabell, and ‘Yes’, I still own his copy, and ‘No,’ it’s been many decades since I even attempted to read it. History has not been kind to some of the writers my dad liked: Sinclair Lewis, Booth Tarkington, William Carlos Williams to name a few. I could not give away Wordsworth, one of his favorite poets (“The world is too much with us late and soon; Getting and spending we lay waste our powers….”). So if you’re holding on to an inventory of books that nobody reads or wants anymore, life is not so beautiful. If, on the other hand, you are completely out of inventory and relying on what comes to you via the free boxes, well here's my two cents on that subject.

 

My favorite sale of 2016 was the auction for a little paperback book of poetry autographed by Seamus Heaney that I found in the free box at a church rummage sale, and after 14 bids sold for $76 on eBay. It made my day.

 

Aside from the obvious differences in the technology, taste and value, the whole idea of “inventory” has changed a lot too. Last year my best sales involved inventory I didn’t own and only passed briefly through my hands. Some of the best and most profitable transactions were done with the help and cooperation of colleagues, and those same colleagues were some of my best customers.

 

This year my lowest sale was under $10 and my best one over $4,000. In between was every other possible permutation and combination. Less and less of it was books, especially big books, and more and more it was ephemera, magazines, photographs, and similar items. If it was books, they were mostly small enough to fit in a flat rate priority envelope. The value of my individual average gross sale was just shy of $60. Adjusted for fees, shipping and other costs it looked a lot more like $39.

 

Of the books I inherited from my dad, including that once long shelf of humor, especially vintage New Yorker cartoon albums, I have one broken lonely item I’m keeping to remind me of the years of pleasure I had reading and re-reading them. Of the dozens of volumes of the Bureau of American Ethnology from 1879-1935 or so I have only a few disbound items left. Not only are they all gone, but if I had them again today I don’t know if there would be buyers?

 

My dad’s advice about the 19th century continues to be true: he thought it was the great underrated century and I couldn’t agree more. The 19th century, especially the pre-Civil War 19th century in America, continues to be one of the last places to find really good material at what I think are still pretty reasonable prices.

 

Though the dealers’ daughter is not as upbeat as she once was, neither is she quite as gloomy as it may sound. In 2016 I had a serious illness, “life threatening” as they say, and I pulled through. I didn’t work from mid-May until August. When you almost but not quite die, everything that comes next looks beautiful.

 

Wiki for the Antiquarian Bookman at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AB_Bookman's_Weekly


Posted On: 2017-02-03 00:54
User Name: TwelfthStreetBo

Susan, your article was a delight, with so many delicious details, a veritable feast of bookseller lore. It touched me for you speak of issues past and present affecting me, an old school, old timer of 31 years. My wishes for you are to be well, continue to thrive, and continue to write more bookseller tales. Thank you.
Lillian Cole
Twelfth Street Booksellers


Rare Book Monthly

  • Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: [Langland (William)]. The vision of Pierce Plowman, nowe the seconde time imprinted..., Roberte Crowley, 1550. £8,000 to £10,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: [Shakespeare (William)]. [Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies], second folio edition, [by Tho.Cotes, for Robert Allot], [1632]. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Bible, Czech Biblia Bohemica, first complete Bible printed in the Czech vernacular, Prague, August 1488. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: Shabthai Tzvi.- Collection of four printed and illustrated broadsides detailing the appearance, rise and fall of the false messiah, Shabthai Tzvi, Augsburg, 1666-67. £40,000 to £60,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Leaf from the Beauvais Missal, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on parchment, [Northern France (perhaps Beauvais or Amiens)], [fourteenth century (c.1310)]. £4,000 to £6,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Aubrey (John). [Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme], manuscript in English, Latin and Greek, [c. 1693]. £30,000 to £50,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: Byron (George Gordon Noel, Lord). Poems on Various Occasions, first edition, Harriet Maltby's copy, Newark, Printed by S. & J. Ridge, 1807. £30,000 to £40,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Tolkien (J.R.R.) The Hobbit, first edition, second impression with dust-jacket, 1937 [but 1938]. £7,000 to £10,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Blake (William).- Thornton (Robert John). The Pastorals of Virgil, 2 vol., engraved plates by William Blake, 1821. £8,000 to £12,000.
    Forum Auctions
    Books, Manuscripts and Works on Paper
    28th March 2024
    Forum Mar. 28: America.- Mount (William J.) & Thomas Page. The English Pilot…, [bound with] The Fourth Book, describing The West Indies Navigation from Hudson's-Bay to the River Amazones, 1721. £20,000 to £30,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Oldfield (Henry Ambrose), Rajman Singh Chitrakar & others. An album of 160 photographs and 13 original artworks, (1833-1919), [c. 1850s-1880s]. £20,000 to £30,000.
    Forum Mar. 28: Audubon (John James) [and William MacGillivray]. Ornithological Biography…, 5 vol., first edition, presentation copy inscribed by Audubon, Edinburgh, 1831-49 [i.e. 1831-39]. £10,000 to £15,000.
  • 19th Century Shop
    Catalogue 198 just published
    19th Century Shop. Darwin and Wallace, first printing of the first paper on natural selection
    19th Century Shop. Shakespeare’s Poems, first collected edition
    19th Century Shop. Walt Whitman portrait inscribed with a Leaves of Grass poem
    19th Century Shop. Major Elizabeth Barrett Browning manuscript notebook
    19th Century Shop. Spock's Baby Book, original MS
    19th Century Shop. Cellarius, Harmonia Macrocosmica, the great celestial atlas

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