Deep, Deep Pockets

I hate to tell you another auction story so soon, but the auction I spent six hours at yesterday is worth the ink. Rarely do you find one of such high caliber around here, but be forewarned -- treasure canters in on the back of a horse named Harsh Reality. Bottom line -- the average book dealer cannot play with the big boys. And, yes, they were once again all men. Well to be fair, you CAN play, but you will not be bearing off the stuff that takes your breath away. What you will do is spend an obscene amount of money on second-tier items, have heart palpitations while you’re waiting to check out and then carry to your car one fairly heavy box, made so only by the outsized (beautiful condition) set pictured above. Oh, and you will also pay a ten per cent buyers’ premium on the total.

The auction consisted of one single collection so large and fine it brought dealers and collectors from Michigan, Connecticut, and who-knows-where. While I was palpitating in the check-out line the guy in front of me dashed off a check for $13,000 and he wasn’t even the biggest player. Just to show you what I’m talking about two of the auctioneers wield the gavel at Wes Cowen’s (Antiques Roadshow) auction house in Cincinnati. Another guy, also connected to Cowen’s, explained the items and why they merited serious consideration. When such a person even exists, and especially, when he is wearing a sports jacket to do the honors, be afraid. Be very afraid.

Here are a few examples of items and their realized prices:

Signed typewritten letter by Humphrey Bogart -- $800

Photograph of a dirigible by Margaret Bourke White in the original frame fashioned from metal salvaged from the dirigible -- $2600

Document on vellum signed by Andrew Jackson -- $900

Two handbills, one advertising a play starring John Wilkes Booth and the other a play featuring his brother who was also an actor -- $900 for the pair

I could go on, but I think you get the picture. For much of the auction I jotted down notes in a state of stupefaction, but did enter the foray three times. I lost once on a box stuffed with stereopticon views each featuring President McKinley, including his funeral following the assassination. The other two times I won, including the two volume set above which I got only because the crowd fixated on the political stuff and didn’t care much for the Civil War or for esoteric books, which is also why Eric got a huge drop-dead gorgeous old print of General McClelland in full regalia on horseback in its original and very handsome frame for the store. And also why I won Observations Topographical, Moral and Physiological Made in a Journey Through Part of the Low-Countries, Germany, Italy, and France; With A Catalogue of the Plants not Native of England, Found Spontaneously Growing in Those Parts, and Their Virtues by John Ray, Fellow of the Royal Society,  published in 1673. (Photos below). All I can say is it’s not the most I ever spent for a single book, but close enough to curl my hair.

After that I shut up and watched until the very end when the promised bargains finally hit the table. In many cases the gavel came down on true deals, but we’d already dropped a bundle, so I set my sites on one box only. This should have been a piece of cake, but wasn’t because they paired it with a box of very common McKinley books. The auction was in Canton, home of McKinley, and down there they’re nuts about all things McKinley, so it drove the price into three-figure land and I didn’t even WANT the damn McKinleys! But the main box held a truly rare Ohio volume and a lot of other good Ohio stuff, as well as a nice book on the Lincoln Memorial from 1927, so I forged on against my better judgment. It could have been a bit squeaky for comfort -- yes, there was buyer's remorse all the way home -- but in the end it actually turned out okay, due to the fact that the book gods felt sorry for us peons and granted  a Hail Mary in the form of a surprisingly good Ohio mining book that I hadn't seen hidden in the bottom of the last box.

The auction resumes today and there are still more books that had been held back. Books I would love to have. And a signed Medina County Jacquard coverlet Eric would love to have. But are we going?

No, we are not.

Choose WHAAAAAAAT?

Late again! I know it, but after being off for the holiday work demanded my attention yesterday. Finally all weekend orders have shipped, new books have been uploaded, and I am feeling sane and righteous once more. The holiday turned out to be busy to the max – never really sat down ‘til I went to bed any of the days. Sadly, while the weather cooperated for the mural, the driveway remained the color of concrete. First of all, the house somehow acquired a revolving door with people coming and going and some even coming back again. Secondly, little Curly Head, my almost-two year-old grandson, has become a force of nature. His house is totally baby-proofed to the point where he can safely travel anywhere on the first floor. But our house lacks the modern open floor plan his does, so each room is a cornucopia spilling out goodies like a bountiful harvest. He loved them all, but the best was his latest discovery – the outlets for the central vacuum system which come equipped with little doors that snap shut with a sound so satisfying it would practically be criminal not to give them a go -- at least forty or fifty times. I think you can see why art, much as I love it, didn't even make the short list.

Anyway, an interesting thing happened Monday. I got a call from a rep at Choosebooks responding to the non-answer to an email question I had previously received from another rep. As many of you know, Choosebooks, a primarily European site, has been snapped up by ABEbooks. One would think that since ABE designed the ideal system for dealing with bookseller requests for additional shipping this system would migrate over to the Choosebooks site. Well, one would be wrong. The new system there allows you to set a shipping charge for both first class and priority. What it does not do is take into account heavy books and sets, thereby creating a classic Catch 22. If you set the price too high to accommodate the high end your sales will resemble the Dow Jones in free fall. But if you don’t do this your postal losses will start rivaling the national debt. Oh, you can ask for extra postage, but here’s the kicker – it can’t exceed five per cent of the stated cost. Yeah, like that helps.

So this very nice rep calls blissfully unaware of the American holiday and I’m so glad to talk to her I wouldn’t care it were Christmas. Just an hour before I had reluctantly (with much mumbling and more than a little swearing) accepted a heavy, oversized order to Germany for a $175 book for which I received $16.00 to ship in the required priority box which, as you know, costs over $40.00. I considered rejecting it, but didn’t because the buyer was a repeat customer. I tell this tale of woe to the rep and – lo and behold -- it turns out she’s actually from ABE and immediately sees the inanity of it. But, she informs me, ABE did not design this system – ZVAB did. And who is ZVAB? The short answer is it’s the German  counterpart to Choosebooks. She then tells me that in the future I may ask for the additional postage and privately invoice it through paypal, provided that the customer has a paypal account. Ideal? No. But I could live with it if only I could remember whether the customer’s email address was visible before I agreed to ship. Anyway, I tell you all this in hopes it will be of help. Soaring postal rates, falling prices and the increased cost of acquisition demand that we keep an eagle eye on the bottom line.

Well, well, as I was writing this yet another missive arrived from Choosebooks. Their new rates are as follows:

A further change concerns the price model of Choosebooks.com. With the return to our core competence we will change the fees for all second-hand booksellers with price model "S". To align our price models across all countries, the following price model will go into effect from 1 July, 2011:


Basic fee: $25 USD


Listing fee: $5 USD per 1000 titles or part thereof


Sales commission: 9%


An example calculationwith 9,500 listed titles, you would pay in July:


$25 USD + ($5 * $9 USD) + 9% depending upon sales volume. The minimum commission of $0.40 USD and maximum commission of $30 USD remains.

All of which makes my above comments moot points. I am SO not choosing Choosebooks.

But enough of that. I wasted too much time on it as it is. Here's something with much more razzle-dazzle. I found it on twitter this morning and it's so cool I wish I could snap my fingers, say “Beam me up, Scotty,” and suddenly be in Iowa City. Check this out – it will make your day. All the king’s Kindles and all the queen’s Nooks could never come close to approximating it.

http://blog.seattlepi.com/bookpatrol/2011/05/26/book-art-on-parade-in-iowa-city/

View From the Kitchen Sink

Don’t expect a whole lot here today – just rambles about this and that. It’s dark and rainy and the view from the kitchen sink (it's glare -- don't get too excited) would make you want to crawl back into bed and forget the whole thing. But this IS Memorial Day weekend so we’re partying over here even though it’s unlikely that my very fun idea is going to take place. (More on that later). The important thing is that even though I’m serving dinner and breakfast to eight people and another dinner to ten people, need desperately to grocery shop, and my house looks like a gale force wind blew in, I’m listing books and talking to you. Not to worry though – I’m a whirlwind under pressure.

But here’s the thing – this party is bittersweet and the rain is not helping matters. My youngest daughter Caitie and her boyfriend are moving to Maryland in less than a week. He works for the government and landed the Big Job in D.C., the one you can’t turn down if you want to climb the aluminum ladder to – whatever. I know it’s selfish, petty, and unbecoming, but I don’t want them to go. These two are  like a portable party. Usher them in and let the games begin. I know, I know -- we can go there to visit and we will, though I am not a traveler of the first order, or the second or third order either for that matter. But let’s not get into THAT. Things are bad enough.

Actually, I’m trying to be hopeful and upbeat over here, so I’m going to stop at Target when I’m out getting groceries on the quarter-chance that the precipitation ends and the sun comes out and I can spring my great fun idea after all. I saw an ad on TV for sidewalk chalk that glows in the dark. So I thought I’d get a bunch of it and take it out of the package so our seven year old grandson who could out-read Marian the Librarian doesn’t know this secret feature. Then we will ALL – big kids, little kids, and old kids – divide up the driveway and make a huge mural. Then when it gets dark we’ll take the kids outside and – voila! I know you think the adults won’t like this, but they will. If something pleases those two little boys every single one of us would have a blast doing it. Really.

In the meantime I’m busy listing books because for some crazy reason sales are popping like kernels of corn on ABE. I mentioned it to a bookseller friend who only sells on amazon (better known here as the Evil Empire) and she says the same thing is happening there. What’s quirky about it is that Auctionbytes just reported that amazon sold more e-books in April than hard cover and soft cover combined. But as the old saying goes, you’re better off not trying to figure it out and just make hay while the sun shines, or sell books in the rain – whichever works best. So here’s a sampling of what I added. The reason I’m showing you a page of Ohio Lands and Their Subdivisions from 1918 instead of the cover is because it’s a plain Jane and I want you to be a little dazzled.

Anyway, I told you this wasn’t going to be much, but I didn’t want to take another four-day hiatus from the blog. So have a happy holiday – go to the parade, grill hot dogs, and take a couple days off bookselling to enjoy your family and friends. I’m going to  -- with or without the mural.

P.S. In answer to the two questions already asked, I don't know why all the icons of my followers have disappeared, but I miss them very much and wish blogger would get over what ails it and the black thing on the windowsill is actually two of the felt pads that go on the bottom of the chair legs so as not to scratch the hardwood floor in the dining room. You guys are a riot!

Hiking the Acquisition Trail

If I were a cartoon character I’d be drawn with so many curved lines around me I’d whirl right off the page. It’s amazing to me that four whole days have gone by in what seems like a blur of perpetual motion. It all began Friday with an auction devoted solely to paper and books with the emphasis heavily on paper. It was rather far from home, but was such a rarity that I would have dug out my hiking boots and walked if needed. To say there was a lot of stuff would be like saying the United States has a lot of people. Boxes, flats, tubs, piles, mounds, and heaps of vintage magazines, brochures, maps, books and prints kept the small, but rabid, crowd bidding for seven hours straight! We got home at eleven p.m. with the Cruiser’s back bumper nearly scraping the road from the weight of the goodies.

At first the prices were scary – think big hairy wood spider scary -- but as the day wore on and the crowd thinned the buying kept getting better. By the time I bought the last big box of books it was so good I didn’t even care that my shoes were twice their size in mud. I got the box for $22 and have already sold a rare Ohio volume, Tales From Yellow Creek, on Advanced Book Exchange for enough to get a nice chunk of money back. The guys – and it was ALL guys because paper seems to be a man’s game – didn’t groove on books too much. They saved their energy and a LOT of their cash for magazines. One guy spent almost $300 on a flat of smallish old magazines called Life. I’d never seen them before, but I know for a fact that they are not an earlier incarnation of the big Life magazine. Maybe he knew something I don’t, but I’m still glad I didn’t jump in on that one. Instead I waited for the Delineator, early McCalls from 1914, Godey's Lady Book from 1879 and stuff I can’t even remember.

The fact that I don’t know what else I got tells you how crazy it’s been since I last talked to you. Usually I’m rooting around in the boxes like a kid who can’t wait for Christmas. But we had to be at the Case Western Reserve University sale Saturday morning no later than seven a.m., so we grabbed a quick something that approximated dinner and went straight to bed. The Case sale used to be my favorite, but anymore it’s smaller, pricier, and lacking in the high-end treasure that gave it a singular rarified cachet. Nonetheless we sallied forth hopefully and got there at seven for a ten a.m opening. But here’s the shocker – people used to spend the night camping in the parking lot. People came from distant states. The line used to wend its way down the side of the building and double back on itself even with the price of admission at $20 a person just to walk in the door. Not this year it didn’t! We were fifteenth in line and it never got appreciably bigger.

In the past scanners were minimal because of the fee. But this year very few of the old-timers showed up making scanners the majority. I didn’t even mind though because there weren’t enough of them to invade the delightful atmosphere of peace, leisure and fun.Though I was greatly disappointed in the antiquarian section, I did buy a few lesser books for old time’s sake just because I liked them and my favorite volunteers (who know me by name because I haunt their section) love the same stuff I do. We all get so excited you’d think we were a pack of 49’ers headed to the Klondike gold fields. I only bought one middling priced book there at $40 though and one other book in the art department for $50. Everything else was in the $10-30 range for a total of only $300, less by two thirds from the good old days.

But after Case there was no more putting life on hold for books -- time to switch gears. Did you hear that eardrum- popping screech emanating from Medina around noon? If not, you must have been in the shower because we’re talking an abrupt one-eighty here. I hosted a wedding shower for a friend’s daughter last night and didn’t start doing any of the preparations until Saturday afternoon. No menu, no groceries, no favors, no games, no centerpiece, no sharpened pencils, no anything. So Saturday and Sunday the pedal met the metal big-time. Don’t ask how it came together. I don’t want to think about it except to say that it did and 25 people had dinner and dessert, the bride glowed in bridely bliss, high hilarity ensued, and a good time was had by all. Picture below of the centerpiece.

So then -- back to the books. Case had a half price sale on Monday which I had pretty much decided to skip until I looked over what I got Saturday night and realized that I had done better than I thought. So off we sped to Cleveland again late Monday morning hoping to snatch up some bargains. We did, but the tables looked like Pompeii after the quake which could be why only two people waited in “line” when we showed up five minutes before starting time. The best buys were in science and technology, but I did scavenge a humdinger in art and a good set in music, so I was happy. Went home, put the finishing touches on the wedding shower, changed into my party clothes, and was good to go.

And that, folks, is what I did on my four-day “vacation” from the blog.

A Cold Wind Blows

I woke late this morning – the day already broken and the standard-issue sky still hanging gray and desolate above. Fog rose from the lake in a murky blur and even the ducks sat in a posture of misery in their puddles of water scattered about the low spots in the greenspace behind the house. The landscape out the back door mirrored my interior scape with uncanny perfection. No blooming azaleas today, no lilacs in bud, no iris waving in lavender glory. Yesterday, a day which began with such optimism and joy, was changed dramatically by a single email from a bookseller friend.

As soon as I recovered from the shock of it (I have yet to recover from the sadness) the first thing I thought of was my last blog post. The final line was a quote from that old Bob Dylan song The Times They Are A-Changin' which I had used to convey a sense of hopefulness in a time of massive change and uncertainty in the book industry. This morning I googled the lyrics, some of which I had forgotten, and was struck by the fact that my choice of song turned out to be more prophetic, or at least cautionary, than I’d ever meant it to be.

The news I got yesterday is not unique and that of course is the tragedy of it. My friend is a long time bookseller who has been in the used, rare, and antiquarian game for decades. He’s smart, knowledgeable, experienced, and savvy, but none of that was enough to keep him in business full-time. He’s looking for a day job, he told me, not because he prefers it, but because he must. Acquisition has become an almost insurmountable hurdle, the number of booksellers has grown exponentially, postal rates soar sharply cutting into international sales, and spiking gas prices compromise travel to distant sites. He hopes to remain a part-time seller, which at least is heartening, but not nearly enough. The book world lost something important yesterday and I am not only sad, but mad as hell about it.

Of course I can blame technology for this travesty, but I don’t cast nearly as much blame on technology as I do on the hordes of wannabe booksellers, most of whom don’t read and don’t care a whit about books. But even them I blame less than I do Amazon, the leading force in encouraging anyone with a cell phone to take up bookselling. The wannabe booksellers just answered the call – I doubt most of them have a clue that they are part of a larger problem -- as am I.

I’ve been a player only fourteen years, entering bookselling just a year or so after Advanced Book Exchange provided an online showcase. Amazon as it is today was just a gleam in Bezos’ eye back then. There was no Marketplace, not even z-shops yet, which meant an employee (the dulcet-toned Tiffany) phoned every day at noon to place orders with us. Back then Amazon paid full price for the books, including actual shipping charges, and shifted the cost to the customer without so much as a whimper. But now….. well, we all know about now and Amazon’s role in how things turned out. I don’t want to talk about amazon though – not as a bookseller and not as a writer. My regard, or lack thereof, for them on both fronts warrants not another peep.

What haunts me today is the realization that I inadvertently led to my friend’s problem. By internet standards I’ve been at this an eon, but by bookselling standards I remain a wannabe myself. Yes, I’ve evolved , and thank God for it, because the truth is I entered this business only slightly less opportunistic than those I rail against. Back then I was a full-time writer who decided to sell what I love as a source of additional income. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to fall in love with it to the point where my identity as a writer would take a back seat to my identity as a bookseller. I did have a vague sense of trespassing though. I remember very well standing in line at book sales behind my friend, whom I didn’t know yet, wondering whether he resented my presence. If he didn’t he probably should have because I was part of the first wave of techno-sellers who would end up changing the face of bookselling forever.

If there’s any redemption for me at all in this it can be found in the work and the study. These at least I have done. I paid my dues and will continue paying them for as long as the book gods allow. I’m just sorry that my  presence compromised a seller who should have been able to continue his profession until he was ready to quit. I won’t live long enough to put in the years he has, or acquire the expertise. I may very well be displaced myself by a vanishing market, or yet another wave of retailers.

But for now at least I stand -- cognizant of the cost.

Something In the Water

Okay, so who spiked the water? I know someone had to have done it because this was a weekend like no other in a very long time. In our absence buyers suddenly unleashed a pent-up desire not only for our books, but for our expensive books. We sold Salvador Dali’s gorgeous golden cookbook that I featured last month here, a pricey collector’s guide to baseball pinbacks, a signed deluxe limited edition book of nature paintings in a slipcase, signed copies of Mr. Bridge and Mrs.Bridge in a slipcase, a 1947 Esquire pin-up girl calendar with its original envelope, an antiquarian copy of the Poems of Cowper in leather, and a bunch of miscellaneous cheaper things. Even the antiques mall popped on Sunday, so clearly the water was enhanced with bookish molecules over there too. Now, if I can only remember this when I’m whining in mid-summer that no one will buy anything good ever again (and I WILL be whining – we all know this) life will be vastly improved for anyone who has to, or chooses to, listen to me.

But of course the big thing I want to talk about today is Bookstock ’11 in Livonia, Michigan where we spent most of yesterday morning. As you know from my latest whine, I was not looking forward to it based on the mania experienced last year. To be honest, this year didn’t get off to a rousing start even though it ended up so good we took the kids out to breakfast to celebrate. We got there an hour early and were pleasantly surprised to see only about 15 plastic-covered boxes in a row by the door. Rain pelted steadily so everyone stayed in their cars, but as soon as the foyer door of the mall opened a fairly big crowd dashed madly inside which of course changed the entire configuration of the boxes. But it’s a mall. It’s big. So who cares? Apparently no one. Had that happened in Cleveland the red phone in the White House would have been ringing off the hook. The only complaint I had, and it did annoy me greatly at the time, was the stampede thing. This you had to see to believe.

By the time the sale opened there were about 150 people in line, all of whom, except for me and Eric I think, sprinted down the mall like a herd of deer running from buckshot. Over the camera cords in use by the two news stations filming the event they leapt like ballerinas. Never mind age, imparity, and dignity. Adrenalin fueled them, passion inspired them, and  onward they sped like Chariots of Fire. I could have run right along with them – no problem there – I might have even left ‘em in the dust. But I’m here to tell you that this is one thing I absolutely, positively WILL NOT do. I walked rapidly, though I didn’t even power walk, and landed where I needed to be (a very far place) in decent time. This place consisted of maybe eight eight foot tables loaded with higher priced books. Could it be that less buyers fought over the spoils? Yes, it could! Not  only was it possible to easily get to the tables and move down them unencumbered, but there were no scanners. Zip. Zero. Zilch. I know for a fact that last year they abounded because the news people zeroed in on them in the mistaken assumption that they were the only dealers.

While I liked the situation much better this year, there was a  a downside to it too because the people we competed against were hard core, long-time, serious book people. I know it because of what they chose and because they talked amongst themselves about exhibiting at the upcoming Ann Arbor Book Fair. But that’s fine -- I more than feel up to the task of working in their company. That is, I feel up to it in regard to spotting the good stuff. I quickly learned, however, that I was NOT up to it when it came to aggression. Twice in rapid succession I lost books I wanted because I was too polite to either take them off the volunteers’ cart, or tap the spine of the desired title from the stack in his arms to get it before it hit the table. In both instances I waited for the books to be put down, despite the fact that somewhere deep in the recesses of this blog is a post about this this very problem of mine. Here’s the thing though. I can’t even moan about rudeness because they weren’t rude. In fact, in both instances the dealers were so understated that most people probably never even saw it happen. Eric suffers from the same terminal courtesy I do, so when I saw him trump the second dealer who got “my” book and claim Spurling and Lubbock’s fabulous three volume slipcased set, Sail, I was stunned speechless.

And THAT, dear readers, was the game changer. From that point forward we sailed up and down the tables, masts billowing with confidence. All told, we bought fifteen books and one set for a total of $300. As we retraced our many steps to the front entrance our major question could have been sung to the tune of Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

The answer? In the cheap books section. And not as many of them as you would think either. So what does it mean? I don't know and I'm not going to hazard a guess just yet, but it could be that "the times they are a'changin'."

A Little Cheese Please!

(NOTE: This post was added Thursday, but shortly disappeared due to technical difficulties with Blogger. Since it has not shown up again I am reposting in hopes that it will stick this time.)

Surprise! Here I am again, partly out of guilt for being so remiss and partly because I will be gone all weekend to Michigan where we will see our kids and our Infinitely More Adorable Than Normal little boys, as well as attend Bookstock ’11 in Livonia. The latter is a gigantic week long book sale held in a shopping mall that sounds like great fun, but is actually not. The preview begins early Sunday morning and from what I hear the campers arrive by four. It’s only about a half hour from our daughter’s house, but there is no way we are going to show up that early. As it is, we will have to creep out of the house like a pair of mice to keep the little guys from waking up. Tyler has built-in Grandar – the second I move a muscle he catapults out of bed faster than Jonathan Horton off the balance beam.

Last year this sale was held in April, but it was just a week after baby Dylan arrived from Korea, so we ended up bringing our daughter and both little people along. We got there about fifteen minutes after it started and the scanners were already blazing like six-guns. We really didn’t get much – the only thing I can remember being in love with was a gorgeous set of art prints on laid paper published by a NYC gallery. The only reason I got it is because it lacked an ISBN. There seemed to be very few older books and specialty items like that in Livonia, sad to say.

Anyway, today I’m rather cranky and forlorn. Last night I went to a NOBS meeting and the talk centered on the Cleveland book fair to be held in the fall. Oh, it sounds so wonderful – piano music, a buffet, a lovely setting, and lots more dealers than in Akron. AND WE CAN’T GO! Eric will be at a show in North Carolina that whole week. It may be for the best actually because unless I get some good stuff in here I could end up with less inventory than I have now, as I’ve been selling my best off the office floor since I got back from Akron. But it still left me feeling like the girl who doesn’t get to go the prom.

THEN, to add insult to injury, I have not attended a decent estate sale in so long I am begin to think I hallucinated all the ones from the past. And wouldn’t you know – it’s the perverse nature of things – this weekend there’s a Saturday sale that not only has old books, but even some antiquarian ones, as well as old magazines and ephemera in stacks and piles and heaps (I saw the pictures). But I won’t be here Saturday because we are leaving early for Michigan to go to Tyler’s soccer game at noon which I would not miss for all the paper in Ohio. Little boys are only little boys for a short while and as much as I want to go to this sale I won’t sell out my little guy who plays the game with all his heart and soul. Oh, and while I’m kvetching I might as well add that Sunday is the Medina flea market too, the source of much ephemera, including this catalog I got there last time. If you’re into furnaces, I’m telling you this one would have you in need of smelling salts.

But things are what they are, so I guess we will try to pull a rabbit out of the hat in Livonia. Every sale is different, so maybe getting there on time and knowing the lay-out will result in a better outcome this year. One can only hope. Meanwhile, I could use some cheese with this whine. A wheel of Montery jack with jalepenos oughtta do it.

Out of the Ball Park?

I have been so hit and miss lately with the blog, but this cold has knocked me for a loop. Monday I was supposed to go see a collection in a Cleveland suburb, but had to send Eric on his own, as I was actually dizzy – or should I say dizzier than usual? :-) The sinus pressure had shifted to my left ear and left me looking like the remnants of a frat party at four a.m.. But by yesterday the instability was gone, though the family room had acquired stacks of books that rivaled the ones that are STILL in Eric’s office. There was nothing to do but deal with them because the furniture store delivery people were due at noon with Eric’s birthday recliner-that-doesn’t- look -like-a-recliner. Most of the books are headed to the store with a fair portion to the antiques mall, but I did list maybe half a dozen online. The ones I didn’t get to are stashed in – yep, the office.

Actually, I wasn’t expecting too much out of this collection because I knew that a well-known dealer, who has since gone out of business, had looked at it some years ago and of course bought the best of it back then. Since most books aren’t exactly soaring like eagles these days there was no need to jump through flaming hoops to get there. So I settled in on the couch and read a novel, barely thinking about whether or not we’d end up with anything. I knew if the price were right Eric would buy them because that’s just the way he is, but quality is another matter altogether. So I was pleasantly surprised by the outcome.

As I’ve mentioned before, the antiques mall allows us to buy things we never would for our online venues. So it was fun to pull out goodies that would be sure-fire winners there. I just sold a small four volume leather set of Le Miserables at the mall Saturday and now have a handsome two volume set with highly decorated spines to replace it, as well as a gorgeous small leather set of  Kipling's The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book. There’s a lot of other stuff too, but you get the picture. So let’s skip to the good part, okay?

Late in the game, just as I was ready to drag the last of the unsorted boxes out of the room, I noticed something small nestled in at the side of one of them. Show me a small thing and I am compelled to look at it, so I wiggled it out from its resting place against the spines, took one look, and snapped to life faster than Lazarus. I had never seen it before, or even heard of it, but I knew with every fiber of my being that we had ourselves a good one. Quickly, I looked it up on bookfinder only to find two copies – one priced at $600 and one at $180. So which was right? No clue. I emailed a bookseller friend who specializes in baseball books and attached a couple photos. To my amazement he’d never seen it before, but thought I should price it at around $400. It seemed high to me though, so I googled it just to see if anything else came up and, sure enough, it did. An auction house had just reported selling it in March for $425.

Will it really sell for that online? Or is it pie in the sky? Who knows? I have a friend who bought an amazingly beautiful and scarce Haggadah at an estate sale last year and, despite lowering the price multiple times, still has it. I’m enough of a pragmatist to know that online prices are not always reflective of reality on either end of the spectrum. But past experience has also taught me that it’s better to err on the high side than the low when faced with an unknown. If you’ve dug back into my old posts you already know the story of the wildly rare and fabulous golf brochure that I mistakenly, stupidly sold for $25 a couple years ago.

Once you set a price you can always come down if someone makes an offer. But go up? Not so much.

The Mad Hatter's Book Party

I’m still pretty croaky, but at least I have a voice, so last night I decided to sally forth at the last minute to a book sale which goes on record as the strangest one to date. This was the preview, which of course means that the crowd should have been as thick as locusts, but was not. There were exactly three people there – me, Eric, and another guy who came in after we’d been perusing the offerings for at least  half an hour. The minute we walked in I felt like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole and landing smack in front of the Mad Hatter. He was very nice, this Mad Hatter, and probably is a genius, but his explanations of everything looped around and around the needle of comprehension like thread for a French knot. I apologize for the embroidery analogy, but every time he talked multi-colored strands of crewel embroidery wool went in and out, up and down, in my head. And every time he stopped I was left with a new psychedelic abstraction.

My favorite by far was the one about the membership. This one was shaped like a huge woolly pinwheel spinning dizzily in flashes of silver, orange, red and purple first clockwise, then without warning – zing! -- counterclockwise. Words cannot adequately describe it even though words created it. All I know is it had something to do with benefits, books nobody could see, an accordian book, a rare book of which he has three copies, 200 titles, validated parking, swarms of collectors, a neurosurgeon, Thor Heyerdahl, email notices, sellers making money, and eight thousand books. We bought said membership – that is, ERIC bought said membership – but God alone knows what it will actually provide. At least it should be interesting, if less than rewarding in any tangible way.

I know, I know – oh, she of little faith. But I’m telling you, you had to have been there. I'd swear on a stack of reference books that one of his colorful abstractions indicated that special volumes were priced so that dealers could make a profit -- or at least that’s what it seemed to be saying once I parted the complex curlicues and shed a beam of light on it. So imagine my shock when we trooped behind the Hatter into a small area where books were piled three-deep in low shelves and many-deep in boxes on top of the shelves. Very soon I found an antiquarian title about Venetian gardens that tempted me sorely, but at $200, I needed to find something I recognized in order to get a feel for his pricing structure. Everything in me screamed “Danger! Danger!” at deafening decibels, but I loved the book and wanted desperately for the price to be right.

It wasn’t long before I found several books to serve as benchmarks. WOWZA! Here was a very nice first edition Marguerite de Angeli’s Petite Suzanne from 1937 with its dustjacket. I’d sold one for $30 awhile back and figured, as I always do, that the price had dropped since then. And indeed it had – to $15 in like condition. His price? Forty dollars. And over there was a two volume annotated Sherlock Holmes in less than desirable condition ($75 his price, $25 internet price for a nicer set). And a copy of Johnny Gruelle, Creator of Raggedy Ann and Andy fine in first edition SIGNED by author, Patricia Hall ($40 his price, $30-35 internet price). When I say that the latter came as close to reality as I was able to find, believe it.

“Didn’t like any, huh?” he asked as we returned to the main room carrying nothing.

“Well, we liked some of them but …” How to put it delicately? I swallowed hard and squeaked, “Um, the thing is, there isn’t much room for profit there.” (Am I the queen of understatement, or what?)

“No, not back there!” he agreed cheerfully. In fact, this seemed to tickle him so much he actually chuckled. “The collectors come for those. They’re all over them!”

And where exactly would these collectors be tonight, I wondered. But all I said was, “I guess I was under the impression that there was a bit of a margin.”

Was he offended? Nope, not a whit. In fact, he was downright merry. The needle flashed, the yarn spun, and the colors swirled yet again. But this time he created a canvas upon which I  completely, totally, vividily understood one very important thing. Another dealer who belongs to NOBS and is respected in the bookselling community gives him grief about prices on an ongoing basis.

“Oh, she’s ruthless!” he said, grinning widely. “But I always tell her I can’t do it.”

Equal parts vindication and exhilaration bubbled up inside me at this news, but I said nothing, only nodded, which was fine by him, as he was happily slashing the prices of the two sleepers I’d found in the regular stacks and the eight Eric had found there for the store. While he was at it he tossed in the membership, validated the parking, and pronounced the final total $27. What a deal! And it didn’t even  count the free idea for this blog, or  the phantasmagoria -- which itself was pretty priceless.

The Silent Bookseller

Eric is back from Maryland, but together we’re not a whole person. The weekend was busy and social for me – much more so than usual. Five friends in four days and one of them twice! By late Saturday afternoon I had laryngitis – silent as a lamb -- though I still had dinner with my neighbor Linda Saturday night and walked five miles with Nancy in the drizzle on Sunday, whispering all the way. But Monday morning was crunch time. I got up convinced I would never be well again. Actually I’m still not and neither is Eric who has the same thing minus the laryngitis. We sound like a TB ward back in the 30’s over here.

There IS one thing that’s good about it all though – the forced silence. It wraps itself around me like a cocoon and I am strangely peaceful inside it. It’s like melting into a hot bath – complete surrender of body and soul. Most people would say that I am outgoing, talkative – VERY talkative – and I am, but only sometimes. Years ago an Episcopal priest friend asked me if I’d ever taken the Meyers-Brigg personality test. When I said I hadn’t he commented that even though he gave the test, in my case he didn’t need to do it in order know the outcome -- I’m an introvert masquerading as an extrovert. At the time I secretly thought he was crazy, but as the years go by I’ve come to the realization that he was dead-on right. I could easily wind up being one of those old ladies who hide in their houses and get dottier and dottier from lack of social interaction. I’d carry on fascinating conversations in my head, eat popcorn for dinner, read until my eyes crossed, and write endless novels that perhaps amuse only me. Maybe I’d even take up meditation, do a lot of messy art projects and not clean  up for maybe a week, and cook things from Julia Child’s cookbook just to see if it’s worth it.

The other weird thing about where I am at this moment is my complete lack of concern about my limitations as a bookseller. Right now I have orders that should have gone out yesterday, but didn’t. Normally that would be enough to launch me through the air like a torpedo and deposit me one short step from the men in the white coats. I also didn’t have a book that was ordered on ABE yesterday, but instead of emitting a cascade of anguished lamentations I clicked the previously sold button with less concern than I’d give a hangnail. Who IS this woman pretending to be me? She’s hanging out in my sweats and she looks like death warmed over, but other than that I think she’s a total fraud. If I had the energy I’d even look into it. But the thing is, I kinda like her. If Eric wasn't huddled in bed with a blanket over his head he’d like her too.

Maybe once she feels a little better I can ply her with pinot grigio and black licorice (probably not at the same time). Who knows? It might keep her around awhile.

More Musings on the Book Fair

Well, it looks like all that running around I did came with a price tag. Woke up Tuesday to a head cold, but by Thursday I was back to (sort of) normal. I wish I could tell you I accomplished a zillion things this week, but I’m afraid I did not. My activities since Monday are as follows: wrote the blog about the book fair; read Reading Jackie about Jackie Kennedy’s work as an editor; went to lunch with Cheryl; wrapped orders every day; cleaned my house, most especially the kitchen floor which after a weekend of rain and little people reappeared under layers of dirt, orange juice, and blackberry jelly; had my friend Mary Lynn from Dayton over for breakfast and a peak at the royal wedding this morning (did NOT love the dress, but the bride’s adorable); listed some books; read a backlog of newspapers; did all the New York Times crossword puzzles I missed; talked to Eric who is at a show in Maryland; and conducted a daily round or two of the Great Book Treasure Hunt.

The latter is a fun, if somewhat stressful, game that occurs when you fail to unpack in a prompt manner after a book fair. I believe I mentioned that books become exceedingly popular when they are in boxes. Well, the good/bad news is that they stay that way even after the sale is over if you don’t release them from captivity. This year we unboxed them because Eric needed the wooden boxes for the show he’s at now, but all we did was stack the books in a large block in his office. Last year I put them away immediately, but with the cold and the other stuff it never happened, hence all the frantic rummaging I've been doing all week.  \I did make a considerable dent in it this afternoon, so three quarters of the books are reshelved now, but some still await me as you can see from the above photo. On the bright side I did  sell a vintage Akron pottery catalog to someone from the book fair. He bought a catalog at the fair and I mentioned I had the pottery one and, sure enough, he inquired about it yesterday and we struck a deal this morning. How cool is THAT? Last year my after fair activity was confined to a large outlay of money when we bought a book collection from a fair-goer. This year only one person asked if we buy books and so far we haven't had a follow-up call from her.

The events of the week -- the cold especially --  gave me both time and perspective to think about the fair some more, so a few additional things occurred to me. Last year we benefited greatly from the ability to process credit cards. In several instances we made sales after the buyers had run out of cash and saw something they wanted. This year, however, we had exactly ONE credit card sale – the rest were cash and checks. I knew credit card usage was down, but Eric was the one checking people out so I had no idea that the number of cc transactions had fallen off that dramatically. Why this would be I don’t know – perhaps the economy and worries about incurring debt. The other thing that occurred to me is something Darwin told me a couple weeks ago about the Ann Arbor Antiques Show. He said that this year attendance soared, but the buyers were not really collectors. They knew nothing about antiques, asked astounding questions, paled at the prices, and ended up being more like museum goers. As mentioned previously, we saw that same phenomenon. Again, I’m not sure what this means in the big picture, but I hadn’t immediately made the correlation between antiques and books.

A third difference this year was dealer sales. Last year we sold only to consumers. This year we walked away from our booth before the sale started on the first day and returned to find a children’s book with a dealer’s business card in it on our check-out table. I also sold three journals to the guy set up next to us and a scientific ephemera item to a third dealer. There may have been more, but even if not, those three sales represented yet another surprising difference. What's interesting is that a long time dealer who was at the show, but not as an exhibitor,  remarked that he couldn't buy inventory at the fair anymore because there was no margin for profit. I agreed, as I used to try buying stock at this fair even before I was an exhibitor and succeeded only once in doing so. Clearly, my prices allowed dealers room for profit which struck me as interesting given how much price resistance we experienced this year.

But of course we’ve only exhibited twice, so it may be premature to make assumptions about any of it based on so little experience. Perhaps every year is its own year, each one arriving and departing with its own eccentricities. Perhaps the fact that I sold a lot of paper this year means no more or less than the fact that I sold a lot of paper this year. Maybe next year I will bring a bushel of it and haul a bushel home again. Last year my hot category was technical books. This year I didn’t sell a one.

Go figure.

Notes From the Book Fair

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Did you hear that? If not, it was an enormous sigh of relief that last week’s frenetic activity is finally over. By the end of the Akron antiquarian fair on Saturday night I was so tired I was practically comatose. Our daughter, her husband, and our two grandsons showed up about an hour after we got home, so I whirled and twirled with the kids for a couple hours and was in bed by nine. The next morning we were back at it by 6:30, cleaning, cooking, flying with the kids, and hosting Easter dinner for ten. Needless to say, by nightfall the Wreck of the John B. had nothing on us!

But enough about that. Let’s cut to the chase and talk about the fair. If I were confined to a single descriptive word I guess I’d choose quirky. From the moment it started ‘til the final bell it felt very different to me than last year. There were several reasons for this which I will enumerate, but the important thing is the take-away message, which is this -- the future of the physical book is more secure than previous indicators may have led you to believe. I don’t know how many people I talked to who have e-readers and love them, yet still love and buy traditional books, primarily collectibles, or books perceived as potential collectibles, but it was a LOT. The other bright spot was the crowd. Eight hundred-plus people passed through the doors over two days and kept traffic at the booths constantly flowing. AND my book guru and neighboring booth proprietor scored $4000 on just TWO sales the first day!

On the downside, the number of dealers had dropped by about ten, but the soaring price of gas, plus the cost of hotels and meals probably had a lot to do with that. The other negative, or at least surprising, difference was the appearance of a never before encountered kind of customer. I talked to several other dealers who noted the same phenomenon and, like me, were a bit flummoxed by it. This customer had no clue about the pricing of collectible books, as in, “Why would a book that only cost $2.95 when it was brand new be $50 now that it’s so old?” This was also the kind of customer who picks up a $200 book and asks if you’ll take ten dollars! And the kind of customer who writes down the pertinent facts about a book when he thinks you’re not looking, so he can buy it cheaper online. And the kind who tells you that a collectible catalog is only worth $10 because that’s how much his friend paid for it at a garage sale. As much as they rattled me, I'm actually delighted these customers were there because we need newcomers badly if books and paper are going to be preserved and appreciated. So I tried my best to educate them as well as I could, though I'm not reallty sure they quite believed any of it!

Sadly, however, this kind of customer also does not know how to handle antiquarian books. In a heartbeat a woman opened a folio-sized 19th century book, allowed the front cover to flop over in mid-air and popped the first page following the front free endpaper. I can tip it back in, but I must admit to a surge of well concealed “shock and awe” when it happened. Believe it or not, we also actually talked ourselves OUT of a three-fgure sale when a woman wanted to buy a complete 13 volume set of children’s books in their original slipcase, throw away the case, and divide the spoils between three grandchildren in three states! When we finally convinced her not to do it Beethoven rewarded us with a few bars of Ode To Joy from the netherworld.

And yet, all that being said, we still did okay. With less items than last year our bottom line was almost exactly the same, minus one first edition Twain. This time the big winner was ephemera, though we did of course sell some nice books, including my favorite, a first edition of Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare & Company. Of all the sales though my three favorites were to people who so totally loved what they got they couldn’t stop telling me. Who knew that a Varga pin-up girl calendar with its original envelope, a salesman’s pocket sample of Victorian die-cut calling cards, a 1930’s Hollywood magazine with Jeanette MacDonald on the cover, Don Freeman’s rare magazine Newstand; One Man’s Manhattan and a refrigerator catalog from the 1890’s could elicit such unabashed pleasure. None of these things were especially pricey – the highest were just $50 and $60 – but the joy they engendered was so expansive I felt like the luckiest seller at the show.

Of course we went there to make money, which we did, but I think we can sometimes get so caught up in its pursuit that we fail to appreciate the less obvious pleasures of the trade. One guy who bought three of the items listed above said to me, “Man, you’re the one with the GOOD stuff! I spent all my money right here.”

Music to my ears. Bethoven not required.

P.S. It's been ten minutes since I posted and I've already been asked about the circle on my leg in the picture. I have no idea. I never even saw it until it was pointed out to me. It's not on my clothes, so it must be a beam from one of  tthe overhead cannister lights (see photo). You guys amaze me with your powers of perception!

Practically Perfect

Some people would argue that there’s no such thing as perfection here on earth. Both Amish quilters and Persian rug weavers believe that only God is perfect and so they will purposely make a tiny mistake in each of their creations to remind themselves of the need for humility. While the sentiment may be true, I think we just attended a library book sale that, if not perfect, is as close to it as humanity is apt to get. It was the first time we attended it though, so I’m not shouting “Eureka!” as if I'd tapped into a permanent gusher. I’ve had this experience before with antiques mall buying, so my optimism for the future of the sale dangles on a cotton thread for good reason. There used to be a mall in Toledo where we always stopped when we went to visit our daughter in Michigan. The first time we went it was so good I thought I’d just discovered the eighth wonder of the world. But never again did I feel so much as a twinge of exhilaration in all the years which followed, though we could always count on getting at least one or two decent books every time.

As to be expected, scanners abounded at this sale, including our local crazies, of which we have three who are extremely colorful. In fact, they are SO colorful that I never met their match at any sale outside of a fifty mile radius. I think if there were a national prize for the most vivid characters at a book sale northeastern Ohio would be dragging home a trophy the size of Mt. Rushmore. Anyway, they were there, the crowd was huge, a loud argument erupted at the front of the line seconds before the sale began, and I almost got mowed down because I didn’t realize that as soon as the doors opened everyone would run like a herd of wild horses. I’m not kidding when I say run either. We’re talking Boston Marathon here. Fortunately, Eric grabbed me by the arm and steered me into a little piece of book heaven before I was flattened like a cartoon character.

But forget that stuff. Imagine instead a tiny room -- Ernest Hemingway’s “a clean well-lighted place” which instead of café tables is lined with beautiful, expensive books. There’s a large window, a very nice attendant, and antiquarian titles blooming here and there like tiger lilies at the side of a winding sun-dappled road. Prices began at $400 and went down to around $10 with the average being $25. At first I scanned the titles quickly, but soon realized something absolutely without precedent. We were the only people in the room! And we remained the only people for an astonishing fifteen minutes! Needless to say, we did very well. In fact, we did so well that we didn’t even bother with the rest of the sale, so never encountered anyone wielding a scanner the entire time.

But here’s the interesting twist. When we got home I immediately unpacked everything and sorted it into three piles – antiquarian fair, antiques mall, online. That’s when I realized that several books did not make it home with us even though I’d paid for them. By the time we checked out another dealer had also bought a ton of stuff and was behind us in line. Eric packed as fast as he could, but her stuff tumbled all over the two square feet of available carpet space and we had no choice but to pile our bags in a heap by the door. The only thing we could conclude was that one of them must have migrated under the card table they used to check out.

Friday morning I phoned and, sure enough, that’s exactly what happened. Fortunately, I remembered two titles in the bag so we were able to claim it easily. I was rather annoyed though that we had to make another long trip even though we were already headed in that direction on Sunday due to yet ANOTHER aggravation. I’d bought Eric a new chair for his birthday and the furniture store had called to tell me that the fabric I chose was discontinued and I would have to come back and choose something else. With the book fair only five days away I felt absolutely crunched for time. The last thing I needed was another thing to do that I’d already done.

But I’m here to tell you that what appears to be a bad thing can actually be Mother Theresa in a Richard Nixon mask. We arrived at the library to find that almost everything in the little room was half price on Sunday! I wound up buying even more than I had the first day of the sale. It was so good it was almost surreal. All week I’d wrung my hands, gnashed my teeth, and rended my garments as people continued to buy the books I’d packed for the show. I knew that realistically my chances of acquiring a quantity of quality new items to replace them were about nil.

But I did. And all because of a forgotten bag. It may not be a coincidence that the first book we got (pictured above) was called The Book of Blessings.

Wonky World!

I know I’ve been MIA, but it’s been a whirlwind of book pricing for the antiquarian show. I did, however, take off an obscene amount of time yesterday to attend a book sale which can usually be counted on to offer at least one nice thing. In fact, I would have to say that this sale has produced over fourteen years the best books we’ve ever purchased in a library. This is NOT to say, however, that it’s as good as it used to be – NOTHING is as good as it used to be. But I am definitely a happy bookseller today. The sun is shining, it’s not even nine a.m., and I have already wrapped my orders, facebooked, twittered, accepted an offer, returned a phone call, taken photos of a magazine and sent them to a customer, and begun this blog. Amazing what a little positive energy can do!

I have to tell you though that the whole book sale experience was the equivalent of tumbling down the rabbit hole into Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory. Yes, I know I have mixed my literary allusions, but that’s the kind of day it was. This sale tends to be the equivalent of Filene’s basement during the annual wedding gown grab, so the staff is constantly looking for ways to make it run smoothly and keep tempers on an even keel. The new idea was to hand out numbers at two o’clock for a five o’clock opening. Of course this means the die-hards now turn up at noon instead of two. We got there around one-fifteen and were happy to find only about half a dozen people waiting, among them a couple favorite old-timers like us. We passed the time pleasantly enough, grabbed our numbers (seven and eight), and headed off to Applebee’s for lunch/dinner at two where we lingered over spicy Cajun shrimp pasta.

Before we went though another new wrinkle appeared at the sale. It seems that the library decommissioned so much stuff that they had no room to display it. So creative lot that they are, the volunteers decided to rent a POD, box the books by category, and sell the boxes sight unseen for $15 each which made the average book price around 60 cents each. The way it worked was you chose your category, they issued you a box number and you went outside to the parking lot to collect it. Ah, nothing like a little gambling to add some spice to the book sale! Plenty of people availed themselves of the opportunity but, alas, we were not among them. I buy ex-libs so infrequently that even when they are fabulous my aesthetic sensibilities cringe like a Victorian dowager at the appalling sight of a young lady’s ankle. I know, I know, I’m something of a book snob, but now that I just celebrated my ickiest year birthday to date I don’t have to apologize for it.

Anyway, after the repast at Applebee’s and some in-car reading in the library parking lot we returned to the sale with about an hour to spare. Again, good people to talk to and an atmosphere of such tranquility you would think it was peopled by a tribe of Tibetan monks. Finally the doors opened and we headed to the collectibles area. Now here’s where it gets interesting. God love them, these volunteers are so nice and so hard working and sincere, but their pricing system is on par with the eternal question “what is the meaning of life?” Believe it or not – and I don’t believe it yet -- in this wonky little world in which I found myself a nine volume leather-bound set of Ridpath’s History of the World could be had for fifteen dollars. By contrast, a battered copy of a cheap children’s series book printed on high acid paper was $12! Needless to say, I chose the $15 option (see photo above). I only snapped four volumes though because the rest are in another box and the box is in the garage and it’s freezing out there, so you’ll just have to use your imagination to picture the whole set in all its glory.

The other thing I got that made me dance a little jig was two of the eight Sara Ware Bassett invention series books. Oh, how I love these and in first edition too. I have never had them before, but my “bookdar” went off like a factory whistle at high noon at the very sight of them.

All told, we spent an astounding seven hours from the moment we left our driveway to the moment we returned and yet somehow it ended up being a fun, satisfying day. Yes, the scanner people were there, but it was as though they’d been issued valium at the door. The world may have been wonky at the library, but I’d be happy to fall down that rabbit hole again any time.

A Course Is a Course, Unless of Course ...

Leo the cat goes home today and I begin filling the wooden boxes for the antiquarian book fair. Once again, I sold a book I had planned to take, but it’s okay, as it got me to thinking about an area of collecting you may never have considered – antiquarian and vintage self-help books and courses. Ever since I was a kid I have loved independent learning. In fact, I still believe the word autodidact was coined just for me. When I was still in high school I somehow managed to cajole my extremely – um, thrifty -- father into spending an obscene amount of money for the Famous Writer’s Course, which of course later proved to be rather bogus, but thrilled me nonetheless and still does. The heady excitement when the big box arrived from Westport, Connecticut filled with books and assignments still almost makes me believe I could be the next Harper Lee.  From that day forward courses of all kinds have called my name.

Over the years I have bought and sold many of these – it’s amazing how many types there are covering so many topics – The Roth Memory Course (LOVE that one and so do buyers), The Purinton Foundation Course in Personal Efficiency and How to Master the New Science of Personal Efficiency (just shipped that to Denmark last week), and The Course in Human Betterment. There are also radio courses, electronics courses, singing courses, art courses, courses on phrenology, and, my two other all-time favorites, The Home Study Course for Hawaiian Guitar published by the U.S. School of Music in 1938 and the rare Marshall Stillman Boxing Course. I’ve bought them all and sold them all, yet my love for them remains boundless.

So yesterday when I sold Annie Payson Call’s book The Heart of Good Health from 1907 (I’d previously sold her Nerves and Common Sense from 1910) it got me to wondering whether I’m the only one who swoons over vintage self-help. The field is huge – I consider early New Thought material to be part of it – and yet the stuff can be maddeningly elusive. Annie Payson Call, for example, was enormously popular in her day – she wrote regularly for Ladies Home Journal in addition to penning books on emotional and physical health, and yet today you say her name and most people stare back blankly. As for her writings, it would be easier to find a gold nugget in the backyard. I got both of her books at the same time and have never seen any since even though my “bookdar” is set so high for this stuff I swear it would go off if anything existed in a twenty mile radius even if were buried in a steel box underground. The last time I bought such a thing was last fall at an estate sale in Wooster where Orison Marsden’s The Secret of Achievement suddenly began flashing in neon red and nobody but me seemed to notice. Marsden started Success Magazine in 1897 and contributed regularly to Elizabeth Towne's magazine Nautilus – about which I will refrain from excessive gushing, as I think you already can guess I’m crazy about it.

Right now I have in stock a VERY cool course, but the thing is I’ve had it about three years, and haven’t listed it because I can’t find a comparable for it and am not sure what the market will bear. This one is Alois Swaboda’s course in Swabodism which is a blend of mind control and physical culture and is believed to have inspired Houdini. Swaboda signed mine, which includes the six lessons, a seventh called Confidential Instructions for the Application of Organic Stress to the Sexual System (yeah -- how about THAT in 1920’s?), plus How To Change From Worry to Happiness and How To Induce Others to Do For You What You Desire. I’d like to take the whole shebang to the fair, but can’t seem to settle on a fair (ha-ha) price. If any of you know anything about this my ears are wide open.

Admittedly, vintage self-help does sort of beg to be chuckled over, but it’s nonetheless a genuine collecting field even if you give it zero legitimacy. As for me, I am not a famous writer, I would be hard pressed to play even a few notes of Aloha Oe on the Hawaiian guitar, have a terrible memory for some things and a prodigious one for others, can’t divine character by the bumps on anyone’s head, can’t build a radio, can’t wire a lamp, worry incessantly, can’t carry a tune and can’t draw a stick figure. I do, however, have great boxing skills, which is good, since I have to haul sixteen boxes of books to Akron very soon.

The Book Fair Effect

Well, I think Leo the cat has decided he’s moving in. Not only does he hang out in places where you can see him, but he’s eating more (though more is relative) and is even engaging in unbecoming behavior. First I found him sitting on top of he kitchen island and then caught him just as he was about to exercise his claws on the slipcase of a Limited Editions title signed by THORNTON WILDER!! But to balance the scorecard, he has also made us laugh. Catnip to this guy is like a reefer dream in Technicolor. He squirms, he rolls, he flips in circles – can’t get enough of the weed. But the funniest thing is what we’ve taken to calling “wacko-wacko hour.” Around five or six p.m. an astonishing force takes him over. He stands at the corner of a wall and leaps wildly into the air, a mind-blowing three quarters of the way up, then lands back on the ground, only to repeat the performance. Catie says he does this many times in a row, but so far we’ve been treated to just two magnificent jumps and a mad lap around the kitchen before he collapsed in his (my) favorite chair for the rest of the evening.

But this post isn’t about Leo, cute though he is. It’s about another mysterious force known as the Book Fair Effect. I’m sure that somewhere along the line I mentioned that last year, our first to exhibit at the Akron Antiquarian Book Fair, I began to notice a strange phenomenon just as soon as I began to pack. Books that had languished all year long on their shelves suddenly developed an aura that made them irresistible. One by one they departed like jet-setters from the wooden boxes I’d placed them in, headed for parts all over the globe. While I haven’t as yet filled the wooden boxes Eric built for shows, I have been pulling out titles I know I want to take. Apparently that’s enough to fully activate the Book Fair Effect because this morning one antiquarian book and four not- small- enough-to-quality-as-miniature, but still pretty small books of Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales were ordered within the same hour. The book is The Soldier's Story of His Captivity at Andersonville, Belle Isle, and Other Rebel Prisons published in 1871 (and later rebound oibviously) which I bought last fall at the fancy estate sale where they not only served food and hot drinks, but provided fires for warmth. It’s a great book and I expected it to disappear fast, but it did not until I decided it should go to the fair. As for the fairy tales, they’ve been hanging around over a year.

I love those little books though and this is the third time I’ve had them, but this particular set is less desirable than the sets I had prior. The first was best – all four books with dustjackets and their golden award winner seals attached to the ends of their red ribbon markers, nestled like babies in their very rare original box. The second time there was no box, but I had the jackets and the seals. This time I just had the books without any additional accoutrements. But STILL, they are very cute and need a home, so I figured off to the fair with them too and if they ddidn’t sell they could take up residence afterward at the antiques mall. Instead they are off to New York tomorrow morning.

If it sounds like I’m complaining, or maybe even gloating, I am -- both things. I love, love, love that the books found homes, but there is a problem here that scares me to death. I have had, as you know and are probably sick to death of hearing about, a year-long acquisition problem. I did just get in a lot of books from the dealer at the show Eric was at in Kalamazoo and from our long-lost picker, but, remember, all those books are about weapons. I am not a gun book specialist and if I was the fair would probably be a bust, so I cannot haul in boxes and boxes of gun books. I will have one box out of sixteen, but that’s it. So, I need the goodies to hang around awhile. Fortunately, a large pile of them has not ever been listed, and will not BE listed, until the fair ends, so that much at least is protected. I could also retrieve some stuff from the antiques mall if needed, but a lot of the good stuff has disappeared from there too. Last week alone I sold a record 19 books in one day, a good half of which were fair material. Of course I loved that too, but nibbling around the edges of my elation was anxiety – LOTS of anxiety which is building as we speak. In fact, last night I dreamed that my teeth fell out. For me this is classic. Push up the anxiety meter high enough and invariably my dreams focus on teeth. Don’t ask why because I don’t know. It just works that way.

Wait a minute – I just realized something! I’m always talking about book magic and how all you have to do is touch a book, think about a book, change something in its description and suddenly it will sell. The Book Fair Effect isn’t a mysterious force at all. Or no more so than plain old book magic is because it IS plain old book magic. By taking them to the fair I focus on these books, I touch them, I pencil in their prices, and I pack them up in boxes. Of COURSE they sell. But here’s the rub – how can I get ready for both the show and Easter unless I start pricing and packing? I could temporarily take my inventory offline of course, but there’s one small problem -- no sales, no money.

So I will keep packing and just try to have a little faith. There’s time – three weeks – and one book sale for sure coming up and maybe a second. Last year I did buy a first edition Twain a week before the sale, so anything is possible. There could also be an estate sale, an auction, a phone call, a – something.

And if not, I can always climb the walls. Seems to ease the tension for Leo.

Living with Leo

Before you jump to the conclusion that this is the successor to the Late Great Mickey, let me clear it up right away. It is NOT. This is Leo (who oddly also answers to the moniker Little Man), a cat of such bountiful hair that he appears three times his actual size. Leo is a Himalayan who nibbles daintily on the contents of tiny cans of cat food the size of silver dollars. My Mickey was a breed unto himself who devoured with gusto everything that wasn’t nailed down. Leo is sweet and laid-back. Mick was a thug known to nip even the hand that fed him. The only thing the two have in common is that they are/were both cats.

Leo’s a loaner cat, here for a few days while our younger daughter and her boyfriend explore housing options near Washington D.C. where they will be moving in June thanks to Joe’s new job. He works here in Ohio for the Department of Agriculture (something to do with grain and ships), but will soon be ensconced right in the heart of the government district. Long time readers may remember last fall when I dogsat Max the boxer. Leo is Max’s adopted brother. The reason I got Leo this time is because they can’t leave him alone since their house is for sale and I’m a cat person and Joe’s father is a dog person. Though Max and I got on famously, I’m still partial to cats, so in that regard the four-legged people got divvied up just right.

Leo arrived late last night, so this morning he was still a little skittish, particularly about the hardwood floor on the steps. He prefers soft carpet so he sort of picks his way up and down. I would be secretly calling him a wimp were it not for the fact that you can’t undermine a cat who instinctively recognizes quality when he sees it. This morning I looked all over for him and finally found him in the guest room lying regally on my divine purple office chair that will soon be in the office( it WILL!). Until it is, however, I'm happy to dub it the temporary designated throne of King Leo I.

Actually, it’s a good thing I have him for company today (though I’ve lost him in the house again), as I was decidedly cranky after leaving at 6:30 in the morning to wait three freaking hours at an estate sale that advertised “lots and lots of great books” and delivered about a hundred lousy books. We were in and out in ten minutes flat and that’s with looking through three stories and a basement. From there we repaired to Panera to drown our sorrows in dark roast coffee and cinnamon crunch bagels. The caffeine and sugar revived us somewhat, at least enough to head over to T.J. Maxx in hopes of replacing the appetizer plates for the Akron Antiqaurian Book Fair basket, one of which I ceremoniously destroyed by dropping it on the brick floor of Eric’s office. I had hoped for the same ones I’d had, but that was asking far too much, so I settled for a black and white set that looks faintly Asian. They’re smaller than the original, but it’s still better to present four smaller ones than a measly two bigger ones when anyone, including those with a recessive shopping gene, knows they come packaged in fours. Even Eric, who has no shopping gene at all, agreed with me on that one.

Anyway, the fact that I can now call the basket a wrap (ha-ha) cheered me up a bit, as did the fact that Leo came out of hiding a few minutes ago and headed for the guest room. I thought I’d snap a picture of him ensconced in the divine purple office chair for this post, but NO -- I CANNOT. He’s defected to the armchair in the corner next to the bed. Maybe he and the Late Great Mickey have something in common after all.

A Tisket, A Tasket, A Disaster With the Basket!

The countdown begins for the Akron Antiquarian Book Fair and I am busily scurrying around trying to get my books (as opposed to my ducks) in a row. Because the fair is always held the Friday and Saturday of Easter and I have the kids – both Moira and her family and Catie and Joe -- coming for Easter dinner the day after the fair closes I have to plan a menu that won’t make me crazy and also get the Easter baskets made for my little boys. Oh, and the eggs too – Easter wouldn’t be Easter without plastic eggs filled with treats scattered around the yard. I already have the gift basket for the drawing at the fair sort of done (more on that in a second), but the next big thing for the fair is selecting books and penciling in prices. The books aren’t too hard to do, but I also plan on bringing ephemera which creates FAR more busy-work. But it’s fun work and I’m jazzed to do it all.

Now then, about this basket which you see in the photo above. Disaster struck last night when I was assembling it for the final time and filling in the spaces with the curly decorative shredded paper. I have no idea how I managed to do this, but I dropped the four appetizer plates on the brick floor of Eric’s office. Oh! The sound! The fury! There are not words.

The good part, the amazing part, is that only one plate actually broke, as they landed face down. But here’s the dilemma. Nancy and I chose them because they match the black and white beaded-handled appetizer knives and I doubt they can be replicated, though I will go back to the store tonight and try. If they don’t have any more and I can’t get some that match the knives I’ll revert to my fall-back plan which is to cut the number of plates down to two, use the backing from the original manufacture’s packaging, and wrap them in cello. Does this make me happy? No! It most emphatically does NOT. In case you haven’t guessed, I am a perfectionistic, neurotic who would make you nuts in five minutes. I’m telling you – that Eric is a saint.

Of course the trick to making this basket was to zero in on stuff that would appeal to the widest audience. So here’s what Nancy and I came up with:

4 (or two) appetizer plates

4 pretty beaded appetizer knives

2 goblets with cloth napkins inside

Basbane’s book about books “Patience and Fortitude”

A bottle of Da Vinci pinot grigio

A box of rosemary crackers

A package of cheese

Garlic stuffed olives

Chocolate

A scented pillar candle

The idea is that you go home, settle in with your new book and have a lovely snack by candlelight. Life is good and you are ever-so-happy that you went to the Akron Antiquarian Book Fair!

Of course before I take the basket to the fair the whole thing has to be wrapped in cellophane with the bow attached at the top, not on the basket handle, and the card I made earlier dangling fetchingly from the bow. But if there’s one thing I know from experience it’s that I couldn’t show you a picture of THAT if I spent the whole day trying. Cellophane creates a glare so blinding it would risk your eyesight.

Anyway, there’s the story of the basket. Mostly I’m happy with it, but I’ll be happier still if Marshall’s department store has four more small white square plates the rims of which are decorated with charming black depictions of New York City cultural destinations. It doesn't seem like too much to ask, but I can't even send up burnt offerings to the book gods.  I have it on good authority that they don't consider plates and baskets their department.

P.S. Yes, I already filled in the few spots I missed with the curly stuff.

Picking Up A Couple More ...

Could it be that when it rains books it pours? I don’t know, but after just getting all those gun books last weekend I was stunned almost to speechlessness (and I am rarely lacking for words) by what happened Saturday. As I mentioned some time ago, we lost our picker last year because he decided to quit the book scouting game in favor of agriculture. I don’t think he’s changed his mind, so the sight of him bearing eight banker’s boxes filled with books was akin to Scrooge being jolted by the vision of Marley. But stunning as this surprise appearance was, the whole thing only gets even more astounding. We took the lids off the boxes to reveal – ta-da! --GUN BOOKS! Lots and lots of gun books – in fact, so many gun books that they account for three-quarters of the lot. And get this – the rest of the books are about swords. It would appear that at this moment weapons R me.

You know I love gun books, but really, this is too crazy a coincidence. He’s brought gun books before from time to time, but never in such great quantity. His bailiwick has always been Civil War history, art, unusual cookbooks, and theater which is why I’m so fixated on this. In the good old days he came only once a year, but when he did the air swelled with the sound of carols – “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas ….”

Not only were the books GREAT, but there were at least three times as many as he brought this time. We always referred to them as “the 28 boxes” though the figure varied a few boxes either way every year. Sometimes he would even show up a second time in the same year, but you could always count on him in the fall like apples, pumpkins and trick or treat. As much as I would like to think he’s back I doubt very much that he really is. He hadn’t even  been scouting for these – he’d just chanced on them and decided to give it a go for old time’s sake. The best I can hope for is that he’ll chance on some more somewhere down the line. I know he knows how much we appreciate him, so that alone might spur him on during the off-season in agriculture.

Anyway, I spent Saturday evening sorting through the offerings and spotted many titles I’d had in the past and could easily reactivate. The difference between this bunch of gun books and those from last week is that these are much newer. Last week’s were the golden oldies – these are as slick and shiny as an oil spill which means they must either be sold in the store or online. To my amazement, the prices had not only held on most, but in a few cases had even escalated, so it looks like most of them will go online. Though it’s all good, I find myself wishing again for a seasoned picker. Someone else tried to do it for us awhile back, but didn’t have the knack no matter how many times I explained it all. Yes, I could have gotten him a scanner, but I am not going to surreptitiously do the very thing I rail about even if I’m not the one wielding it. What I want is a seasoned scout like the newly minted farmer. He takes one look at a book, sizes it up, and there are very few duds. In fact, he even segregates what he considers acceptable, but not faint worthy, in a separate box and charges less for those.

The sad fact is the seasoned picker may well be a thing of the past, an iconic image of bookselling in the Golden Age. At this juncture I’m grateful to have even known the joy of having had a picker -- which of course doesn't mean I've given up on revitalizing him!