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From the Collected Works of Bookseller Hints

 

From the Collected Works of Bookseller Hints . . .

 

 Most new bookdealers burn out within three years...

  

[Satnrose]

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Re: From the Collected Works of Bookseller Hints

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From the Collected Works of Bookseller Hints . . .


Don't marry a mismatch.


Sometimes you can save the DJ but not the book and have a shotgun wedding. i.e., you can buy a book for the DJ and "marry" it to an equivalent copy of the first edition. Sometimes ex-library copies have been unmarked: the labels, etc., were affixed to the mylar covers instead of the DJ itself, and the mylar was glued to the book, not the DJ.


There are many collectors who object to the shotgun weddings, and with good reason: often the later printing DJs are not exactly the same as the 1sts.


If you are going to be a matchmaker, you must be very careful that the shotgun wedding will be a good marriage in all things, esp. condition & issue. A book that has been without a dust jacket may be in poorer condition than one which has had a dust jacket. i.e., spine sunned or spots on the boards or the later edition dust jackets may have review blubs or awards given after the publication of the first edition. Matchmaking doesn't always work as sometimes later printings are a different size as is the case of most book clubs and books like The Catcher in the Rye or Tales of the South Pacific.


The legality of this maneuver is a little murky. Some booksellers feel that an appropriate marriage does not have to be disclosed; other booksellers feel that the buyer should be told of the marriage; and still other booksellers feel that even if you tell the buyer what you have done it may not be disclosed to the next buyer…


[Satnrose]

 

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From the Collected Works of Bookseller Hints . . .


Never break up a set. It would be like breaking up a family.


There are people who are willing to pay a premium to have a complete or nearly complete set that are nearly identical in condition and other factors rather than trying to piece a set together.


That said, most likely there are some exceptions to that rule of thumb...


[Bookhall]

 

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Message 257 of 353
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From the Collected Works of Bookseller Hints . . .


1st ed. issue points of several Roald Dahl books:


Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator states "First Edition"


Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has 6 lines of printing information on the colophon [back] page, including the statement "Paper manufactured by S.D. Warren Co."


James and the Giant Peach "Bound by H. Wolff" stated on colophon, not "Book Press"


"Glass" is fairly common.
"Chocolate" is scarcer.
"Peach" is VERY RARE!


[Satnrose]

 

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Message 258 of 353
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From the Collected Works of Bookseller Hints . . .


It's easier to sell something expensive if you have a bunch of other expensive things up for sale at the same time. Bidders will thus then have more confidence in bidding. [or buying]


This goes along with the "critical mass factor", where items of a type tend to do better if clustered. So, it's a good strategy to hold stuff back until you can list all of a kind on the same day.


[Satnrose]


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From the Collected Works of Bookseller Hints . . .


Some tips about signatures in books:


Nearly every signature below the author's portrait is printed.


Usually, not all the time, an author will sign a book on the half-title. Another fairly common place for an inscription by the author is on the front free endpaper.


Check to see if the ink sits atop the page instead of pressed into it. Most signatures with a pen or a pencil leave an imprint. Felt tip pens do not.


Examine it closely with a magnifying glass. Ink trails off at the ends of lines and thickens in the middle. Where lines cross each other, the ink is doubled. There is usually a variation in the strength of the line: nobody can write exactly evenly.


Look to see if the ink is the same as the typeset print.


Look at the back of the paper to see if there's an imprint.


Look to see if the signature is exactly level and/or exactly centered on the page. If so, it ain't real.


And then, of course, there are secretarial and other proxy signatures. And the autopen.


[Satnrose]

 

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Message 260 of 353
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Look at the back of the paper to see if there's an imprint.

 

A small caution here. I recently acquired an inscribed/signed copy of Winston Churchill's The Aftermath. On the back of the dust jacket (alas, a remnant in my copy) there is what appears to be a second signature. The color is slightly different than the surrounding text, and if you hold the verso up to a light at an angle, there are clearly some raised - and to my eye random - imprints, as though a pen had been pressed into it. However, when comparing it to other dust jackets, the precise "signature" is duplicated every time. So, I'm guessing that this was separately stamped to the dust jacket. A suggested addition to Joel's list would be to always check other copies for duplications.

 

An aside: Hands down the most unpleasant transaction I have ever had on eBay was to carelessly purchase a "signed" Willie Nelson First Edition that was clearly a facsimile upon receipt. The unending message exchange I endured with the seller was insulting to me, not to mention withering, before I was ultimately, under vehement protest by the seller, granted a refund by eBay. As a gesture of goodwill, I applied a Brodart sleeve to the dust jacket before returning it and was subsequently accused of altering her book! All of this would have been prevented had I simply searched for similarly "signed" copies before pulling the trigger. 

Message 261 of 353
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Bookthink/Craig - Good addition to the hint re: checking other copies for duplications. Sorry to hear about the Churchill as well as the Nelson.

 

 

Given the changes in state laws in the past decade, I wonder if this hint is still true?

 


From the Collected Works of Bookseller Hints . . .


LSD books sell better than marijuana books.


[Satnrose]


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Message 262 of 353
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From the Collected Works of Bookseller Hints . . .


Most eBayers are hunters, not gatherers.


Most bookstores depend on gathering over hunting. In fact, most do no hunting whatsoever: they sit in their webs like fat spiders and let the flies come to them.


Most of us are the new breed of bookscout: but instead of wholesaling to the dealers, we are enabled to sell at the retail level. This is a new economic paradigm, not only for bookdealers, but for radical ragpicker capitalists of all kinds.


But usually, we buy for a few dollars and sell for a few dollars more. At the top level of bookdealing, the princes of our profession spend a lot of money to make more. Very little of what they do is "discovery". This is our most valuable function: we find that which has been overlooked, cast-off, underappreciated and/or undervalued, and rescue it for posterity and bucks.


[Satnrose]

 

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Message 263 of 353
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Re: From the Collected Works of Bookseller Hints

LSD books sell better than marijuana books.

 

On average, they still do. One possible explanation is that, though marijuana does have a higher profile now than it has in recent years, LSD has always had at least some connection to awakening/enlightenment/etc., as a kind of gateway to heightened forms of perception - and in recent years there has been a burgeoning interest in spirituality. Also, LSD pioneers Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) remain a focus of collectors, and LSD enjoys a cachet in this context that marijuana does not. 

Message 264 of 353
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Bookthink/Craig - Good info!

 


From the Collected Works of Bookseller Hints . . .


There are reasons why a book may be valuable for no apparent reason. This is why a feel for books is not enough. There's too much to learn. Nobody can know it all. Everybody misses something.


[Satnrose]


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Message 265 of 353
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Re: From the Collected Works of Bookseller Hints

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From the Collected Works of Bookseller Hints . . .


Your goal in writing a description is to communicate with the person reading it.


If you are selling a $20K incunabule, you want your description to have all the detail a potential buyer for this book would want, expressed in the manner he expects to see it.


If you are selling a more ordinary book, you have to keep in mind whether the potential buyer will understand your description.


BAL 15392 is fine if you think your buyer will know what "BAL" is and will appreciate that you have checked the book, but it means nothing to the person who doesn't know the abbreviation. If it is your judgement that all potential customers for the book will know "BAL," then use it. If not, explain it.


If you have a book that says it is printed in an edition of 300 copies, it is perfectly comprehensible to the book trade to describe it as 1/300, but this does not necessarily communicate to a person who is not in the trade.


If you have a book that is not the first edition, but is the first printing with some additional attribute, such as illustrations, saying "first thus" puts the person reading the description into a guessing game about what "thus" refers to. If you say "first illustrated edition," everything is clear.


[oldbookshopnj]

 

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Message 266 of 353
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From the Collected Works of Bookseller Hints . . .


Not all dates in books tell you when they were printed:


A date at the end of the preface is simply the date at which the author finished writing the preface. It is not the date of the first printing, and it could be a hundred years before the printing of the book you are looking at.


The copyright date is not the date the book was printed--it is the date the book was submitted to the copy right office for registration.


Both of these dates do give you one positive piece of information, however. The book was not printed before the date you have found.


[oldbookshopnj]

 

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Message 267 of 353
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From the Collected Works of Bookseller Hints . . .


Any JFK [Kennedy] assassination book signed by a member of the Warren Commission is worth big bux.


Especially Gerald Ford, who wrote PORTRAIT OF AN ASSASSIN. The one-volume Warren Commission issued by the GPO is quite common around here in the DC area. On page v [?] are the facsimile signatures of all the members of the WC. Sometimes one or all of the members would sign on that page, instead of the endpaper or title page [as is usual].


[Satnrose]

 

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Message 268 of 353
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Re: From the Collected Works of Bookseller Hints

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From the Collected Works of Bookseller Hints . . .


Learn to read all the different types of catalogs.


That includes dealer catalogs, and those of auction houses, auction records, libraries, bibliographies, catalogues raisonne, checklists, A/B&N, price guides, etc. They all requires different techniques to ascertain whatever key piece of information that it is you may need.


The BAL, the Bibliography of American Literature by Jacob Blanck et al. [9 volumes], uses all of the basic hardcore terminology of book bibliography. This means that if you can train yourself to read and understand a typical entry there, you can get a fairly accurate mental image of what the book should be, right down to the color and texture of its binding. A BAL entry may look complicated, what with collations of signatures and binding terminology and pagination and publishing history, but is actually the most complete form of this kind of thing. And, once you get the hang of it, simple.


[Satnrose]

 

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Message 269 of 353
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Re: From the Collected Works of Bookseller Hints

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From the Collected Works of Bookseller Hints . . .


Kennedy Assasination books.


There seems to be 1000's of books that deal with the President's death. Most are common as dirt. These are the books published by the big New York book companies. I would steer clear of them as a rule. The key book to any serious collection begins with:


· Earl Warren (Chief Justice): of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy [The complete 27 volumes only. The one volume edition is worthless.]


The books to watch out for were usually published by a small regional press or by the author. Most were printed in small numbers and never recieved wide distribution. Look for sloppy graphics, bindings, and printing. Look for "early" dates... generally pre-1970 stuff. And don't be turned off by those in trade paperback. Most were never published in hardcover. Some of the authors/titles to look for:


· Penn Jones: Forgive My Grief [in four volumes, any of which are quite collectible] (late 1960's)


· Jesse Curry: Retired Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry Reveals His Personal JFK Assasination File (1969)


· W. R. Morris & R. B. Cutler: Alias Oswald (1985)


· Harold Weisberg: Post Mortem - JFK Assasination Cover-Up Smashed (1975)


[Gruetzmacher]

 

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Message 270 of 353
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