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What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

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Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#41
In a book I found at Goodwill back in 94/95 there was a 8x10 photo of an orangutan sitting alone in a metal cage. It wasn't a part of a book and the book wasn't about apes or zoos or anything related, it was just a random photo someone had stuck in there. I asked how much for the photo, and they gave it to me. I still have it in a box in my office.

Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#42
post #6

Once in a while, I see a cluster of books in a Goodwill or Salvation Army that are very niche. Like, 20 books on flyfishing among 200 books. I bet the most interesting people to meet have odd collections of books.

Those can be very valuable. I have a little library of Victorian angling books that someone will donate similarly, yet cost several hundreds to accumulate. As the saying goes: "pray your wife doesn't sell it for what you told her you paid for it"

Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#43
Although not really strange, I bought a copy of Green Mansions from a rural, and dingy, old used book store. Stuck deeply in the pages were a bunch of silver certificates of several denominations dating from the 1920s and 30s, through the 1950s. Face value well into the hundreds of dollars. Still have them. Turns out the book itself is a first edition from 1904. Still have it, too.

Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#44
Back in 94/95 at Goodwill I was thumbing through some random book and there was a 8x10 photo of an orangutan sitting alone in a metal cage. It wasn't a part of a book and the book wasn't about apes or zoos or anything related, it was just a random photo someone had stuck in there. I asked how much for the photo, and they gave it to me. I still have it in a box in my office.

Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoting: > ... I looked through some of the books in the top boxes and realized that there were some very old, and often valuable, books in this boxes. You're right that this isn't saying that the books were definitely worth a lot of money, so it really say something remotely similar.

That's a far stretch to "tens of thousands of dollars." A valuable second-hand book can be $50.

The article is about a guy who finds a friend inside of his pallet of books and you're all arguing about the theoretical value of the books.

Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoting: > ... I looked through some of the books in the top boxes and realized that there were some very old, and often valuable, books in this boxes. You're right that this isn't saying that the books were definitely worth a lot of money, so it really say something remotely similar.

That's a far stretch to "tens of thousands of dollars." A valuable second-hand book can be $50.

I quite recently bought a used book for something like $100. Certain books can be expensive, it was not a popular or particularly good book, but the writer was a character and I guess therefore his written books are valuable niche items... Also no more will be printed, so there is limited supply. Similar for some old music sheets or records.

However these are definitely not liquid, if you are going to sell them you maybe have to store them for a long time.

Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoting: > ... I looked through some of the books in the top boxes and realized that there were some very old, and often valuable, books in this boxes. You're right that this isn't saying that the books were definitely worth a lot of money, so it really say something remotely similar.

That's a far stretch to "tens of thousands of dollars." A valuable second-hand book can be $50.

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