Wow! What a beautiful story! Thank you for sharing this. On a side note, this is the kind of stuff I love about blogs, people sharing the nice, unexpected and serendipitous moments of life.
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?
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
The books were worth tens of thousands of dollars (sold individually on the second-hand book market, after being carefully catalogued etc.), but nobody interested in buying books happened to be at the auction and the auctioneer set a $1 minimum bid because he didn’t know anything about books and was more interested in disposing of the books than making money from the sale. The auction house could surely get significa…
Good auctioneers make sure that there is a buyer for specific things like that. I'm surprised that there wasn't a used book buyer in the crowd. Though maybe his guy didn't show up.
Good auctioneers make sure there are at least two buyers for specific things like that.
Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?
#63Reminds me of a time as a kid when I went to the bookstore and put positive notes in the books, like "have a wonderful day!"
The notes I leave in books at bookstores all say "Who is John Galt?"
Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?
#64Once 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"
As I've got older though I'm starting to realize I don't care what my wife sells my stuff for after I'm gone. What I care about is she sells it to someone who wants it. I want my stuff sold to some collectors who will appreciate it, and not the scrap dealer. If the collector gets it for less than the scrap dealer will pay that would be fine with me. (and I think I'll leave my wife enough that she can afford to give it away like that)
Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
The books were worth tens of thousands of dollars (sold individually on the second-hand book market, after being carefully catalogued etc.), but nobody interested in buying books happened to be at the auction and the auctioneer set a $1 minimum bid because he didn’t know anything about books and was more interested in disposing of the books than making money from the sale. The auction house could surely get significa…
Good auctioneers make sure that there is a buyer for specific things like that. I'm surprised that there wasn't a used book buyer in the crowd. Though maybe his guy didn't show up.
It's a Salvation Army auction. I imagine the main purpose is to dump stuff that they haven't found any other use for. They get all this stuff for free, any money they happen to make from an auction is just a nice bonus.
Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?
#66The wonderful book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki contains a page which is blank except for a drawing of a fly in one corner. Nowhere else in the book is it mentioned or any explanation provided. Having practiced Zen for 10 years, I have an idea that might explain it. But on the surface, it is completely strange and inexplicable.
Care to explain your idea?
Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?
#67The wonderful book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki contains a page which is blank except for a drawing of a fly in one corner. Nowhere else in the book is it mentioned or any explanation provided. Having practiced Zen for 10 years, I have an idea that might explain it. But on the surface, it is completely strange and inexplicable.
The book is the explanation :)
Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?
#68Once 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"
I thought that saying was about a fellow's workshop tools? (not me, honest luv...) However, anyone who's dealt in rare/collectable/used ANYTHING has also run into the opposite problem: when someone's sure what they inherited is super valuable, and it's really not. Worse when it goes to waste because they want thousands for it and nobody sane will pay that, then they dump it out of spite. I probably ought to leave a note in the safe about which of my own things are worth appraising (not many) and which not to bother (99%).
Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?
#69My dad died a couple of months ago and I'm still sorting through his and my mother's stuff, including a lot of books.
I discovered in one of them he'd written a fake dedication from the author "To ____ who could have written this far better than I".
And in the front of a copy of Tristram Shandy he'd written: "This is the 3rd copy I have bought. All the others have been STOLEN. If I ever get to read it I may find out why!"
Makes me miss him more.
Re: What’s the strangest thing you ever found in a book?
#70I have an interest in medical books from the first half of the 20th Century. It's fascinating what you can find, even in books that have been passed through many sets of hands.
In one, I found a stockbrocker's letter and managed to trace the owner to his historic pubmed articles (all > 100 years old), as well as obituaries and probable descendants on WikiTree.