On 10/15/2011 0:42 AM, ellen ford wrote:
Does anyone ever find anything at the Salvation army stores? I never
have and I'm convincrd that we "civilians' never get to see anything
like what Francis scores because the stores cull everyrthing that
strikes them as valuable to hold for dealers who know titles and values.

Although this seems to have been a long tme practice,--as long as I
can remember anyway-- these days it's so easy to find out the
approximate selling price of almost any printed matter, I am super
impressed by Fracnis's finds--and also commit a deadly sin every time
Francis reports about read about them: N V !!

EF, newbiy lurker



Hi Ellen,

I have never had any luck at Salvation Army either. I also
have never found Salvation Army to be equal to Goodwill
generally. I don't think that Goodwill culls books -
because I don't think they understand them at all. It is
all a matter of who is giving away what under what
circumstances. And, from my recent experience at Savers, it
is clear that they don't cull them either.

Your remark about how easy it has become to find the price
of a book makes me think of a related subject - the people
who come into stores and book sales with these scanners.
What a waste of money. A scanner cannot tell you if it is a
first printing or not, or advise you about relation of
condition and value of a book. And it is completely useless
for any book printed before 1976. There is no substitute
for the long, slow process of learning who wrote what. And
even experienced dealers miss good deals because they cannot
know everything.

By way of example . . . There is a book sale I go to once
a month. It is open to the public but those of us who have
been going for years get email notice and arrive early for
coffee and donuts. Most of the people who come are dealers,
with some collectors like me. One day I came across a slim
volume of poetry, Color (Harper, 1925) by Countee Cullen,
his first published work. A number of the others had passed
over it, but I recognized the name as an important
participant in the Harlem Renaissance who illustrated his
own books with androgynous figures. If I had not taken an
interest in the development of African-American literature
and read about the Harlem Renaissance, I too would not have
had any reason to pick up that book. And a scanner would
have been had nothing to scan.

I should note that my mother was a book collector turned
dealer when she retired, and she got me in the habit of
going to book sales when I was a teenager. She subscribed
to the AB Bookman magazine, and I started absorbing
information about collecting about 50 years ago. She was
also a voracious reader, and after I was in a car accident
at age 8 where I suffered a head injury and had a hard time
getting to sleep, she would read to me to help me fall
asleep. At age 10, she was reading Thackeray's A Book of
Snobs aloud. Unfortunately for her, I liked the dry humor.

--
Francis A. Miniter

Mesure is Medicine þauh þou muche ȝeor[n]e.
Al nis not good to þe gost þat þe bodi lykeþ,
Ne lyflode to þe licam þat leof is to þe soule.

William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman
Passus I, lines 33 - 35