Ever had any luck with finding rare books in thrift stores?

[Bob Ducca]

Bumping this to brag about a garage sale find from this morning.

Found a 1st edition (2nd printing) of "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" for $1. Book is in very fine condition (doesn't seem to have ever been read) and the dustjacket is in very good condition with only a couple of very minor tears. Not sure if it's worth much at all, but it's gotta be worth more than a buck. Photos here.

[chela]

In an antique/junk shop, St Elmo's Fire by Augusta Jane Evans. printed late 1800's. great condition, under $5. Turns out she was a notable southern author. It caught my eye because the name is the same as my kid, had to show her.......

[Typo Knig]

I got a signed copy of Charles Sheffield's The Web Between The Worlds from a nearby used paperback shop. I think I paid $5 for it. It's probably not worth a fortune, but I went back the next day to ask them if they shouldn't charge more for a signed book. Nope - they were fine with the price they charged. It's still part of my collection of signed books that might be worth something someday"

[ChrisM]

We have a nice St. Vincent de Paul thrift store here that has an excellent book room, but that means that anything really valuable usually gets noticed and picked up pretty quickly. I've found a lot of great books there, but the only unusually valuable things I ever found were a set of three old 1st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons modules (G1, G2, and G3) still in the shrink-wrap. I sold them for $50 or $60 each on eBay.

[Cartooniverse]

Dad used to buy books by the pound in Huron, SD and Cleveland, OH and Wichita KS and such. Mom handed me a signed copy of a Thomas Mann book a few weeks ago. She also has a complete set of the works of Schiller, in German, from the ... 1860's?

Dad loved the classics and was buying from people who sold by the pound. Pretty cool. She asked me to find a good book buyer to see what they are worth. ( If anything ). It does seem to me that they're wicked hard to find. Don't mean to hijack, but are there any reputable rare books dealers in NYC these days?

[Slade]

Originally Posted by Crime Scene

LOL! That was my response too. I called my wife and asked her if she had ever heard of the wedding edition. She said she would look into it and found the value of it online. I'm not sure why in the hell you would ever give that as a wedding present, but lo and behold there it was.

Wikipedia has this: "While Hitler was in power (1933–1945), Mein Kampf came to be available in three common editions. The first, the Volksausgabe or People's Edition, featured the original cover on the dust jacket and was navy blue underneath with a gold swastika eagle embossed on the cover. The Hochzeitsausgabe, or Wedding Edition, in a slipcase with the seal of the province embossed in gold onto a parchment-like cover was given free to marrying couples. In 1940, the Tornister-Ausgabe was released. This edition was a compact, but unabridged, version in a red cover and was released by the post office available to be sent to loved ones fighting at the front. These three editions combined both volumes into the same book."

I take this to mean that the local Nazi Party officials routinely gave a copy of the wedding edition to every German couple who got married at that time.

[Slade]

One of my most treasured books as a child was a sky-blue hardback containing all the Jeeves short stories. Foolishly, I sold a load of books when I moved away in my late teens, and this was the one I always regretted losing.

Thirty years later, I was visiting my parents in the same Devon town where they'd always lived, and found myself with half an hour to kill in the local market. Browsing through the second-hand bookstall there, I discovered a copy of that same edition of the Jeeves stories, in good condition at a very reasonable price.

I can't prove it was the selfsame copy, but I like to imagine it drifting round various Devon homes for three decades before finally finding its way back to me.

[Dendarii Dame]

Years ago I bought a copy of Thoroughbreds by C.W. Anderson for $5. It turned out to be autographed, which presumably would have increased the value, but I wasn't able to find out how much.

[limegreen]

There used to a "used book" store that was nothing but an old barn filled with boxes of books piled head high in haphazard stacks. You would drive up, roust the old man out of his house, and spend hours digging through tottery piles. I did find an American first edition of Tarzan there, once.

[Cartooniverse]

There was an immense and comprehensive used book store in the original Cheltenham Shopping Center just over the city line from Philadelphia ( anchored at one end by the infamous Cheltenham Theater, where I saw a Cinerama print of 2001: A Space Odyssey when it was in original release).

That store formed and informed my childhood and teenage years. The owner was a sharp kind fellow who adored reading, adored books and firmly believed in allowing kids to read whatever caught their eye. I've always been in his debt for letting me buy a used copy of the paperback run of The Hite Report on Female Sexuality.

I was 13.

[GreenElf]

I bought a limited edition Kalevala for $4 and a few AD&D modules for $1 each at Goodwill. That's about it for rare books, but it shows that the local Goodwill doesn't pay much attention to book values. It's just a matter of showing up at the right moment before someone else snatches the goods since it's a busy store.

[digs]

I'd like to point out that I spend a lot of time in used bookstores, and Goodwill-type stores, and I've bought hundreds if not thousands of used books...

... and not one has been a neglected Shakespeare first folio, or a five-buck copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard. Nor are any of my finds autographed "Mark Twa-- ah,screw it, I'm Sam Clemens!"

Just books I wanted to read.

[WordMan]

Originally Posted by digs

I'd like to point out that I spend a lot of time in used bookstores, and Goodwill-type stores, and I've bought hundreds if not thousands of used books...

... and not one has been a neglected Shakespeare first folio, or a five-buck copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard. Nor are any of my finds autographed "Mark Twa-- ah,screw it, I'm Sam Clemens!"

Just books I wanted to read.

Really? Smug much?

Glad I didn't tell the story about how I flipped a first edition, second state copy of As I Lay Dying, a first of Player Piano and another book plus cash in order to score a First edition do To Kill a Mockingbird.

<score!!!>

[digs]

Originally Posted by WordMan

Really? Smug much?

No, actually the opposite. I keep looking for a "buried treasure" (local comic book guy's term-- he found a rare Silver Age Superboy comic in a box he'd bought for $10). But I feel like a loser after all these stories.
Hmm, I would love to work my way up to smug. maybe I'm getting there, and I didn't know.

But I love to live vicariously, so keep those first edition Harper Lee stories coming (now, if you'd only found a copy of the sequel, like I did...)

[WordMan]

Originally Posted by digs

No, actually the opposite. I keep looking for a "buried treasure" (local comic book guy's term-- he found a rare Silver Age Superboy comic in a box he'd bought for $10). But I feel like a loser after all these stories.
Hmm, I would love to work my way up to smug. maybe I'm getting there, and I didn't know.

But I love to live vicariously, so keep those first edition Harper Lee stories coming (now, if you'd only found a copy of the sequel, like I did...)

Sorry - please forgive my complete misread of your comment.

Fwiw, I had far more "finds" when I was shopping at small booksellers more than thrift stores. They've picked over a lot of stuff so the hit rate for interesting stuff is higher, but they still can undervalue things here and there. That's how I got the As I Lay Dying for a fraction of its value and traded it towards TKaM for a lot more.

[digs]

Originally Posted by WordMan

Sorry - please forgive my complete misread of your comment.

No harm, no foul... my last line could've seemed smug. But I do just buy stuff I want to read.

Drives my local comic book guy nuts. I'll buy a Legion of Super-Heroes from the 60s and then roll it up and put it in my back pocket. I tell him that's what I did when I was ten: "So I'm gonna jump on my Schwinn Sting-Ray and ride down to the malt shoppe, order a Grape Nehi, and actually read this!" Last time CBG said "So, you don't want to buy a Mylar acid-free sleeve to go with that?"