No treasure trove, but I did find a nice little place in Belfast that sold books literally for pennies (as opposed to a few pounds and pennies). I bought one book and then found it had burnt to the ground with the rest of the mall :smack:
Strange place, a few second hand places in there with it too and some sort of rubber/leather gear fetish place opposite. The proprieter of the book shop seemed to run it to give himself a place to read and keep active in his retirement, which is a goal I too would like to acheive 
In the Glorious Serendipity category: Once while attending an SF convention in Orlando – a WorldCon, it was, so this must have been 1992 – I got into a discussion of Avram Davidson with a fellow fan in the hucksters’ room, and he mentioned that one of the few Davidson books I did not own – Vergil in Averno – was available at a nearby, warehouse-sized used-book store. I ran for my car, zipped to the store, and there it was, in exactly the part of the store specified.
I really don’t recall how the subject came up . . . nor do I recall how that fellow happened to know where the book was . . . nor do I recall signing any pact in blood, but there were some unexplained stitches the next morning . . .
Gosh. I adore used bookstores. Just scored a few great hits two weeks ago, in Burbank.
- Final Cut: Dreams and Disaster in the making of Heaven’s Gate. hard to find
- Light Years: Confessions of a Cinematographer. Both a soft and hard copy.
- Found a copy of The Orlando Furioso from around 1900 as a gift for my brother. In okay shape, about $ 25.00 a bunch of years ago.
- A copy of Shere Hite’s “Report On Female Sexuality”. I found it in my local used bookstore at Cheltenham Shopping Center when I was 14. Kind of changed my life.
Cartooniverse
I bought the complete Encyclopedia of Philosophy for $50 at a used bookstore in Olympia, WA. That’s about it.
WordMan writes (about a Tolkien book):
> More than that, my friend, from a top rare-book dealer, where most of the
> copies are these days. At least $35,000 depending how how much buzz there
> is about movies or potential sales of movie rights, etc…
I thought this was a little strange, so I asked so people who are experts in the prices of Tolkien books if there was any increase in the prices of rare Tolkien books because of the Peter Jackson films. They say that there didn’t seem to be any significant such increases. They say that it’s hard to tell for certain. Not that many rare Tolkien books go on sale and the ones that do differ in editions and conditions so much that it’s hard to compare from one year to the next. Of course, like all rare books, rare Tolkien books will tend to go up in price as time goes on, because of inflation and because the number of books in private hands deceases. There’s also a certain amount of random variation from one year to the next. At most, the Jackson films may have caused only a slight bump in the prices.
Incidentally, they also tell me that the most expensive Tolkien book available for sale at the moment is a signed true first British edition of The Hobbit that’s priced at 82,500 pounds.
While visiting another website I read about a kinky horror novel called “Let’s Go Play At The Adams’.” A few weeks later I casually picked it up at a nearby used bookstore. I discovered a couple of months after that, that the book was in copyright hell and extremely hard to find via casual searching, as it hadn’t been reprinted, ever. It’s pretty much a cult novel, now, with several sites devoted to it.
at a garage sale “I AM NOT SPOCK”… by some guy who was in startrek (25 cents)
Original Hardcover of "confederacy of dunces’ (on;y 8500 were printed… ($4)
paperback of “Do androids dream of electric sheep”, signed by author ($2)
note on above, they had marked it down as a defaced copy, because of signature)
1st edition of Cosmic Banditos (if you haven’t read it, you are living it, if you have read it, you are watching other’s live it)
regards (smugly)
fml
I found a copy of Life’s The World We Live In, the large-format volume with the gorgeous illustrations. Not that the book is all that rare, but we had a copy when I was growing up. I loved the dinosaur plates and the glorious space art of Chester Bonestell.
