I love Yard Sales

[SeaCat]

You never know what you'll find in a Yard Sale, especially an Estate Sale.

Last Weekend my wife and I visited a couple of these. We probably dropped a hundred dollars in them but we got some nice things. (An nice area rug for the living room comes to mind.)

In one of them I found what looked like a Scrimshawed Whales Tooth. It looked nice but had that Reddish Orange color on the base that meant it was made of resin. I paid the five dollars because it seemed to call to me.

When I got it home I put it on a shelf and left it there but something about it didn't seem right. When I talked with my father that evening I mentioned it to him and he laughed at me.

The next day I picked it up and looked it over again. I took it outside in the bright sunlight. On one side of the base there seemed to be a crack in the resin. I started picking at it with my thumbnail and the crack seemed to be growing and extending around the base of the tooth. I kept working at it and suddenly the entire base of the tooth seemed to come off in my hand.

Thinking I had broken it I looked at the rough cone in my hand then looked at the tooth. Much to my surprise when I turned over the tooth I found not broken resin but smooth yellow white. I didn't say anything to anyone but put the tooth back on the shelf after fitting the resin back in place.

For five dollars I had purchased an actual six inch tall Scrimshawed Sperm Whale Tooth.

I love Yard Sales.

Cat

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Damnation! A folk art treasure. Folk Art is so hot these days and an actual scrimshawed sperm whale tooth is probably worth a couple thou. Good shopping, that Cat.

http://www.antiquearts.com/4373/PictPage/3923495921.html

http://www.antiquearts.com/4373/PictPage/3923491734.html

http://www.trocadero.com/stores/antiquesemporium/items/979289/item979289.html

 

[stephen55]

out of the mouths of babes.............

About a decade ago, while visiting The Big City, I wandered into it's university library. They were having a book sale, getting rid of various and assorted no longer wanted items. All books were priced at $5.00. Being a book hound, I had a look.

In the large section titled miscellaneous, I found a first edition (1913) of The Dry Fly Mans Handbook, by Halford. Right next to it was the first edition (1902) of Dry Fly Entomology, also by Halford. As I fought to still my beating heart, there it was. The first (1899) edition of Fly Fishing, by Viscount Grey Of Fallodon.

The sale was "cash only". I had some loose change and my bank card. Trying my best to look nonchalant, I asked the young lady at the cash register to hold onto "these three discards", then ran to an ATM. After paying my $15.00 in cash, with the three volumes safely in my hands, I asked the girl if she had any idea what she had just sold to me. She gave me a blank look, muttered something like "whatever.." and proceeded to look bored.

 

[oggbashan]

About a decade ago, while visiting The Big City, I wandered into it's university library. They were having a book sale, getting rid of various and assorted no longer wanted items. All books were priced at $5.00. Being a book hound, I had a look.

...

My County Library sold me the massive leather-bound book of condolence for the assassination of President Lincoln with Secretary of State Seward's handwritten signature - for ten pounds, and a commemorative book for the dedication of the monument to Will Adams, Pilot, of Gillingham (the original Angin-San of James Clavell's Shogun) - for fifty pence.

One of our local junk shops sold me a battered first edition of Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles for one pound, and a first edition of Charles Dickens Barnaby Rudge for another pound.

I sold the Lincoln book to an American for 250 dollars: gave the Will Adams book to the Mayor of Gillingham as a gift because Gillingham didn't have a single copy; sold The Hound of the Baskervilles to another bookdealer for eighty pounds - he had it rebacked, cost ninety pounds, and he sold it for three hundred; and I still have the Barnaby Rudge.

Og

P.S. Until the 1980s, MacMillans, the publishers, would sell any book in stock in their warehouse at the marked price, no matter how old the price was. One bookdealer, in desperation wanting a very rare 1910 book that he couldn't find anywhere, asked MacMillans if they had a copy. They sold him their stored ten copies at seven shillings and sixpence (37.5 pence) each, the 1910 price. The market value of worn copies was seven hundred pounds. He sold each "as new" 1910 edition at over one thousand pounds each and then bought dozens more "new stock" books until MacMillan got wise. They made millions from their warehouse back stock.

In the 1970s I bought a book I had wanted for years through a local new bookdealer who added it to his weekly order from that publisher, not expecting that he would get it. Including his commission, I paid ten shillings (50 pence) for a book that I would have paid ten pounds for secondhand.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

By God, Oggbashan, you've really got me thinking, now. What a dangerous concept. D'ya think all the publishers have wised up?

 

[Zeb_Carter]

By God, Oggbashan, you've really got me thinking, now. What a dangerous concept. D'ya think all the publishers have wised up?

Duh, Bear!

 

[oggbashan]

By God, Oggbashan, you've really got me thinking, now. What a dangerous concept. D'ya think all the publishers have wised up?

They've all amalgamated, at least in the UK, and having heard about MacMillans, they reviewed their warehouse stocks. After all, storage space costs money.

Now, new books are remaindered and sold off within a couple of months of first publication. The most difficult books to source are those published within the last 18 months. The publishers have got rid of them, and the secondhand bookdealers haven't got them yet.

POD (print on demand) is usually the only source for recently out-of-print books.

Og

 

[voluptuary_manque]

The one I really want is long out of print and I wouldn't put any money on the publisher even still being in business. Guess I'll just have to pay the damned price for it. Foo!