I started a blog of this name in 2006, which turned into a monthly column in Book and Magazine Collector. As the name suggests it was written to encourage book-lovers to take a different approach to building up a collection. There are millions of old books out there, and many are far more interesting than the same old titles and themes trotted out by established authorities like… well, Book and Magazine Collector, for one.
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Sixteenth Thousand Alice in Wonderland
22nd October 2017That ‘Sixteenth Thousand’ means just what it says – the batch of books this one came from completed a run of 16,000 copies. It would be easy to say that this was therefore the 16th edition if we knew that…
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1936 Town Planner Map of London – in a plain brown envelope.
21st October 2017It’s true. Have a look here, on ebay. People collect maps for all sorts of reasons and those red lines are one of them. Finding the territory of London District Surveyors in the thirties cannot be easy, but here it…
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Banting for A Decent Meal
20th October 2017One of the things I love about book selling is that I’m always learning something new. This week, for example, I learnt that another copy of a book I’ve been trying to flog over the table for £100 was on…
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Edwardian school wall map is 21st Century interior design heaven
19th October 2017This is a huge wall map with TWO cute-as-it-gets features. First, it has brass eye holes at the top corners so that it could be hung on the wall. ( You got ten in a box – I had one…
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Too Early For Christmas, Part 1.
12th October 2017It’s terrible, isn’t it. All these retailers attempting to milk as much as possible from Christmas. Take your mind off it with this little curiosity – an 1843 advertisement for ‘A Christmas Carol.’ It was published in ‘Punch’, December 30th,…