An educational and informational site about rare, old and antiquarian books.
I was born in Mainz, Germany. I lived for the first month of my life in a printing plant before being brought to a merchant. I can remember very little about that time, for as soon as I left the plant I was securely stored away in a bookcase outside of town. I was very […]
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Since 1949, AB Bookman’s Weekly, which ceased publication 50 years later, strived to establish the criteria for grading the condition of used books. AB’s definitions of “Very Fine” (or “As New”), “Fine”, “Very Good”, “Good”, “Fair”, and so forth, have basically become the industry standard. The condition of each book is, in a very real […]
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Book repair, book restoration, book preservation, book conservation or do nothing at all. With a worn or damaged book in hand, the choices for treatment (or no treatment) may seem bewilderingly complex. Add to this the contradictory advice and opinions offered by different authorities, it may seem impossible to come up with a ‘best’ course […]
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Stopping at a yard sale a few years back, I picked up a set of The Encyclopedia Britannica 11th edition, produced during the year 1910. Fascinated by the idea of owning a cross section of the trunk of the tree of knowledge just prior to the First World War, when the publication was at a crossroads with […]
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Sotheby’s sold Fitzgerald’s masterpiece The Great Gatsby New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925, at an auction last month for $377,000 including buyer premium. The lot was traded at the high end of the estimated value, signifying the fact that rare book investors and collectors will pay premium prices to acquire top quality books. This particular […]
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The history of paper is well known to anyone dealing with manuscripts, books and other similar material. Paper was the preferred option in Europe due to its cost, which was lower than that of vellum, adopted earlier as the primary writing material. It quickly became known in Western Europe, having travelled from China through the […]
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Like many people do, I get to visit the local flea-market in Athens every weekend. The first thing I turn my attention to are the piles of books on large cloth sheets lying on the ground. Of course, some book sellers use benches, tables and so forth, but most of them prefer to use something […]
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Unfortunately, sometimes book collectors get a taste of what is considered a bad purchasing experience. Often times they realize that the book that raised their pulse rate did not turn out as expected. Sometimes a book bought online may just not have been adequately described or the smell from fungi present in a book turned […]
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For quite a while now, I have wanted to put down to paper some thoughts about the situation here in Greece regarding the book binding profession and the broader bibliophile interests in general. I could not say that people in Europe have lost their interest in books as a direct result of the financial crisis. […]
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It is not unusual for many collectors and researchers to come across old books retaining their original paper binding. Centuries ago, the books were sold by the printer or the publisher. The client, who had requested a title, purchased it directly from the workshop; the book was in booklets tied up together with a string. […]
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