Which is to say, “Sold”

 

Just finishing up a big appraisal job – about 25 linear feet of documents and records from an important 19th century mercantile family – which, of course, had me scurrying around for comps in all the usual sources, including Ten Pound Island sales records. I have almost 50,000 records in my Inventory database on Bookhound and, since I currently have fewer than 4000 items online and another thousand or so pieces of ephemera and uncataloged items, that means about 45,000 of those recorded items are gone. Which is to say, sold. Admittedly, many of those 45,000 listings are duplicates. They might be second or third copies of common items, or relistings of rarer books as yet unsold. That still adds up to tens of thousands of sales over my 50-year career. It’s something I never really think about. Or, when I do think about the past in those terms, I tend to imagine my earlier years being dominated by common books in the under-$100 range, sold over and over and over again. However, on an appraisal job like this one, where I actually have to go back in search of specific types of records, I’m amazed at what I find in my own cupboard.

List 187, for example, way back in 2009, featured 110 items totaling about $120,000 including this marvelous illustrated whaling log/autobiography of the whaleman “Wicked Ned”  at $50K,

or List 213, from 2012, about the same number of rares, including a beautiful signal book for $30K. The more I looked, the more I found. In fact, I’ve had enough wonderful stuff to convince myself that I’ve spent my career as a rare book dealer rather than as a used book dealer. Probably doesn’t make any difference to you. It does to me.

But why have I been unable to keep detailed records of all these transactions? That’s what a good appraisal demands, and prying my sales records out of the past is a work of archaeology. If it weren’t for the Interweb, from which nothing ever disappears, I’d have a hard time accessing info about what sold to whom over the past five decades.

That’s because, I realize for the thousandth time, I’m an analog person caught in a digital world. I try to be a good Modern Man. I do email and I shop online and spend too much time in front of my Smartphone. But in truth, I tend to write down anything of importance… in notebooks, on scraps of paper,

unused bookfair invites.

I pay my taxes and commission fees, and never cheat my customers or vendors, but everything else is back-of-the envelope, slipshod. It’s a wonder I’ve survived as long as I have.

In case you’re wondering, I believe survival has its benefits. Thanksgiving eve I walked down to my sister-in-law’s house, where most of our extended family had gathered for dinner. The sun was just getting ready to set and everything was the rich golden color that characterizes day’s end. I passed a sun-tinted building and remembered Louis Mumford talking about how he loved New England’s white clapboard houses because they  picked up and reflected the colors around them. So I took a photo with my phone, something I learned to do a year ago. The building was actually a pale yellow, but it could’ve been white, and can you see that lovely little moon sailing up there?