Publisher/ The Sheldon Press
some spotting to page edges, darkening to green cloth cover, picture on cover of girl on bed being consoled by a woman. Frontispiece of woman gazing out into garden, very rare book hence price £480
The book sells four months later and I try to justify my profit. How many car boots have I visited in order to find this gem of a collector’s item?
The buyer in Australia might be a seller or a collector. I have no way of knowing. She may well intend to sell the book on, providing that she has a customer or a better judgement of the book’s value. A hierarchy of knowledge, the fundamental setter of price, determines the chain of book transactions.
(Distance travelled: 15 miles. Profit: £465. Fact learned: My business success is as unpredictable as Anglesey’s weather.)
Tuesday Morning, Montpellier Auction, 1996
The room is packed with objects and people milling about them. I am slightly apprehensive. This is my first auction and I’m late which means there is only time for a cursory glance at the various lots. Beneath a settee, there is a box of books, which I crouch down to assess. There are plenty of Folio paperback classics and I consider them worth a bid. I’ve got increasing confidence in my judgement of French books.
The auction soon starts and the auctioneer is rattling through the bids. His voice lulls me into a trance-like state out of which I am jolted upon hearing the words ‘boite du livres’. I thrust my hand skywards and soon discover that nobody else wants to bid. Sixty francs is all I’ve offered and I feel slightly exhilarated to have participated and triumphed at my first attempt.
Successful bidders are expected to assemble fairly promptly at a desk near the hall’s entrance where payment is made. In handing over the money, I am then puzzled when the auction ‘ushers’ walk straight past the box of books. They go instead to a massive mahogany headboard, which they need two men to carry. My mistake dawns on me.
‘Bois du lit’. Idiot. Attempting to appear unfazed, I lead the assistants outside to my van into which they heave the bed. I feign contentment with my purchase until I drive out of their sight whereupon I unleash a volley of expletives.
(Distance travelled: 3 miles. Profit: None. Fact learned: A little knowledge in French can lead easily to humiliation.)
Southport, July 2009
Drawn to this smart town with a reputation for good bookshops, I am not disappointed. The owners at Kernaghan Books, situated in Wayfarers Arcade, are friendly and much of their stock is reasonably priced (by my definition) in that it can be bought and sold on. I willingly part with £10 to own the works of Voltaire and the diary of Jules Renard in the Bibliotheque de la Pleiade.
My next port of call is Broadhursts, established in 1926. The shop covers four floors and is a delight for any bookworm or bibliophile. Some of the rooms have a museum feel about them and they get me thinking. Broadhursts boasts an impressive array of Biggles and Just Williams. Many other books — including modern firsts — are struggling to fetch prices achieved in previous decades. W. E. Johns and Richmal Crompton have resisted this trend but for how long? The rule of supply and demand dictates but demand has no inherent hold on stability at the best of times. Collectors covet certain books because other collectors have previously done so and are continuing to do so. Someone is buying a book whose ‘value’ is based upon other people’s assessment of its monetary worth. A philosopher acquaintance and former customer points out that these books as an investment are dependent on a third party’s investment decision. He has me scratching my head and wading through Keynesian theories of economics in the tertiary sector.
Opening Bangor Bookshop, April 2007
The city is roofed in local slate — Penrhyn purple — which imbibes somehow the grey skies, something of a meteorological default setting in North Wales. To compensate, there is the timeless melancholic beauty of the mountains.
Bangor is really a small town although its compact cathedral confers upon it official city status. It has an old university (by today’s standards) and a proud, friendly working class community. There is an absence of snobbishness but Bangor is still, in other respects, a microcosm of Britain, and somewhat schizoid in nature; PhD meeting KFC: professors intoxicated by the abstruse, lads on lager overload, seaweed from Japan for sale in Upper Bangor’s health food shop while, below, the city’s High Street is awash with the country’s regulation fare. Seagulls gorge on the leftovers. A plethora of chippies but no fishmonger. Packed pubs at weekends. Drunk students, skunked students, but studious ones too, that, I hope, will buy second-hand books. Some locals resent their presence and the mess of their rubbish spilling out of discarded bin liners. But they are the lifeblood of the city, and in the High Street, at the cheapest end, I open a bookshop prosaically called ‘Bangor Bookshop’.
I make a stab at targeting the university market but the margin on academic texts is, after a student discount, fifteen per cent at best. It makes more sense to concentrate on used books. Rents and rates mean that I have to conjure, from book sales, some £800 a month before I’ve made a penny. I’m struggling from the start.
The truth of it is that not enough people buy my books. Unhesitatingly, the public buys newspapers and magazines. But not books. Arnold Bennett in the 1920s announced that he had ‘scarcely ever met a soul, who could be said to make a habit of buying new books. Most people look upon money spent upon books as money wasted: the public hates to spend money on books, although they do not hesitate to spend lavishly on such ephemera as newspapers and magazines.’ Plus ça change…
A pub opposite, The White Harp, makes me think if only people could get drunk on books, ordering one after another. Hey, this Rankin is the business, bookseller, serve me up another three more Rebuses and a Dexter chaser.
Rogers Jones Auction House, Colwyn Bay, March 2003
On the ‘viewing’ eve of the monthly antiques sale in Colwyn Bay, an oak Welsh dresser distracts me from the purpose of our visit. Anne gets me back on track by spotting The Speaking Picture Book for the amusement of Children by Image, Verse and Sound.
Lot 278 intrigues. The pages are inside a carved wooden box upon which is a colour pictorial label. At the front of the book are eight fine chromolithograph illustrations, each facing a page of text. Next to each page of text is an ivory knob that, when gently pulled, causes a different animal sound to be produced (cock, donkey, lamb, birds, cow, cuckoo, goat and mamma and papa).
I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s a half book half toy antiquarian oddity. We return home and the internet sets my pulse racing. Haining (Moveable Books, p. 136–7) calls this ‘the piece de resistance of any collection of moveables’ and adds that few complete and fine copies have ‘survived youthful hands’. The guide price in the auction catalogue is £250–£300 which is well out of kilter with valuations on various websites. There are copies going on abebooks.com for well in excess of £1000.
I rush back to Colwyn Bay to convince myself that it is the book that was published in Sonneberg, Germany by Theodor Brand in 1880. All evidence indicates that it is. The label on the cover notes that this is ‘A new picture book’. Inside the front cover is a printed label at the bottom of which reads ‘A German edition is also appearing.’ It also notes that it is patented in Great Britain, the United States, Germany and Austria. The thought of a patented book appeals to me.