Two of my passions are reading and collecting antiques. Though I tend to enjoy modern books for my reading pleasure, I have combined my two passions to start an impressive collection for books that are rare. I don’t need to read them to enjoy the significance of the collection. To me, a rare book is a first edition copy written by one of the many great authors to ever grace our bookshelves with their literary thoughts. The first time I held such a book in my hands was quite by accident, but it started me down a path that I truly treasure.
When family or friends ask me why I collect books that I don’t even read, I explain to them how first editions of certain books have their own stories. Some of them were thought to have little appeal only to sell out on the first day they were published. Some of the greatest first edition books printed less than 1,000 copies each. Times were different back then, and costs were very prohibitive without knowing how well a book would fare.
Though they all were printed many times over afterwards, there is only a certain number of first editions available for those classics. Continue reading
When I was a child my grandfather had a great big bookshelf upon which he had all sorts of books. He was interested in all sorts of things, but he especially liked the novels of Zane Grey and Lour L’Amour. I read Riders of the Purple Sage for the first time when I was 11 years old and I probably read most of the Zane Grey Novels. Pappy had a very nice set of them, which I would guess included around 20 or more novels in hardbound editions. I really wanted to have them when he died, but they ended up being donated to the local library in a tiny town in Western Kentucky.