Looking for books at the Flea Market

Big post coming up.. Sorry! Geez..

Most thrift stores i visited last week looked like the picture above. Fucking clothes.

 

 

     I had a very productive week in general work-wise, but really found nothing in the way of books the entire week. Instead of posting fail videos and no pick ups, I decided to take a week off and just throw myself in to my work. Last Sunday as you know, I was in Tampa so really nothing got done then either. Went to a football game and visited some friends and drank way too much beer and ate too much red meat. I vowed the next weekend would be one for the books.

 

     Tomorrow I'm going to the Flea Masters flea market downtown. It's about 4-5 acres of garage sale-like small shops, some dedicated to one thing. I hope to find some gold in there somewhere for my collection. Stay tuned!

Fixing a book, Parenthood Edition

     I was not going to post anything today, but this changed my mind. Right when I stepped foot in the front door, my wife stopped me before I got my shoes off and let me know my son had ripped the back off of one of my Forgotten Realms books. He had been taking out the same book and looking at it for weeks now, just turning the pages and putting it back. She said she had punished him already and he really wanted to look at the book. I'm all about my son's interests in reading, but tearing something up for fun, just plain sucks.

     I'm a huge Forgotten Realms fan, having played Dungeons & Dragons for the better part of my high school life, and for about five years after that if you break it down. I don't have another copy of this particular book, and it was brittle like confederate money. The only way to fix something like this, is with really good, strong, well.. tape. I use tape I can get from work we call "Slap Tape". It's actually tape, but the adhesive is more like a glue and once on, is on forever. About 10 pieces of slap tape later, and the book was good enough for me. Obviously now I will need to find a replacement...

Piers Anthony Collection

     Huge Piers fan for a long time, when calling 1-800-hipiers was a cool way of getting free newsletters and discounted books.

     Piers Anthony was the first author that I took pains to collect every book they had wrote. When I finished that, I went after editions, but realized there were many talented writers in the world.. and yes, I will say it, some even better than the legend himself. I posted these pictures to the Piers Anthony Facebook page when he asked for everyone to post their collections. I looked at hundreds of pictures before I decided to post my own. I saw colections of twenty, thirty and even as few as five books. Some of the pictures were taken with their proud owner arranged on a bed. Not to be outdone, it so happened I owned all his books. In the comment of the picture I wrote, "Here is my collection of all 244 of Piers' books, not counting cover variations and printing differences." Needless to say, the pictures above garnered some attention, and had to post another picture with a hand written note with my name and the date. Some people contacted me and wished to buy the collection for as little as $100.

Worth noting: I have every Anthony book in Hard Cover and Paper Back. At one point I went after cover variations, box sets, and signed editions, and all first editions.. and got pretty far in to it before I called it quits. All together its over 500 books. I have over 20 personal letters from Piers himself, all the 1-800-hipiers catalogs, the PC game and the board game, all the calendars and posters I could find. Oddities? I have a few. Signed Encyclopedia of Xanth series by Nye, signed by both Anthony and Nye. Signed first edition of Pornucopia, brand new.. the list goes on. I should clarify I live in Florida, very close to where Piers lives, and was able to attend several conventions in the early 90's when he was doing such a thing, which allowed me to get a lot of items signed, and buy certain things only available at conventions.

One comment in particular was my favorite.
Random Person: "How long have you been collecting piers books?"
Me: "I stopped 8 years ago."
Random Person: "Geez. What do you collect now?"
Me: "I dunno.. everything."

EDIT: This Piers Anthony ego trip of a post did not age that well. At one point I did have them all, but he kept writing and my interest waned. I still have all the books in storage and have added a few singed copies to the bunch, but I'm not nearly attached to them like I use to be. I wonder why I thought it was something I needed to do, to flex on the facebook Xanth community? I'm glad I've grown up some since then. All collections are beautiful and meaningful in their own right, especially the small ones. 

Blog Repost from Sept 6th, 1999

     I had a blog before the term was popular, had regular emails and requests for more posts.. kind of strange being a 15 year old kid and having people listen to what you're talking about, even if it is nonsense. Demon's Pentagram (blog) was open from 1994 to 2001 when AOL had shut down their "members.aol.com" service. Basically everyone had a whopping five megabytes of web storage on their AOL account they could use for the purpose of building a website. Early on I saw it was five megabytes per screen name, not account, made tons of alternate screen names before the limit was five per account, and made websites and fansites. As I stated before, I may have owned 100 books at this point in my life, and I guess I found the exact instance of when I decided to be a collector. Had to post it. Below is the post from 1999 when I talked about collecting books:


"Not alot has happened today. I went to work, and they worked my ass off. I haven't worked that hard in a very long time. I hate people. Anyways, I was watching the new Real World on MTV, and I find it quite interesting. Lots of people who are after sex are trapped in a house, and they do it and get naked occasionally. I like it. I can really see why those voyer sites on the Internet get so much attention. The people on the real world got to eat dinner exclusively with Anne Rice, the author of the Vampire Chronicles. They got to go in her private study where she writes her books, and stuff like that. I even saw a Lestat and Louis doll in the corner of her study. That's like my dream come true.. id love to go there and eat dinner with her.. I have so many questions to ask...

"Soon the city will run out of rats Louie." -Lestat

Books.

A lot of people in this drear world love to read, I'm one of these strange people. I think reading makes you smarter, and everyone should read at least once a day. Not to be vulgar or anything, but I at least read once a day when I take a shit. That's the best time to read, it passes the times of your echoed moans in the bathroom. I like to read anything fantasy or science fiction... My favorite authors are Piers Anthony, Anne Rice, Mercedes Lackey, Robert Jordan is a good author; The author of the Dragon Riders of Pern series is good, I forget her name. Robert E. Howard (the Conan series) is also very good. Some day I would like to own the majority of all old fantasy books. If I was to collect anything, it would be books. Any fucking how. I know a lot of people who didn't read, and ever since they left high school they haven't even read the back of a baseball card. I pity these people. "

Ebay Follow Up, Book Collecting Philosophy, Pictures

     Ebay is a fickle mistress. you can do everything right, but still not sell anything, or you can make a million mistakes and get tons of bids. I'm normally pretty lucky with the selling aspect, but so far, no bites. I did get an email about the Redwall first edition I scored last weekend so that will most likely be sold.

     I'm spending the rest of today getting ready for Tampa tomorrow so I'm not sure if I will be able to get over to the paperback exchange as planned. If I go, I'll come home and write about it, take pictures, etc.. Again, I'm suffering from N.B.S.D.., which for those who don't know what that is: "New Blog Stress Disorder". Having created many blogs before this, and seen some great success, I know how hard it is to really get the ball rolling and be seen. Getting comments is the first part of this, which will come, and at this point after ten or so posts, 95% of all blogs just give up. Not me! Oh no!

     The last few days of the week I had to throw myself into my job a little bit and get some real work done, which is how I get paid more or less. I'm not going to bore anyone so I will be breif: I work in the beer industry, which is great, and I'm given a certain freedom of working at home and on the road. My fuel and expenses are paid for by my company so driving to an out of the way place is not too uncommon. All things considered, my job meshes very well with my hobby of book collecting and allows me the liberty of covering more ground in different places so I don't exhause one resource. By distance, my area I cover for work is from here, to here. So basically 216 miles end to end through five major cities. Bound to run into a thrift store along the way! Oh, and some quick pictures below:

A picture of me in the middle of no where Florida, working of course. That particular store had...

 

...a Ms. Pacman arcade in it. I played for half an hour at least.

 

My desk at the office in Fort Myers; that's pretty clean for me.

 

The paperback exchange near my house, the lady who owns it let me organize it by author so I can see when something new comes in.

First Edition Hunt: Dune

*Edit* Also check out my Dune Price guide to find out how much your copy is worth!

This is the holy grail of Fantasy/Sci Fi book collecting. I have seen one for sale in Temple Terrace Florida, when I went on vacation years ago, the price then was about $4,000, unsigned. I vowed to own such a book some day.

I feel that the rarity of this book in it's first printing and significance of the writing itself makes this an impossible find. Non collectors who read know something of it's rarity and are likely to spot it. This book will not be found at a paperback exchange with their rampant EBay searches, and most flea markets would have had this already picked out and sold. I'd like to call this book a "Garage/Yard Sale Only" item.

Someone has to already own it, and not know what they have. Unfortunately, this book was reprinted tons of times. The book club edition is almost identical in every way. The inside does not say first edition, but the date is correct. The actual cloth of the hard cover is red in the Book Club edition and baby blue in the true first printing. Other wise, a perfect match. Subsequent printings do not always have print runs on the inside cover, so you will many "Second Printings" on EBay as well. Signed copies double or triple the value even of book club editions. Over all, it's not uncommon to see a signed first edition go for over $10,000.

To answer a question that someone, someday will ask: No, I have never owned a first edition Dune. I do own a first edition paperback which is near worthless and always misidentified on EBay. I have had a book club edition in my possession, but found out it was worth less than the $5.00 I paid for it, so I gave it to a Dune enthusiast friend of mine. While with my enthusiast friend at a paperback exchange he found several ancient Dune paperbacks, hardbacks and other printings, all of which I own. He looked as if he was in heaven. I love the books, some of the best I've ever read. More pictures to help you identify a genuine first edition below:

Ebay Listing! (Magi'i of Cyador)

Yeah I listed it. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330807676081

If the Redwall book does not sell, I'm not listing it again.. no way. I changed my mind about selling it really. Not the biggest Modesitt fan so really don't care either way about that one. He is a good author, I just never got around to reading much of this stuff. So lets hope this one sells, being signed and all, and the Redwall one does not. I'm getting attached already, the books are just sitting here on my desk and of course I'm picking them up and reading them a little bit. Getting sellers anxiety.

Also, I'm feeling the pressures of starting a new blog. I want to post good quality content at least twice a week, which I hope I'm doing, but it's hard staying motivated when no one is reading what I write. My other blog, when I post the dumbest thing I get ten comments. I refuse to promote one to the other, I just want this one to attract a different kind of people and make it's own way. The Fantasy Bibliophile must succeed! Thinking about changing the look of the site as well. I've been know to get comfortable and just say, "Yeah, its good enough, Fuck it."

Also, as a side note, this is the first post I did where spellcheck did not find anything. Hooray?

Two stops.. six books, two Chevy Volts

     I just took a picture of the shelf.. 'cause I'm lazy as hell. Honestly I'm pretty tired. Fixed my dad's computer, sold a bike, worked an eight-hour-day. Time to relax! The books I found today as follows:

1) Robert Holdstock - Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn
2) Robert Silverburg - The Seed of Earth
3) Douglas Adams - Life, the Universe, and Everything
4) C.S. Lewis - The Last Battle
5) Anne Rice - The Feast of All Saints
6) Cecilia Thornton - The Well of Tears

     The rest of the books on the shelf I already own. I have a shelf just dedicated to unsorted and unloved books. Eventually I will put them in the Collectorz.com file with the others. Maybe I'll even remove the stickers from them? God I'm lazy. I found all the above books at a Kiwanis Thrift Store going towards Ft. Myers Beach. The building is huge real close to the water. There were two Chevy Volt's at charging stations outside. Although we have several charging stations around town, I did not expect to see one at a thrift store. Only about four shelves of books, so nothing special. I'll be going to Cape Coral this weekend so I expect to find some goodies over there, and I have been lucky there in the past.

     No bids on the Redwall book I found over the weekend. Going to to put some other stuff up later to try and get some tailgating money together for the Buccaneer's game on Sunday! Since I'll be going to Tampa for the weekend I'll try and hit some Goodwill's in that area.