Keep an eye out at garage, antique and book sales for rare publications like these -- you never know what you'll find!
Edgar Allen Poe's Tamerlane and Other Poems sold for $696,000 in 2009. (And this was a beat-up, tattered-looking copy. Of course, very few were ever printed -- as few as 20, or as many as 200.) Find out more about Tamerlane here. (One of the copies extant was purchased in 1988 at an antique shop in southern New Hampshire -- price $15!)
A Western Trip by Carl Schmidt was purchased at a garage sale for a buck -- but it's worth $6,000.
Charles Darwin's 1859 printing of Origin of Species: found in a bookcase a British family kept in their bathroom! (They paid a few shillings for it about 40 years ago -- needless to say, it's now worth insanely more...) Another copy, auctioned in 2010 for $52,500, was found on the bookshelf of a woman in Tempe, AZ. She had many books; this one was acquired by her grandfather sometime in the 1930s.
A big batch of Thomas Jefferson's personal library books were discovered in the rare books collection of Washington University in St. Louis. (When his books were sold at auction after his bankruptcy, his granddaughter bid on many of them -- then donated them to the university. Except -- the university didn't know, until a tip from a Jefferson scholar. They could easily have deaccessioned them...)
A handwritten Robert Frost poem, found inside the cover of a book owned by one of his friends, who donated collection to the University of Virginia. It was discovered by a grad student 88 years later.
Action Comics #1, the debut of Superman, originally sold for 10 cents. (It's now worth millions.) This copy was found in a storage locker in California -- the same copy that was stolen from Nicolas Cage a decade ago.
I haven't been this lucky. But I have found several books at our local thrift shop and public library sale room that have resold for considerably more on Amazon -- including a video I bought for a buck, and resold for $10.95! So keep looking...I will, too. Who knows -- one of us may run into another copy of the Declaration of Independence. Or a set of glass negatives of Ansel Adams photos -- $45 paid at a garage sale, worth about $200 million.
Edgar Allen Poe's Tamerlane and Other Poems sold for $696,000 in 2009. (And this was a beat-up, tattered-looking copy. Of course, very few were ever printed -- as few as 20, or as many as 200.) Find out more about Tamerlane here. (One of the copies extant was purchased in 1988 at an antique shop in southern New Hampshire -- price $15!)
A Western Trip by Carl Schmidt was purchased at a garage sale for a buck -- but it's worth $6,000.
Charles Darwin's 1859 printing of Origin of Species: found in a bookcase a British family kept in their bathroom! (They paid a few shillings for it about 40 years ago -- needless to say, it's now worth insanely more...) Another copy, auctioned in 2010 for $52,500, was found on the bookshelf of a woman in Tempe, AZ. She had many books; this one was acquired by her grandfather sometime in the 1930s.
A big batch of Thomas Jefferson's personal library books were discovered in the rare books collection of Washington University in St. Louis. (When his books were sold at auction after his bankruptcy, his granddaughter bid on many of them -- then donated them to the university. Except -- the university didn't know, until a tip from a Jefferson scholar. They could easily have deaccessioned them...)
A handwritten Robert Frost poem, found inside the cover of a book owned by one of his friends, who donated collection to the University of Virginia. It was discovered by a grad student 88 years later.
Action Comics #1, the debut of Superman, originally sold for 10 cents. (It's now worth millions.) This copy was found in a storage locker in California -- the same copy that was stolen from Nicolas Cage a decade ago.
I haven't been this lucky. But I have found several books at our local thrift shop and public library sale room that have resold for considerably more on Amazon -- including a video I bought for a buck, and resold for $10.95! So keep looking...I will, too. Who knows -- one of us may run into another copy of the Declaration of Independence. Or a set of glass negatives of Ansel Adams photos -- $45 paid at a garage sale, worth about $200 million.
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