As pretty much everywhere in the World, we are all experiencing disruptions to our live, here in Melbourne, Australia we were onto our 5th hard lockdown, shops closed, unable to venture further than 5 kilometres etc.
So what do you do, if you want to hunt down rare books? Well obviously you turn to the internet and order online, this is obviously not ideal as delivery charges etc are much much more than thrift store hunting… On the bright side though, one can find treasures that are extremely rare at thrift stores.
So for a few weeks we were not really allowed to venture out, I relied on eBay & Facebook marketplace to find some deals.
I managed to get some great books, John Wyndham’s “Day of the Triffids” I was hoping for an early edition, but I did manage to find a book club instead, same went for Stephen Donaldsons “Thomas Convenant” trilogy – nice attractive book club copies in hard cover.
On Facebook I managed to score a collection of vintage Isaac Asimov hard covers, I also found a 1978 set of Lord of the Rings, by JRR Tolkien, found but not picked up till after the lock down, as the seller was reluctant to post out.
The absolute crown of my finds was a first UK edition of Ken Kesey’s “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” in poor condition, but its the best copy I own.
One of my friends also managed to find some Tolkien Hard Covers for the store 🙂
As much fun as thrift store / market hunting is, it is getting very hard to find older hard covers, let alone 1st editions, but hey it really benefits excellent charities, so I won’t be stopping thrift store hunts any time soon… If you see an expensive book in the store, most likely it is from my personal collection.. bought on eBay.. most likely outside of Australia at a hefty premium.
Until the next treasure hunt (hopefully out in the world and not in front of a computer)