Not sure what to do with this book?

There may be some holding libraries for the original edition. Sometimes it is not obvious in WorldCat, but you can tell it to show all editions and then there is a link that says "show libraries holding this edition only" (not an obvious link)

I found one record that appears to be for the print edition from 1852. There are 11 holding libraries:

http://www.worldcat.org/title/essay-on-the-trial-by-jury/oclc/9848325?referer=br&ht=edition

See what you think. I'm not sure this will really help with your quandary, though.

Fig

 

Fig, thanks so much... I had overlooked that link. I just searched two of the libraries that came up in the list, and saw they both have an original copy. So I imagine it's true of the other nine libraries listed there as well.

It's interesting to me the number of law libraries that hold an original, which might indicate that other law libraries might be interested in obtaining a copy.

What's still to be determined is how much value is added by my copy being signed, and having been Spooner's personal copy, and how much the value is reduced by it's poor condition.

I sent photos and a description to Heritage Auctions yesterday for their free informal appraisal. I'll let you all know whatever they tell me.

 

I've just sent the photos and info to Freemans Auctions in Boston, as well.

 

Wow, I heard back from Freeman's Consignments Coordinator within a half hour. She said she shared the photos with the appropriate department, and that I would hear back from them within two weeks about consignment.

Should I assume this is a good sign or could it simply be they were having a slow day? Does it mean I should also contact one or more of the larger auction houses?

 

Pat - I would go back to that website you had in the OP - http://lysanderspooner.org/node/5
and click on the name of the professor who set it up down at the bottom of the page. He might just be interested in the book. Good luck.

 

If you get it for 2 bucks, a dollar profit would be a modest profit, but unreasonable, $150 would be an enormous percentage profit but reasonable.

If you got it for $100, that same $150 would be a modest profit.

If you got it for $100 but insist on $500, that would not be a modest profit unless a dozen buyers were beating your door down to buy it. Your large profit may never materialise and you have $100 tied up that you might have used to buy and sell a dozen times before you finally sell your book for what you can get.

I tend to buy antiquarian books at auction (local venues, not ebay) if I think the price reasonable and they sometimes are quite cheap because few auction goers are all that interested in musty old tomes written in funny printing about things that happened long ago, or are now considered nonsense. If the saleroom is not all that fly on books, the reserves may be very low, and often that is the only real opposition bidding.
Then I read my purchases if they are interesting, and take that book I paid £30 for and sell it in Hay-on-Wye ( book town near my 'country retreat') for £50 to a dealer who is prepared to hold the thing for ages to double his money, or who sells on some specialised book site or who has specialised customers on tap.

It's a modest profit.

 

Af, I think the problem here is that it was found among books from her mother - not purchased at a sale.
She has no money in it, but that doesn't mean she wants to give it away.

 

Elarnia said: "Pat - I would go back to that website you had in the OP . . .
and click on the name of the professor who set it up down at the bottom of the page. He might just be interested in the book."

Elarnia, a very good idea. I think that the real market for this book lies probably/mostly with attorneys, law schools (including law school libraries), and sitting or retired judges. The possibility of "jury nullification" remains a factor in trial-by-jury verdicts to this day, no matter what "jury instructions" are given to the jurors before jury deliberations begin or even as the jury deliberates but comes back into court with a question or questions.

 

Just as I have known doctors to collect medical quackery and weird books on the subject,etc. I have known a few attornies who collected books pertaining to law and the outrageous. I agree with yourturn

 

Lots to reply to here... thanks, everyone!

First, I heard back from both auction houses today and neither think it's appropriate for them. Freeman's didn't give me a reason, but I did get a detailed reply from Heritage's rare book folks.

He said the book usually sells for around $500 with no signature but in better condition. I guess he must have found auction or sales results that I don't have access to. I really need to go into Boston one of these days with a list of books to research.

He thought it was possible the book wouldn't sell at all in it's current condition. He also said they require a minimum $5,000 estimate to accept items. I'm wondering if he meant for a group consigned at the same time since the majority of books I saw that sold on their site went for far less than $5,000?

Elarnia, YourTurn, and Shiloh, I agree. I'll pull together a list of people and organizations who have in some way indicated an interest in Spooner's thoughts and contact them.

Af, as Messilane said, that's good advice, but this book was inherited so cost me nothing. That's going to be true for most of what I sell from now on, so I can't use any kind of formula, as I've done with things I've bought. Zero times any percentage is zero!

I did find my mom's original receipts for some items, but not for this book. Anyway, she bought everything so long ago that it's not a good indication even taking inflation into account. And as Messilane said, I don't want to leave money on the table if I don't need to.

As I sell more books, hopefully I'll get a better handle on what I'm doing, but right now I have the inventory of a fairly savvy collector but the knowledge and experience of a novice. I like to do things professionally, but it's kind of hard when I have so much to learn.

My biggest headache at the moment, anyway, is integrating my mom's "stuff" into the "stuff" I already had. Some day I'll have a house again that doesn't look like an overstuffed antiques/junque shop!

Thanks, again, everyone for your ideas and suggestions. I really appreciate it.

 

I should add that the Spooner book isn't at all typical of the books my mother collected.

She was a textile designer, and most of her antiquarian books are in the fine and decorative arts, and natural history (botanical) areas. She bought them for inspiration and sometimes used them in her designs.

After she retired her purchases became more eclectic and less discriminating. She probably bought the Spooner book because it was signed by the author, without knowing anything about it. I doubt that she paid more than a few bucks for it.

 

I may be just being picky, but I'd not call anything after 1800 an antiquarian book. 19th C stuff is just oldish. Not a criticism, just how I see it. I might stretch to the last of the Georges, but Victoria is just too recent. My father was Victorian, for hems sake.

 

Af, the definition has evolved. Here's a quote from the President of the Interantional League of Antiquarian Booksellers...

"There are no clear definitions that distinguish “rare books” from “old books” or “antiquarian books”. The standard definition of an antiquarian book is a book over 100 years old, traditionally antiquarian books are those printed before 1800. But through usage the meaning has changed and rare books can now include 20th century books.
It must be remembered that there are 19th and 20th century books that are much more difficult to find than a good number of 16th and 17th century books. "Old" does not necessarily mean “rare”, "rare" does not necessarily mean “old”. In general I would say that any book that is rare and collectable and can no longer be obtained from the publisher, is a rare or antiquarian book, but a rare or antiquarian book is not necessarily old!"

http://www.ilab.org/eng/ilab/expertise/The_Worth_of_Books.html

Also, don't forget that our country's history is far shorter than yours. When my book was published, the U.S. legal system was only 76 years old.

 

Hi,
Had to say I was worshipping in a High Anglican church in Brooklyn and several of the prayer books were published in the 1850s and still had prayers for Elizabeth Our Queen and our bishops. When I first saw them I just saw the prayers and thought it was printed in the 16thC not the 19th. lol. I bought a book on bottle makers new in the 1970s. I spent 19.95 on it, through the years it got lost. Last year I started looking to purchase another copy and the cheapest I could find was 450.
greg

 

Goodness, Greg, that sounds like a lot!

Just out of curiosity, where was the church? I grew up in the middle of Brooklyn.

 

Af, the definition has evolved.

I'm not all that surprised I have the 'traditional' view of them.
When I first started to sell antiquarian books on ebay, supplies of anything from the 16th to 18th Centuries were quite plentiful at book auctions, because of the pickiness of British book dealers.

This was the early days of ebay and international selling and I imagine I was the only one at the saleroom who did not have a dusty shop somewhere full of pristine ancient books where a bumped corner or a missing spine label would relegate the volume to the cellar. Lord knows what they did with anything with a detached board or missing endpaper, use them for the cat's litter tray, possibly.

Anyway, the copies that had come out of Lord Whatsit's country house library and had been untouched for 300 years fetched prices I was not going to pay, but there was treasure indeed in the mixed boxes under the tables, typically 'Lot 256, 32 antiquarian and other bindings, etc, as found'

The box would contain anything from a coverless breeches Bible
through 16th C Amsterdam printed religion and history, some shabby 17th and 18th C books, mostly not very interesting, but by no means always (first edition Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, spine cracked and front board missing) odd volume of Johnson's Dictionary, early edition, almost invariably volumes through the 18th.C. of the Spectator and similar weekly magazines topped off with some dull 19th C books in fancy presentation bindings.

The serious book dealers simply turned up their noses at these heaps of 'trash' (but they'd have said 'rubbish' ) which most have been why, when there were what I at least considered potentially valuable books, I'd get the whole boxful for maybe £100 or so. I might come away from a sale with ten boxes of what the auctioneer and the pros must have considered floor sweepings.

BUT this was a time when US ebay sellers were selling single pages of 16th C books for $10 or more a time (there was only ebay.com in those days) and my vital discovery was that the US market was not snobbish about condition. My early stuff sold very well whatever the condition, maybe $100 for something that cost me the equivalent of $10 and into the higher hundreds for the more famous scruffy volumes. The number of US clergy who had good money to spare from feeding the poor to buy early bibles was surprising.

The result was that I'd have most of the contents of those scorned boxes sold long before the next quarterly auction, with the books I considered not worth the effort piled up around the house.
That was how by exploiting a niche market that the traditional sellers did not have I managed to learn a bit about antiquarian books. The snag was that pretty well all the profits went into building my famous shed to store all the unsalable ones. (Or, more accurately, any I thought boring)

Then along came the online bookselling sites, and my near monopoly was broken, and everyone wanted anything however scruffy, prices soared, and switched my spending to other stuff.
However, I cut my teeth on books published from maybe 1550 to 1800, so anything later than that I tend to think of as shed material.

 

Hi Pat,
It was St Paul's Carroll St in Carroll Gardens. It was one block north of St Stephen's the church in the movie "On the Waterfront". I lived in Carroll Gardens then moved to Brooklyn Heights.
greg

 

"I cut my teeth on books published from maybe 1550 to 1800"

Talk about destroying old books -- incisors, cuspids, bicuspids, molars, and saliva are never friends of books.

Sorry, Afantiques, I simply could not resist.

 

Greg, I don't think I was ever in the Carroll Gardens area. I do remember visiting a friend of my mother's who lived in a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights.

My grandmother lived near the SE end of Prospect Park, and my parents lived there until shortly before I was born. They moved then to Midwood, where I lived until I left home. We were near Brooklyn College.

 

Hi Pat,
Carroll Gardens was a "cleaned up" name of this side of Red Hook. It started at the Gowanus Canal down to the Highway. It was where the Longshoreman's Hall was. I loved my apartment there. I had six rooms, two fireplaces. It was the entire 2nd floor of a 1860 brownstone. It had a front yard and a back yard and deck. My landlady God bless her let me do what ever I wanted. She did not know that there were built in shutters at the windows until I unnailed them. She had the parlor floor and basement, I had the 2nd floor and the third floor was rented. I only had 11ft ceilings. the 3rd floor had 8ft but her parlor had 12ft but the owners before her had installed an acoustical tile ceiling at 8ft. After I showed her the real ceiling she almost stroked out. Anyway by the time I opened up her floor. It was a beauty. All the decorative plasterwork was all hidden including a seven ft wide ceiling medallion.
greg