santa monica book fair

I must be a real rare book librarian: I got an invitation in the mail at work for discounted admission to the Santa Monica Antiquarian Book, Print, Photo and Paper Fair. So I figured it was my professional duty to stop by. Antiquarian booksellers were selling rare books, works of art on paper, vintage posters, and old advertisements. It was great fun to walk around and see what everyone had. One of the highlights for me was a small early 17th century book of maps by Ortelius, who is generally thought of as the creator of the first modern atlas. I also saw a lot of books that we often showed to users in the RB&ML, which made me nostalgic.

But what was funny is that I expected to be most impressed by all the really old, really rare books, but I was actually most drawn in by early editions of books I read as a child. One bookseller had a whole shelf-full of first and early editions of Anne of Green Gables books, which I basically lived on growing up. It was so fun to see how they looked when they were first published. The bookseller told me that first editions of Anne of Green Gables go for as much as $20k because there were not many printed at the time (the one in the link sold for $12.5k, and Antiques Roadshow appraised one at $12-18k). That's as much as the prices on first editions ($12k) and signed first editions ($20k) of Hemingway. Surprising, right? On the topic of books I read as a child, I also got to see a letter written by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Bonus: on the way to the book fair, I walked by a yard sale (if you can call it that...it was located on the little bit of grass between the sidewalk and the street), and a French woman moving to Australia with the same size feet as me was getting rid of as much as possible. I walked away with five pairs of shoes for $10. Not bad!