We picked up our free tickets today and went to the book fair. I took four of my old books with us to have them examined. Think Antiques roadshow – ‘if this were up for auction it would bring one million dollars.’ Well, not quite. Three books were family books, a Bible for soldiers with a thanks from Gen. Pershing letter in it, a hymn book, a hymnal and a German date book with pretty colored plates. The Bible (1917) and hymn book (1883) are both in poor condition and aren’t really anything to look at, so the guy told me if they were for sell they’d be about $10-20. The hymnal is rare and old (1852) but is in poor condition, so he said it might bring about $50-75. The German book is not too old (early 1900′s) and is in fair condition and the plates are what make it worth more, about $75-100 (although he said that if someone bought it they might buy it just rip out the plates, which would be a shame.)
After learning that we wandered around the fair.
Grace spied this mint set of Nancy Drew books from 1960, then she went around finding more. This one is a first edition from the 30′s with dust jacket in mint condition.
The seller said that the dust jacket from these versions are very collectible ($185 for this one) and that even without the jacket they are still worth some cash ($85 for the same title w/o a jacket.) He said that the 30′s books are a tad different from the 60′s ones, Nancy is a different age, drives a different car, etc. Hannah had me take a picture of this one so we could try and find it at the library.
We saw a book from 1642 and a set of books with an atlas, bound in leather that were priced at $90,000! We saw Japanese accordion fold books, Little Brave Sambo books (I remember reading that one), kids books, first editions, rare books, miniature books, postcards, movie posters and beautifully illuminated books. We saw a printing press that was printing off copies of the Declaration (cool, we’ve done that before at the Houston printing museum) and talked to sellers about their books. We were leafing through an early 1800′s illuminated Psalms book that had a carved wooden cover and then saw 3 more books with carved wooden covers too, they were heavy. None of the sellers seemed worried that the girls were perusing old books, which was good. They are very careful, but I know that some people see kids coming and cringe when it comes to old books or art or anything they think is valuable – and that’s not always the case. Some children can be responsible and careful when they are around valuable things. We saw old maps and documents, like a ship’s roster from the late 1700′s, and even a flag.
This is a US flag from right around the time CO became a state, the flag has 38 stars, 34 in the circle and 1 on each corner. That seemed like an odd arrangement, but it was the centennial of the US flag; there are more 38 star flags, we found some of them here.
Here is a festival book from Denver in 1898, it looked to be about a parade where different states were represented on floats, it looked like fun!
We wandered around a bit more and then took off for some ice cream at Little man’s. Today we had chocolate malt, plain chocolate and two honey gelatos. Then we drove by Spark gallery and entered the art pieces; the gallery guides really like both pieces and asked if Bethany had been in the other art show. I think the name stands out, or maybe they just see us there on the First Fridays. Tonight we are going to see Toy Story 3 at the park with some friends, it should be a nice night for it. James and Joel are off climbing (hiking) Lookout Mt., so I’m not sure if we’ll be hiking again tomorrow, I hope so I was kind of looking forward to it.
