Uwishunu.com

I’ve heard it said that people in bookstores don’t really want the books! they want to buy the time to read the books. Well, if the book is truly special, they’ll find the time to read it, and pass it along to someone they love.

Find some time, immediately, and head over to Freeman’s Auction House for the preview of their book auction. VP David Bloom has been working specifically with their books and prints for decades, and is a wondrous font of bibliophile minutia, as well as a real mensch.

There is ALWAYS something worthy for me at their book sale, to the point that I’m almost afraid to go. What I love the most is finding a special gem for someone having a wedding or big birthday.

A book for a wedding present? How about J. Calvin Smith’s New Guide for Travelers Throughout The United States of America! Railroad, Stage and Steamboat Routes, circa 1846? They’ll forget who gave them the blender, but Smith’s New Guide should be the staring point for the happy couple’s exploration of this great country.

Cousin Ed finally got elected to the bench? He should own AND KNOW Price’s Observations on The Nature of Civil Liberty, The Principals of Government and The Justice and Policy of The War With America, Dublin 1776

There is a large bound volume of sheet music from the 1840s to the 1860s. OK, I know the songs are not big finishers at the company barbeque, but the GRAPHICS are often killer, and totally unknown to modern pop culture.

As at any auction, some lots can go so high you’re left scratching your head, and others will go so reasonably you look around sheepishly like you’ve successfully committed a major flim flam. I once bought a stack of printed tracts! original anti Quaker laws from the 1660s through the 1740s, for a whole $40. Nobody wanted them (that day, in that place), and we donated them to the Peace Library at Swarthmore College.

I bought a large self caricature of Xavier Cugat, a noted cartoonist as well as Hollywood’s most famous Latin bandleader of the 30s and 40s, which to this day is my favorite of all the kooky gifts I ever lavished on my wife, after our two kids of course!

Preview is online, or in person today. Thursday the place will be quietly mobbed, and the preview ends when the auction begins, at 10.

The illustration is from lot 470, Antonio Scaino’s Trattato del giuoco della Palla, Venice , 1555, the first book ever printed on tennis.

Freeman’s Auction
www.freemansauction.com