Stealing Books-A Bookscout's Guide To Book Collecting

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Sections
  Introduction
  Chapter 1
  Chapter 2
  Chapter 3
  Chapter 4
  Chapter 5
  Chapter 6
  Chapter 7
  Chapter 8
  Appendix 1
  Appendix 2
  Appendix 3
  Appendix 4

Chapter 8 - A Day In The Life Of A Bookscout

A Day In The Life Of A Bookscout

January 13th, 2005

7:00am on Thursday Jan 13th: I suggested to my wife that maybe we can go off and hit the bookstores in Las Vegas, that they were kind of fun last time. I was greeted with an icy silence. I'll try to convince her in the coming weeks. Maybe tonight I'll go head and gather addresses of used book stores in the Las Vegas area and start plotting them in my GPS.

8am on Thursday Jan 13th: I got on the internet at work, and using Google I gathered a list of used bookstores in the Las Vegas area. First I found a handful of libraries that each have a small used book store. Next I found an online yellow page type listing for used book stores in the Las Vegas area. This gives a list of 25 used book stores to hit in Las Vegas when we are there on vacation.

January 18th, 2005

I kicked of my book hunting a little earlier by hitting the two used book stores in Pahrump, NV. The first book store called Chapter 1 Books at 111 S Frontage Rd, was stocked with mostly paperback books, with nothing in the way of sports books except a few biographies. The hard cover books were fairly common titles. I headed to the other used book store called Bookworm Haven which was located at the corners of Highway 372 and Bolling Road. This store has more what I was looking for. I found the sports books, and managed to find a martial arts related book titled Knives, Knife Fighting And Related Hassels by Marc Animal MacYoung. Also as I was looking around, I caught a glimpse of the cover of a book out of the corner of my eye. I took a closed look, and it turned out to be a first edition of The Paper Chase by John J. Osborn Jr., which I already had a library discard copy of in my own collection, and knew that it was valuable. I bought this book for $6 and figure it is worth over $100.

January 19th, 2005 – The Day Of The Hunt

7:55am: My wife and I are leaving my Dad's house in Pahrump, NV, driving East towards Las Vegas to go bookscouting. The Garmin GPS V is guiding us to the first of 25 used book stores on the route. I believe the first stop is a library, but we'll find out when we get there.

8:45am: Stop for breakfast at Jack In The Box.

9:00am: We arrive at our first stop which is Enterprise Library on 25 E Shelborne in Las Vegas. Helen decides to wait in the car. I find the book store which consists of small room the size of a large closet. There are also a couple carts outside the door of the room with more books on them. A large portion of the books are ex-library. I begin to scan the books. The books are only moderately organized being separated roughly into fiction and non-fiction. I find some books that if lived locally, I would probably buy, or at least research to see if they had resale value. There were some Honda Service manuals that looked promising. But since I would need to ship them home, or be able to pack them, in our luggage, I am trying to be very discriminating in the books I will buy. I locate the sports books on the one the carts I saw outside the door of the room. I don't find any martial arts books, but I find an ex-library book on the Philosophy of Hatha Yoga (second edition, revised and expanded). But since its only 50 cents I decided to pick it up.

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