Kicking myself . . .

I have several more obscure eBay searches set up to send me e-mail alerts. I was asleep at a ridiculously early hour last night and therefore missed the alert ("beverly gray" burt) for the following auction: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140335782117&ssPageName=ADME:B:SS:US:1123

I'm dying here, folks. When I saw the original thumbnail in the e-mail, with all those distinctive gray covers, I tried to tell myself there might just be multiples, maybe if I was lucky, they'd have In the Orient, which I've yet to find in a Burt edition. But no.

Someone got every Beverly Gray title ever printed in Burt editions. Including At the World's Fair. For FIFTY DOLLARS. *dies again*

What kills me about it is that the seller knows enough to say that it's a hard to find title, but not enough to have any idea of the value. When you add in World Cruise and In the Orient, both hard to find in Burt printings . . .

To end this on a more personally positive note, I acquired my Burt edition of World Cruise in dust jacket when a seller sold multiple Burt copies in djs of the series, including World's Fair. Sometimes when a seller is selling off a collection, it helps bring more attention to the individual listings than it might when selling only one. If the collector is known to other collectors, this can be especially true.

In this case, though, I believe so much attention was focused on World's Fair that buyers overlooked the other hard to find titles. I also acquired at least one other title--I think Senior? --very reasonably. If I'm not mistaken I paid between $20-25 for World Cruise and about $15 for Senior. While there's not uncommonly a couple of copies of a Burt Senior in dj up for sale on Abe or sometimes Amazon, at that time, this was the only Burt copy of World Cruise available online, with or without dj. I've had my Burt alert set up on eBay for over a year now, without another copy turning up, so I'm pretty pleased. In fact, I was contacted by another buyer almost immediately after the auction closed, wanting to purchase it.

While I generally like to cheer on a fellow collector instead of a reseller, I'm hoping these titles show up again. I don't have much hope for World's Fair, but I would definitely have some interest in In the Orient, although I would prefer a title in dust jacket. When you think about it, there almost has to be fewer Burt copies of this title than World's Fair, as they printed it for a much shorter time before Grosset and Dunlap acquired the rights to the series.

Worry not, I should have a decent review post up for Pemberton Ginther's The Secret Stair eventually. Unfortunately, my primary computer has finally drawn his last breath, so I've been getting by on a decade old clamshell iBook, which is painful in the extreme to use.

Storing Books

I'm always curious how serious collectors store all those books--Jenn Fisher's collection is about the only person's I've seen pictured. You can see my own library above, although I've added since then (I know you're shocked), and the shelves are all pretty full. If you want a tour, the far left bookcase is all Nancy Drew and Dana Girls. After that, I have them organized alphabetically by series name. I group formats together because I think it looks better (white spine Nancys, OS Nancys w/o dj, wrap dj Nancys, etc.), arranged by number within the format. To get even more anal, the formats are done in the order they were introduced (purple Dana Girls, turquoise DG, wrap DG, etc.), which gets complicated with Nancy Drew, since there are overlapping formats (i.e. cameo editions), and I also have some British and French editions. The few single titles I have are alphabetical by author.

My issue right now is that while all my series books are on the shelf, my regular books are still boxed from my move last summer. Clearly, I don't have the shelf space for them. I've bought another tall shelf and a different desk with a finished back. The current plan is to move the desk away from the wall, then use that space for two more shelves. I've also tentatively started selling off series I don't like in my Bonanzle booth--Kay Tracey is my test of this at the moment. I should also disclose that my favorite series, Judy Bolton and Beverly Gray, are housed on the built-in by my fireplace in the living room.

P.S. Please ignore my beginning attempts at stripping the fireplace. Thanks.

And in a final random note, there's no less than 3 Cherry Ames board games up for sale on eBay right now, and two others have sold in the past couple of weeks. A little odd, but it seems like there's a rush on certain things every now and then. The first one sold for almost $90, which may have encouraged some other people to list.