Sidney-By-The Sea has a charming little downtown area with 8 or 9 bookstores and an incredible number of thrift shops that, despite the number of book dealers in town, had a lot of pretty good books. I talked at some length with Ginny Porter, Manager of Beacon Hill Books and asked her how Sidney had become a Book Town.
She noted that the Tanner family, who owned a large bookstore in town, had always had a dream to create a Book Town such as Hay-on-Wye in Sidney. The area was not particularly economically viable at the time, and they felt that they could make Sidney a "destination" for book addicts and book buyers. It seems to have worked. They encouraged others, and soon more and more book dealers moved there and opened shops. "It is a passive industry," said Ms. Porter, "and it has helped the economy immeasurably." Each spring, Sidney has a 25% off all books in town sale which brings many book buying visitors. We found Sidney to be incredibly book-buyer friendly and every used book store offered a discount. The car was beginning to sag with the weight of our books and we had a week to go!
Our next stop was The Butchart Gardens, a 55-acre garden on the Butchart family estate just down the road from Sidney. It would take a whole 'nother article to give you the tour we took, but suffice it to say it was breathtaking, and the flowers, trees and shrubs were phenomenal, considering the whole place was once a quarry formed by the removal of limestone used in the making of cement. In the background, peeking through fifty or seventy-five foot tall trees, a tall kiln stack is all that remains of the cement plant.
The next day we took a long, leisurely ferry ride through the San Juans to Bellingham, Washington. We have old sailing pals in Bellingham or I have to say, we wouldn't have stayed very long. The book dealers we met were generally pretty cranky and the mantra we heard time and time again in Washington was "we don't give dealer discounts because our prices are so low." Sorry, guys and gals, but your prices were not so low; they were, actually, in general, pretty high. Now I have a rule, because I understand how difficult it is to make it in the book business, that I give all walk-in book dealers who have some sort of identification, a 20% discount on any book that I can afford to discount. If I pay $100.00 for a book and I'm selling it for $120.00, I can't afford to discount it, but most of the time I can and do. So, when I go to a store, I politely introduce myself, ask if they give a dealer discount, and if they decline, I check a few prices to see if, indeed, they are so low-priced that I won't need a discount to make a profit. One dealer in Bellingham - Henderson Books - had one of the nicest, best organized, best stocked bookstores I have ever seen. They had a plethora of high quality, non-fiction titles. But, he actually said that he not only wouldn't give a discount but that he "didn't want his books to go out of Washington, anyway." All I could do was stare at him in astonishment, thank him and walk out the door.
Sotheby's Fine Books & Manuscripts Available for Immediate Purchase
Sotheby’s: Balthus, Emily Brontë. Wuthering Heights, New York: The Limited Editions Club, 1993. 6,600 USD.
Sotheby’s: Charles Dickens. Complete Works, Philadelphia & London: J.B. Lippincott Company & Chapman & Hall, LD, 1850. Limited Edition set of 30 volumes. 7,500 USD.
Sotheby’s: John Lennon, Yoko Ono. Handwritten Letter from John Lennon and Yoko Ono to their Chauffer. 1971. 32,500 USD.
Sotheby’s: Winston Churchill. First edition of War Speeches, Cassell and Company, Ltd., 1941. Set of 7 volumes. 5,500 USD.
Sotheby’s: Andy Warhol, Julia Warhola. Holy Cats First Edition, Signed by Andy Warhol. 1954. 30,000 USD.
Old World Auctions (Feb 11): Lot 11. Blaeu's Superb World Map on a Polar Projection (1695) Est. $5,500 - $7,000
Old World Auctions (Feb 11): Lot 36. Schedel's Ancient World Map with Humanoid Creatures (1493) Est. $14,000 - $17,000
Old World Auctions (Feb 11): Lot 49. One of the First Lunar Globes to Show the Far Side of the Moon (1963) Est. $1,000 - $1,300
Old World Auctions (Feb 11): Lot 5. The First World Map with Lavish Allegorical Vignettes of the Continents (1594) Est. $15,000 - $17,000
Old World Auctions (Feb 11): Lot 55. Anti-British Propaganda Map with Churchill as an Octopus (1942) Est. $2,000 - $2,300
Old World Auctions (Feb 11): Lot 197. One of the Most Influential Maps of Westward Expansion (1846) Est. $9,500 - $12,000
Old World Auctions (Feb 11): Lot 10. Scarce Pitt Edition of Carte-a-Figures Map of the World (1680) Est. $9,500 - $11,000
Old World Auctions (Feb 11): Lot 220. A Fine, Early Rendering of San Francisco (1874) Est. $2,200 - $2,500
Old World Auctions (Feb 11): Lot 707. Hand-Colored Image of the Presentation of Jesus with Gilt Highlights (1450) Est. $1,600 - $1,900
Old World Auctions (Feb 11): Lot 80. One of the Most Important Maps Perpetuating the Myth of the Island of California (1680) Est. $3,250 - $4,000
Old World Auctions (Feb 11): Lot 725. Homann's Atlas Featuring 26 Folio-Sized Maps in Original Color (1715) Est. $4,500 - $5,500
Old World Auctions (Feb 11): Lot 169. One of the Earliest Maps to Show Philadelphia (1695) Est. $4,750 - $6,000
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