“Junky” Old Book Taken to Antiques Road Show Turns Out to be Worth $50,000

You never know. This story is a follow-up on an account from the Antiques Roadshow where a gentleman showed up with an old book by William Shakespeare. It was published in 1655, old but not extremely so for Shakespeare as he had been dead almost 40 years by then. It was also quite ratty looking. The lesson here is that while condition is of great importance, and first editions are often the only ones of significant value, some books and some authors trump the usual constraints. William Shakespeare is such an author.

The gentleman (Mike) brought some old books for an estimate. They had been collected by his grandfather, passed down to his father and then to him. Rare books expert Devon Eastland of Swann Galleries glanced through them, at first seeing they were old but unspectacular until one caught her eye. It wasn't pretty, but it was a 1655 edition of Shakespeare's King Lear. Not only was it a fairly early Shakespeare but she noted it was a quarto edition. Those are particularly rare. She did some digging into the auction records and discovered it last sold at auction at Sotheby's in 1946. Auction records are usually the best source for estimating values, but that is so long ago it can be hard to use it for accurate appraisals.

The 1655 edition sold at Sotheby's in London for £28. That's about $36 in U.S. dollars, but a lot has changed since 1946. Taking into account inflation, that's around $7,000 today, but even that would be a serious underestimate. Some books increase in value more than others, and early Shakespeare fits the bill. This was a third quarto edition and not only was it old, it was rare. Eastland could only locate 17 other copies of this edition known to still exist.

The third quarto had sold prior to 1946 at Anderson Galleries in 1918, but we do not have the price from that sale. What should be noted of the previous two sales is the provenance. The 1918 copy came from the library of Henry Huntington, one of the greatest collectors of the last century. He did not collect unimportant material. The 1946 copy was sold to legendary British bookseller Maggs Bros., and they would have purchased for discerning collectors, ones who would have been willing to pay considerably more than the auction price.

When Mike presented the book to Eastland on camera, she examined it and noted, “This book doesn't look that great. Looks a little brown. We had trouble setting it up because the front board is detached. Looks like a piece of tape on it. Do you think that looks like a junky book?” She also pointed out that the publisher, Jane Bell, the widow of Moses Bell, has a somewhat shady reputation and might not have had authorization to print it. It might have been a pirated edition.

Mike must have been feeling a bit down at this point, but then Eastland said, “At auction I would conservatively say $10,000 to $15,000.”

Mike responded, “Really?”

Eastland, “Yes.”

Mike, “Wow.”

Eastland, “For this dirty little book.”

Mike, “I knew it was unusual but I had no idea.”

A week later, Eastland received an email from Mike. He was ready to sell. Since the condition was a mess, and the covers weren't original anyway, she rebound it. Then, they put it up for sale at Swann Galleries. It turned out that Eastland's term “conservatively' before her estimate was prophetic. When the bidding at Swann finally stopped, it sold for $57,500 all in, with $46,000 to the seller. Appearances can be deceiving. Beauty turned out to be more than skin deep.