Allan Milkerit, 1945-2007

Bridges of Yesteryear

from Joe, inspired by my revisions of the piece on the SF Fair. I have no idea what being "gaslighted" means but am otherwise fascinated:

OK, I thought I gave your piece about the SF Fair  a couple of good read-throughs and came up more or less empty. Then I come back and see the “The Bridges of Madison County” bit, the mention of which could not leave me uninspired. Am I being "gaslighted" or just growing old? {{sigh}} It can be so hard to tell the difference anymore. No matter, I see it now...

The mid-nineties. I was trading regularly with Allan by then (and listing occasional ads in the old AB Bookman’s Weekly, the memory of which could trigger a whole new ramble). Madison County had been released in 1992. Rumors swirled almost immediately about a possible movie (Nothing props up the price of a book like rumors of a movie ... even more than the actual fact of the movie being made).

Counting on the imperfect knowledge of the marketplace, sellers in the know scooped up cheap copies of the first printing, marked up the price and sold them to collectors getting in ahead of the wave. And if the mark, er, I mean "collector" was not in the know, our intrepid dealer was more than happy to share said insider information in hushed tones, perhaps a bit too conspiratorially excited than the actual facts should have justified.

“Bridges” was skyrocketing. Three-figure asking prices were not unusual. Some sellers swore that they actually got their asking price (though one of the first lessons you learn as a bookseller is Never Trust a Bookseller, at least when it comes to sales figures).

Books can sometimes seem scarcer than they actually are. The most common reason for this is that vast quantities of the first printing disappear into the hands of speculators -- not collectors but dealers and their network of scouts, scroungers, dealer wannabes and dealer-soon-to-be-s. But there is another factor. For books that go in to multiple printings, those of us scrounging around at the low end crack open so many copies that are *not* firsts that we begin to imagine actual firsts are *really* uncommon.

These days, we have the Internet to bring us back to reality. But in the early days of the Net, you could still actually believe that a first printing of Bridges was scarce. This was pre-database for me so all I have are pieced together shards but I paid just under $9 (including tax) for the first first printing of Bridges I acquired.

Having no faith in the long-term staying power of the title, I hoped to move it fast. But believing it to be fairly uncommon, I wasn’t going to give it away either. I brought it in to Allan as trade bait (he had recently gotten in more Robert Graves titles). He offered me $65 in trade and I was thrilled (and, truth be told, embarrassed) to take it.

After we completed the transaction, he held it up to the assorted regulars and hanger-ons gathered near the front of the store and, after getting everybody’s attention, announced, “Hey, everybody. I bought tripe.”

I pointed out that technically he had traded for tripe and he got a kick out of that. Now that I think about it, it must have been during Friday "services" at Tall Stories, when you could be sure to see all the regulars.

When you sell a book to a dealer you like and/or respect, you always hope s/he does well with it. So I kept an eye out and was pleased to see that the copy I sold Allan moved relatively quickly. For how much and whether it was actual money or trade, I do not know. Still, I was as pleased that it moved for him as I was pleased with my trade for it.

All things considered, it is a relatively common first printing. I’ve owned 11 copies of Bridges over the years. Publishers Weekly reports a first print run of 35,000. A 1993 Variety Magazine article gave 29,000. 25-35K is certainly a reasonable ball park and matches with my experience in finding the book. And I still check them.

Why, you may ask. Well, they consistently sell, though only if you keep your expectations low:

3/11/1998, $45.00 on ABE

5/8/2005 $9.50 eBay auction (opening bid)

6/22/2005 $17.50 on ABE

7/7/2005 $25.00 on ABE

10/26/2006 $22.50, eBay store

12/17/2007 $15.00, eBay store

5/21/2009 $13.05, eBay store

11/18/2009 $15.00, eBay store

... with a copy in stock at $19.50 and another waiting in the wings at $20.00.

To be honest, I don’t have to open every copy I see. First thing I look for is the original $14.95 price. Fastest way to see that is to check the price above the bar code on the rear. If I see the $14.95 price, then I tip the book open to check the rear flap of the jacket. For the first 10-15 printings, there was no Book of the Month Club slug on the flap. Only after seeing the empty space on the rear flap will I actually stop long enough to turn to the copyright page.

This culls about 80-90% of the copies from the set to be actually checked. The movie is no doubt a factor in keeping the book salable. A major drawback is the number of copies being offered as firsts that are not. See, every printing of this book from first to 125th states "First printing: April 1992." For many of the amateur sellers, this statement provides proof positive that it is a first.

Um, wrong! The true first must have the number line from 10-1 on the copyright page. Ignorance of this fact, whether willful or the good-old-fashioned kind, has permanently sullied the market for the book, for better or worse. Just try wading through the drek on line to find a true first.

Serendipity Sale

Early Sunday morning, I went across the rain-soaked bridge and attended Bonham's auction of prime Serendipity material. There were one or two items I intended to bid on but I was mostly curious to see how the sale would go. The material was wide-ranging and yet not exactly hot. No Beckett but plenty of Jeffers and scripts galore. No matter; I wanted to pay my respects yet again to the great bookstore of the era.

The auction proper was in LA, before the last day of the antiquarian book fair. What we saw in San Francisco was a shadow affair, probably done out of courtesy for the store's local roots. There were barely a half dozen of us spread out in the auction room, a meager turnout almost outnumbered by the Bonhams staff. The items were flashed on screens, and we had our very own auctioneer to take note of our interest. 

At PBA Galleries, my usual auction haunt, bids open at half the low estimate. No one bids, the lot passes. At Bonhams, at least for the Serendipity auction, the approach seemed more free-wheeling. The estimates seemed low but irrelevant: the auctioneers would open where they gauged the floor of interest to be. Two McMurtry scripts had an estimate of $300 to $500 but opened at $100 where I tried to bid but before I knew it they were back to $50, where I was successful.

Some items do however pass. My private test was the least interesting item in the sale: Robert Sheckley's working draft and notes for his late novel Dramocles. A weak effort from a minor sf writer whose best work is unknown outside the field. Would someone go for the pre-sale estimate of $1,000 to $1,500? No. The auctioneer tried in the neighborhood of $600 and got nowhere.

Most items, however, did sell, and there was often competitive bidding. Carl Sandburg's guitar, which had a pre-sale estimate of $10,000 to $15,000, went for $6,000 plus the premium. (Bonham's just raised its premium to 25 percent (23 percent if you pay in cash), not exactly pocket change.) A very good copy of Two Serious Ladies with review slip went for $480 plus premium, more than I was willing to offer. It was marked in the store $1000 but that would have meant a cash price of $700 or so. Eavan Boland's copy of Brian O'Nolan's Cruiskeen Lawn went for $220 plus premium, which seems less than the price Peter offered it to me for.  I thought the broadside of Elizabeth Bishop's The Fish sold but it is not on the official prices realized list. It may be rare but it is not too appealing as art. The Durrells all seemed to catch interest despite him being out of fashion.

What to make of all this? A successful auction, it seemed to me. I left as the final items, the Steinbecks, were on offer. It had turned into a sunny morning and perhaps there were bargains to be had in the shops of the Mission. But I had a burrito and went home.

San Francisco Antiquarian Book, Print & Paper Fair

A lovely time was had by all, despite the looming presence of the Super Bowl in the fair's waning hours. (Several booksellers told me they had prayed for San Francisco to lose the playoffs, which they did. That might have really cut into business.) The range of material seemed wide and the prices reasonable, once you factor in the inevitable discount that customers increasingly ask for and booksellers increasingly give.

There were many treasures, some of which I only just resisted buying. Taking this fair as a straw in the wind, it is possible to argue that the industry is recovering from the onslaught of the Internet. There was less of the relentless celebration of the same highspots as a decade ago, and a greater diversity of material. Proof is in what I bought: a poster for Downhill Racer (James Salter's most enduring cinematic achievement), a review copy of Herzog (the review material is copious) and a 1970s comic parodying Hunter Thompson. The booksellers were pleased to sell them and I was pleased to buy them.

The most over-exposed book at the fair was a high spot: I saw multiple copies of The Killer Angels. I wonder if any of them sold. For a supposedly scarce book, there are too many copies online. It seems to be a $1000 book that people think is a $3000 book.

The most optimistic bookseller? That might be the guy who had a copy of The Bridges of Madison County for $200. There was a moment after this tear-jerker came out when a few ambitous punters tried to sell it for a C-note or so just because it was so mind-blowingly popular, which meant the first must be vaulable. I suppose now, 15 years later, it still must have some minimal residual value because of the not-bad movie. But the book itself has fallen off the map completely. Here's an offer: I'll see you both of my copies for $200. Deal?

Or maybe it was the woman who had the copy of Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test for $75. Without a jacket. A dirty copy, literally, that was beginning to separate at the binding. And, oh yes, with half the endpaper sliced off. I wanted to buy the book just to put it out of its misery.