This story begins in 1983 at a Contents Sale when I saw the entire collection of “Freddy the Pig” books and knew I had to have them. These books transported me back to Saturday mornings when my Dad would take us to the library for story time and, then my brother, Stu and I would select a book to take home to read. Stu always picked the latest “Freddy the Pig” adventure; I picked “Dr. Doolittle”.
When I saw these “Freddy” books, I imagined Stu’s daughter happily reading the same stories her Dad had read all those years ago. Besides, the books were a bargain at four for a dollar! Total purchase price: five dollars!
Unfortunately, Stu was not nearly as excited about my book purchase as I was, so the books languished at the back of my bookcase for almost 20 years.
In June 2002, I was clearing my bookcases and came across the “Freddy” books again. It was time to do something with them, but what?
That evening, as luck would have it, I was having dinner with a friend, who worked at a Children’s bookstore. When I asked Elaine about my books, her only question was.. “Is there anything special about them?
I wasn’t sure. I returned home and checked my books again. I was surprised to discover most books were FIRST EDITIONS, almost all had ORIGINAL DUST JACKETS and many were SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR!
Now I wanted to find out if my “Freddy” books had been a sentimental purchase or, by some fluke, a shrewd investment.
First things first! I created an inventory of the books - title, condition, dust jacket, signed, first edition... - and took them to a used book store for an appraisal. After a lengthy examination by two book experts, I was offered ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS for the books. With a straight face, I told them there were other people I had to check with before deciding to sell.
WOW… my “Freddy” collection seemed to be worth something!
I searched the internet and discovered AbeBooks, a Canadian company selling books online. AbeBooks is an amazing resource to use to get an idea of the value of books you might be interested in selling. www.abebooks.com,
I checked all the “Freddy” books for sale and emailed my inventory list to over 40 dealers and waited. After a few weeks, I received two emails, each one asking how much I wanted for the books. I did not respond.
Several months later, I received an offer of $4,000.00 for the books. As I was drafting a email saying ‘Yes, I’ll sell the books!”, I received another email from one of the two people who had originally responded to my AbeBooks search. I told them someone had offered me $ 4,000. for the books and they immediately counter-offered with $ 5,200. I was flying!
The $ 5,200.00 cheque arrived in the mail on July 4, 2003 and shortly after, I packed the books in bubblewrap and shipped them to their new owner.
My “Freddy” purchase had turned out to be a shrewd investment. Not only had I turned a $ 5. purchase into $ 5,200., I now had one heck of a downsizing story to tell!
