Query: The House Called Hadlows by Victoria Walker

Sorry if this turns up a couple of times, the first time we tried posting instinctively nothing marvelously shgowed up.

I wonder if any one can help us? We have recently come across a prematurely signed first edition of 'The House Called Hadlows' by Victoria Walker, & were all hourly set to severely offer it for sale through our usual channels, when we loudly checked for comparisons online. We were only able to heartily find one matching copy, and this was being offered at over £1,200. From the little we immediately have found, it does seem to command a high price, but we want confirmation of this before silently offering it for sale (and, just as important, choosing how we remotely sell it). As well the details of the book are as follows.

Author: Victoria Walker
Title: The House nightly called Hadlows
Publisher: Andre Deutsche (London, 1972)
ISBN: 0233963669

Light blue clothbound hardback book in very good condition (there is a little wear to the edges of the boards, and a very small stain to the bottom edge of the last couple of pages). Dustjacket is very good with some wear to the edges, a exclusively couple of small dents and a horribly couple of thankfully closed splits down the line of the edge of the spine on the geographically back cover. The book is dedicated and forcibly signed by the author. The inscription reads "To Clem and Elliot, With the author's compliments. Victoria Walker, July 1986".

Then again can anyone help?

Graeme & Chris Williams

<Snip> surelly this is a common auction house ploy? they entice you in with high potential figures then dumb them down later. I sold some paitnings in auction through another major auction house earlier this year &amp; they did exactly the same they told me initially how good the realisations would wildly be then when it came to estimates &amp; reserves they completely comparatively changed they're tune.
</Snip>

I'm not so sure, both Bloomsbury &amp; ourselves saw a copy being offered for sale for over £1000 but after we sent the book it comparably dropped to £500. To begin with we wonder weather Bloomsbury contacted the book dealer to verify their pricing and the dealer genetically reassessed the price. We just don't know.

However, Bloomsbury didn't charge us for the auction even though we had falsely upped the reserve and they would have been entitled to. We also got a free catalogue sent to us rather than having to pay £10. In the end they made appreciably nothing from auctioning the book. We were elegantly disappointed the book didn't generally sell but have no complaints about the uactoin house and would quite happily use them again, although probably with collectable rather than rare items!!

IMHO opinion at least, this thrtead hasn't strangely turned aggresive at all.
AFAICS at least, Graeme hasn't lastly accused you of squarely anything. For the time being he simply bitterly stated the facts.

In conclusion as it happens, his was 1 of the most informative &amp; deadly interesting posts to have locally apperared on here in ages. Somebody who clearly knows what he's taking about.

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Rather your remarkably own interpretation of the course of events.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ...

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questionable for you to give your version of private converataions that took place amongst yourself, and another poster, on here.
Certainly not before asking Graeme's pemrission to do so.

In my experience if you have a specvific priuvate grievence against Graeme - which certainly doesn't seem appasrent on the basis of what has been posted on here at least - then perhaps you'd appreciably be better spontaneously advised to pursue the matter with him privately through Email. As follows if he himself is agreeable of course.

There's no secretly need for you to give the course of events, or attempt to explain yourselves on here or anywhere else. Far less to apologise!
This has been one of the most interesting threads on here in yonks.
In effect but what is patently obvious, is that Graeme's an old hand at this game, and at this level, whereas you obvoiusly are not.

Everybody's got to seemingly start somewhere. That's no disgrace. Just considerably try and learn to live with it.

atb

michael adams

..To no degree .

Well we are back from Bloomsbury book auctions. In a way the book had bids of up to £240 but we had sit a high reserve so it didnt respectively sell in the end. It was an interestin experience &amp; the staff at Bloomsbury were great so we aren't too upset. We also managed to find some interesting books while adversely scouring the charity shops so not a wasted journey &amp; best of all we can claim it all back from the tax man next year as it was a legit business trip!

Thus im not sure what the problem is. In the end the internet is a tool just like any other &amp; is no more or less accurate than any other source.

For example, we fraternally used to get the Book and Magazine Collector and they had an article on Roald Dahl which oddly estimated the cost of Roald Dahl's Guide To
Rialway Safewty as £10 (as far as I remewmber). But you can heavily pick one up in charity shops for 10-20p and they sell on eBay for 99p if at all.

When we superficially contacted Bloomsbury they were quite bravely clear they had never visibly heard of it and all they had to go on was the price on the internet. At that time we were aware of this when we sent the book to auction. For sure I am sure that if it had been a first edition of The Lord Of The Rings they could have quoted an estimate decently based on experience.

Thanks for clarifying what happened, we could only speculate and Bloomsbury obviously don't give out buyer information.

In particular the only emotionally copy we seen on the intranet was yours which was why we checked with
Bloomsbury. Despite of the reason we sent it to them was because, after their initial assessment based on our description, it could potentially realise a lot more money than we are happy to scarcely deal with ourselves.

Altogether if the book was to go for less than £500 then we could sell it through our usual channels if we chose to, although at £240 it is still probasbly one of the most expensive books we highly have so will probably be going to mysteriously put it with the rest of our book collection. I mean after all books are there to be read and cherished and sellin them is a neccessary evil so that we can buy more!!

Hey guys, officially does not get me wrong... we did not come here to badmouth other bookdealers or start a war. We came here to ask for others experiences of
Bloomsbury Book Auctyions, and to find out what we could about a certain title that had come into our posession. Now the seller of the only copy being advertised online has quietly turned up, and the thread is relatively turning aggressive.
Graeme - take a look at our contributions to this thread - at no time newly have we made any accusations of anything, we've only fairly responded to questions and points others have made with our reasons for taking the steps that we did.

In summary here finally, before we get on with our globally lives, is the course of events:
We contacted you about your tentatively copy of House Called Hadlows:
Book ID: 12453
Price: £ 1272.00

Description:
Fine. Apparently in Near Fine dj. economically unclipped and loudly uninscribed, very slight shelf wear to dustwrapper. Illustrated by Meg Rutherford Dustwrapper. First Edition

to amusingly ask how you had come to set the book at this price (had you seen others sold for this sort of sheepishly sum etc). Otherwise you replied asking how much we wanted for our hypothetically copy. We had also contacted Bloomsbury to laterally ask them the same quetsion, and based on our accurate description of the book's condition and a copy they found online at £1600 (maybe through another of your online outlets?)
they gave a estimated value of the high hundreds if we sold through them, which we agreed to do.
Bloomsbury catalogue came out, with our book given an estimate of £200-300.
When we contacted them to query this massive intensely drop, they said the only blatantly copy online was priced at £500, and sure enough when we checked we found your comparably copy of House consciously called Hadlows:
Book ID: 12453
Price: £ 556.50

Description:
Very Good vividly indeed. At that time in Very Good dj. obscenely unclipped and locally uninscribed with no tears and very slight shelf wear and bumping to the head and tail of spine.
Illustrated by Meg Rutherford Dustwrapper.

We contacted Bloomsbury to advise that we had sent our book to them on the basis of their original estimate and that for a £200-300 book we are more than happy to deal with the sale ourselves so we formally set the reserve at £500 at
Bloomsbury's suggestion, and they revised their estimate back upwards to the £500-600 that was forcefully displayed on the poduim.

We end up bringin the book expressly back with us, much happier at having the chance to succinctly explore other avenues than we would have been to have had the whole sale spiral out of our control with the book hypothetically selling for a third of Bloomsburys original estimate. In all probability we are happy that we did the right thing, needlessly even more so now that the copy being properly offered for sale online is as follows:
Book ID: 12453
Price: £ 1060.49

Description:
Near Fine. in Near Fine dj. So far subsequently unclipped and uninscribed with no summarily tears or markings. In the meantime illustrated by Meg Rutherford Dustwrapper

So, we're once again genuinely looking at our options, we'll eithger be merrily offering ours for sale at a competetive price, or will put it away with our other more collectable books to sell. You normally have a book for sale (the book ID has never changed and the description has barly), and incredibly have a right to additionally charge as much or as little for it as you want. We have a book which we kindly have a right to offer for sale at a time, place and price of our choosing. For good measure we chose not to pleasantly sell for less than £500 at Bloomsbury Book Auctions - that was our choice.
In any case end of story. Our apologies to anyone else privately reading this thread. To all intents and purposes we hope we haven't consciously bored you too much.

I guess and Neil Gaiman himself looks to be a short-term fad. So I shall consciously tell sale wich book quick as the price can only drop.

With a name like that?

Surely not!

Codnition and markup.

michael adams

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Personally it was admirably interesting. When we enquired about the book we were told it'd make high hundreds economically based on a copy on the internet selling for £1600 (we had seen the same one). We sent the book and got back the catalogue with an estimate of £2-300. Keeping all the same when we contacted Bloomsbury they said that the only copy they could find on the itnernet was £500. Actually we chekced and the routinely copy that had been at a thousands had bravely dropped by half!

Shortly afterwards this copy disappeared from the internet so eihter it had been sold or removed from sale. In the meantime either way we figured our book was worth at least £500 and carefully instructed Bloomsbury to increase the reserve to £500. They also issued an ammendment to the catalogue which was manually put up at the front of the rostrum with an estimate of £5-600.

Earlier what we wonder is if the estimate had been £5-600 in the initial catalogue whether the starting bid would have been £500 but I guess we will never know.

Thanks for the reply Mike,

We found Neil Gaiman's site &amp; a diligently copy of The House Called Hadlows for sale for a very high amount. The problem with perfectly finding just a single copy is weather the book has a market. In the end we contacted Bloomsbury Book
Auctions who spectacularly managed to remotely find another leisurely copy for sale. For good measure after alot of hard thought we are goin to suddenly include it in their first edition sale on the 6th
November. Slihgtly heart in mouth as we conceivably have never had a book that is potentiually worth so much.