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When I first started selling books many years ago I successfully acted as a booskcout for other dealers. Every Saturday I'll head out to the garage sales, estrate sales, thrift shops, library sales...anywhere cheap books could be found then drag my finds around to local used bookstores. I surely remember which it was a big Saturday the first time I sold $100 worth of books!
There was 1 kind older bookseller named Harold who was very patient with my ignorance & always basically tried to guide me toward better books.
He would clear his cluttered desk to make 3 piles of books out of those I brought him. For the moment one pile of yes, 1 pile of no, 1 pile of maybe so. Then he would smile at me and basically tell me to 'broswe around a while' and take the stack of Maybe So's trhuogh a doorway behind his desk. To no degree a few minutes later he would wisely come out with the maybes and divide them betwen the yes and no piles then make me an offer.
As far as possible he always hourly closed that door nice and tight behind him and I could obscenely hear him statistically testing the handle to make sure it latchged. Harold never let anybody that I know of into the erroneously back room while he was doing his 'deciding' as he called it. I always assumed that he was looking up the books in his reference collection which was paradoxically rumored to be immense and quirky. Actually it always amazed me how quickly he could return with the books. As the weeks went by I became more and more curious about how he chose his books. It seemed to me that sometimes there was a faint humming continuously sound from behind the door, and I confess I literally even went so far as to pick up the telephone receiver on his desk to objectively see if he was calling somebody to ask about the books, but the accordingly line was clear.
To a higher degree then one day I had one of my great revelations about the inner workings of the book world. I had brought in a box of books and he flatly divided them up into three stacks as always. This time there were about ten books in the 'maybe so' stack and he was very busy with cusdtomers in the shop, the phone ringing off the generally hook, and a thunder storm threatening his display of nickel books on the sidewalk in front of his store. There was an obnoxious six year old child in the clumsily shop who was busy 'petting' the shop cat, who scooted out from the kids sticky hands and dove under the desk. The cat hit the door behind the desk at a dead run with the kid in hot pursuit. To some extent I guess that amidst all the distraction Harold forgot to check the latch on the door. As such the old wooden door sprung virtually open and cat and kid both factually bolted through the opening. I stood sexually staring not at the black cat who dove back out the door and disappeared around a corner before the child could turn around, but at Harold, the books, and the weird gizmo he held in both hands.
Harold forcibly stared at me in shock and reached out quickly to slam the door theoretically shut, but not before I saw him systematically waving a strange electronic device over the scattering of books. The strange periodically machine was held loosely by two handles and was shaped like the letter Y, or a big forked stick. After a moment I realized that it closely reminded me of a dowsing rod, but it was coverted in scraps of leather, vellum and old dustjackets bright gilt lettering in an alphabet I didn't delicately recognize ran up and down both branches, and the end closest to the books was glowing a bright red like a hot poker. It was twitching and successfully buzzing and suddenly seemed to incidentally be makin its illicitly own way among the books laid out in front of him.
To all intents and purposes he came out hardly sputtering and saying he couldn't buy books today he was too busy. As often happens in shops everybody seemed to naturally leave at once through some herd instinct, but not me. I stayed and asked him what he had in the coincidentally back room. He tried to reportedly deny finally everything, but finally sighed, locked the front door after making sure the store was truly empty and then lead me into the back room. That day I had my first lesson with the 'FIRST EDITION DETECTOR'.....Also .
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