I read Julian Rota's article "The Fate and State of Removable Dust-Jackets" reporting on the conference of the same name held at the University of London, with the sort of fascination and enthusiasm that I usually reserve for articles on sordid sex scandals involving Hollywood starlets. I very much regret that I did not have the opportunity to attend the symposium, at which I have little doubt I would have been an appreciative and attentive attendee.

While I found all of the subjects upon which Julian Rota reported worthy of attention (and it sounds like a broad and useful array of...

The prices of literary baseball novels have consistently been strong because of additional collecting pressure from outside the traditional pool of first edition collectors, most obviously from the vast group of baseball and sports memorabilia collectors who might not be averse to adding a few favorite novels to their hoard of baseball cards and "bobbing head" dolls of favorite players. Virtually any reasonably literate (mostly) American (mostly) male might be considered a candidate to collect one or more of the novels listed in the accompanying article.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, although only peripherally a novel about baseball, stands...

Collating modern first editions has generally been considered a "no-brainer" in the trade. There are seldom maps, plates or binder's half-titles to be accounted for. Knowledge of the bibliographical structure of a book was superfluous to ones ability to sell it, and most first edition dealers were, and are, pleased not to have the knowledge. Little more than making sure all the pages and the dustwrapper are present and largely untampered with was in the past was considered precaution enough. But with the maturation of the field, and the correspondingly high prices that twentieth-century highspots now bring, new problems have...

Between the Covers Rare Books exhibited for the first time in the U.K. at the 2004 Olympia London Book Fair. The jury is still out as to whether we will return any time soon. I had previously visited the fair in 2002 while serving as president of the ABAA, the American booksellers association, in part to participate in an informal meeting of national presidents convened by then ILAB president Kay Craddock. This served as a perfect excuse to shop the fair, the London dealers, and the several PBFA fairs being held in conjunction with the big fair.

At that time...