Recent Hunting

My haul from a recent hunting trip. Most of the stuff in the top photo was from a house cleanout. No mind-altering wallpaper this time. The biggest excitement was having to doubletime rifle through dozens of stacked, splitting boxes two steps ahead of the trashmen who were hauling everything away. This is a scary proposition because I usually find the best stuff on the second or third deep look after I have cleaned out all the obvious.

Highlights included nice, jacketed Asimov Physics 1sts, Mary Astor's A Life on Film (HC 1st), Adultery For Adults (an interesting '60s period piece on the practicalities of committing adultery discretely and sustainably) and a first of the Norman Mailer Marilyn Monroe bio with photos by Avedon, Beaton, etc.

Nothing extraordinary but a lot of stuff to ship off for fulfillment by Amazon which has become a steady and growing set-it-and-forget-it revenue stream.

The rest came from my habit of GPSing thrift stores whenever I'm in a new town. Found one that had a 79 cent DVD sale and I picked up some classics including the complete M*A*S*H for $6.

In the "just for me" department, I picked up a nice inlaid wood fliptop box a tiny rope monkey for the shadow box and a peculiar (and bad-ass) looking Japanese vegetable (?) knife made of Vanadium steel. Anyone have any idea what this is for?

 

The items in the next photo were the fruits of a trip to a stretch of "thrift" shops I've come to ignore because they believe you can ask internet premium for things that you are NOT going to deliver to a customer's doorstep.

Saint Mario must have thrown me a star me because I found about a dozen rare Nintendo Gamecube titles (including late period RPGs and a SEALED Fire Emblem Awakening) All for $2 each. I also found a copy of Linda Lovelace's Loose Lips: The Last Interview signed by punk /porn scribe Legs McNeil.

All in all and fun few days of scouting that kept me up until 3 AM listing.

Wallpaper

I bought a pile of books at a house cleanout recently. The place had 18 rooms and I kept getting lost and forgetting where I put down my piles. It didn't help that the wall paper in the place was--bold.

 

That is some deep-pile purple and teal shag carpeting. The place was a bit dilapidated and kind of had a psychedelic Grey Gardens vibe.

The owner was a practicing family/children's counselor and had a large library of decently preserved children's books including some uncommon Black/African-American titles. Standouts are The Legend of Africania (which features a white demon tempting an African Prince to ravage his land for diamonds and gold and turning people of other races into business-suited profit drones), and Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears (with a 7" record), beautifully illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon. I might not be able to give that one up but most of these will be hitting my Children's Books and Illustrators catalog in the next week or so.

My other favorite book find was the commanding: Look Younger, Look Prettier with a great 70s day-glo cover and some fairly bonkers yoga illustrations.

I think I saw that last routine at a Miley Cyrus concert. 

"Can a gawky Louisiana farm girl transform herself into an international beauty? She can--in fact she did. Virginia Castleton Thomas was that girl who stared in awe at 'beautiful ladies from New Orleans' and resolved to transform her own life....Look Younger, Look Prettier is the distilled essence of the methods by which the transformation took place, and which can be used by any woman seeking the kind of beauty that does not wash off at night, but reflects  the glow of good health and spiritual serenity."

Some other things don't wash off so easily either as illustrated below:

"Laura's vacations helped create family disunity."

Dumpster haul

Witness the carload of Kabbalah, occult, Theosophy, reincarnation and general WooWoo that I dumpster-dived (with permission) from a snow-covered bin behind a local thrift store.

WooWoo remains evergreen better than some topic areas because it never had a connection with contemporary, experienced reality to begin with. For the bookseller this makes it a similar prospect to higher math (and both subjects make my brain hurt).

These are mostly headed to the Amazon warehouse for the FBA program (which I've started experimenting with) but a few of the more vintage/unique titles will be findable in my New Age catalog.