Found this old field guide at a thrift store in Des Moines with hand-drawn illustrations. The author used these crazy scientific names for every fungus and I kept getting stuck on one page about false morels. Has anyone else spent way too long trying to decode an old reference book?
I went to an estate sale in Portland last month and saw this old 1920s book on bird migration with a super cool embossed cover. Lady running it said it was a rare first edition and wanted $60 for it. I bought it thinking I got a steal. Got home and looked it up - turns out it was just a regular reprint from 1952 worth maybe $15. The cover was cool but the inside was all faded and had a weird musty smell that wouldnt go away. Now I always check the copyright page and research on my phone before handing over cash. Anyone else get tricked by a smooth talker at one of these sales?
I was at this Goodwill in Columbus last weekend digging through a box of old sci-fi paperbacks. This guy maybe 70 years old walks up and says "you know most of these aren't worth the paper they're printed on, right?" He pointed to a beat up copy of "The Left Hand of Darkness" from 1969 and said that one's actually got some value. I never really thought about why some books survive and others don't. He told me it's all about the first edition runs and how many copies got printed back then. Now I'm looking up publishers and dates before I buy anything. Anybody else run into a random stranger who changed how you collect?
I grabbed this old math textbook at a garage sale last summer for 3 bucks just cause the cover had this wild geometric pattern on it. Turned out to be a first edition of something called "Modern Mathematics for the Elementary Teacher" from 1968. Listed it on eBay last week and it sold in 4 hours for $200 to some collector. Has anyone else found a random old textbook that ended up being worth way more than you expected?
I kept finding old sci-fi paperbacks with torn covers and thought the 50 cent tag was just clearance junk. Then I grabbed a 1970s Ursula K. Le Guin with a wild spaceship painting and it's now my favorite shelf piece. Anyone else dig through those discount piles and snag something surprisingly cool?
Got it home and the first recipe says to seal jars with paraffin wax which I guess was standard back then but now everyone says that's a botulism risk. I tried one batch of strawberry jam that way and the wax cracked after two days in the pantry, so I trashed it all. Has anyone run into old canning methods in vintage books that are flat out dangerous?
I grabbed a box of old sci-fi from a thrift store in Dayton, thinking I got a steal, but three of them are literally falling apart when I turn the pages. Anybody else run into this with paperbacks from the 60s and 70s?
I paid $40 for a beat-up copy of the "Buckeye Cook Book" from 1895 at a flea market in Cincinnati last Saturday because the cover looked so neat. Got it home and every recipe calls for ingredients that don't exist anymore or measurements nobody uses like a "gill" of something. Spent two hours online just figuring out half the terms and still couldn't make a single dish. Has anyone else fallen for a vintage cookbook that was basically unusable?
Was at a garage sale in Portland last Saturday and an older woman told me she never trusts cookbooks printed after 1970 because "they stopped testing recipes before printing them." She collects depression era cookbooks and showed me how the instructions assume you know basic stuff like how to render fat or test yeast. Now I'm wondering if my 1963 Betty Crocker picture cookbook is actually way more useful than the newer ones I've been grabbing. Anybody else find older cookbooks have better instructions even if the ingredients sound weird?
Everyone raves about finding those old timey how-to books but mine literally has a chapter on mixing asbestos into soil for 'better drainage' and I'm not sure if I should keep it or throw it out. Has anyone else grabbed an old book only to realize it's basically a hazard manual?
Some dude was literally telling his friend to toss any cookbook from before 2000 because "ingredients and ovens have changed." Dude I found a 1972 Betty Crocker at a library sale last spring that has the best banana bread recipe I've ever made. Sure the gelatin molds are gross but the basics are still solid. Maybe he just can't figure out a gas oven? Has anyone else run into people trashing old cookbooks for no real reason?
Last Saturday I picked up a book at a garage sale in Tulsa called "The Coming Ice Age" by some geologist from 1970. The cover had this beautiful painting of glaciers rolling over a city, so I grabbed it for a dollar. When I got home and started reading, I found out it was predicting another ice age by 1990. It made me realize I never check the publication date on old science books before buying them, because now I have a shelf full of outdated predictions. Has anyone else picked up a vintage science book that turned out to be hilariously wrong?
Someone at the library told me last month the musty smell in old books is just drying glue, not history or magic. I found a 1930s botany book at Goodwill for $3 and it smells like a chemistry lab, totally ruined my nostalgia.
I was digging through a pile of donated books at the library sale my town puts on twice a year when a retired librarian saw me flipping through a 1972 field guide to mushrooms. She pointed out the date stamps inside the cover and said those were from the county bookmobile that used to run routes out to the farms around here until 1985. Has anybody else run into old library stamps or bookmobile marks in their thrift store finds that made you wonder about the book's history?
Found this beat-up book at a garage sale in Phoenix that claimed to be a first edition, but the copyright page showed it was a 2018 print-on-demand. Has anyone else gotten fooled by those fake vintage reprints with worn-looking covers?
The entire week after that was a bust because I spent 3 hours reading about chinchilla fur grading instead of looking for actual readable books.
I was at the Salvation Army in Cleveland last Saturday and grabbed this beat up old cookbook called "Party Perfect Meals" from 1953 just because the cover had a lady in a fancy dress holding a tray of food. Paid 50 cents for it and flipped through it in the parking lot. There was a whole section on gelatin salads with stuff like shredded carrots and mayonnaise mixed right in. But the one that got me was the "Savory Jellied Dinner" that used lime jello, chopped hot dogs, and cottage cheese. I actually tried making a tiny batch last night just to see if it was as bad as it sounded. It was worse. The hot dog pieces went all rubbery and the jello never set right because of the grease. I learned that some old recipes really did just throw random ingredients together because they thought gelatin counted as a vegetable. Has anyone else found a recipe so weird you actually had to test it?
I grabbed a beat-up copy of 'The Sea-Wolf' for $2 at a flea market in Tucson last month and only realized after I got home that it was a first edition from 1904 because I never bothered to flip past the title page lol, has anyone else overlooked something valuable that way?
I grabbed it as a joke to show my friends, but then I actually tried the recipe for canned tuna and crushed pineapple casserole. It was surprisingly good, and now I'm rethinking all the weird old cookbooks I've been passing up. Has anyone else found a hidden gem in a book that looked like a total disaster?
Found it at the Friends of the Library sale in Portland for 50 cents and a guy next to me literally gasped when he saw the pressed mushrooms still intact between the pages, anyone ever find something like that tucked away in an old book?
I grabbed the chinchilla book for $1.50 and it had a handwritten note inside from a kid named Timmy about his pet named Fluff, so now I'm wondering if I should have grabbed the soap one instead since it had way cooler illustrations... anyone else pick up a weird book just for the personal notes inside?
Snagged this weird old book at a Goodwill off Route 66 last Saturday for like $2. It's called 'How to Build a Fallout Shelter' from 1961 and it's packed with diagrams for digging into your backyard and stacking concrete blocks. The author was dead serious about stocking canned food and a hand-crank radio too. I flipped to the part about ventilation systems and realized I'd have no clue how to actually make that work without suffocating. The cover has this retro atomic age graphic that just screams cold war panic. Has anyone else stumbled across one of these old survival manuals? I'm debating whether to keep it for the kitsch value or try to sell it to a vintage decor person.
Found a beat-up paperback called "Secrets of the Soil" at a garage sale for $1. The old timer running it said it was rare and worth at least $50. I bought it thinking I struck gold. Got home, checked online, turns out there's hundreds of copies out there. Still a neat read about weird farming techniques though. Anybody else get tricked by a seller's hype?
I got told by a retired book scout at a garage sale in Austin to always flip through any book with water damage because it hides first editions, but I tried that on a soggy old copy of 'The Swiss Family Robinson' and got a stained moldy mess with no hidden value, so has anyone else found that logic actually holds up or is it a myth?