The book-collecting and -selling impulse animates an entertaining group of mavericks who are a joy to follow through their groaning shelves
THEY ARE hunters and pack-rats, guardians of the unusual and obscure. Rare-book dealers sound like an obsessive breed you might have thought was long extinct . Yet as a delightful new documentary makes clear, today’s dealers and collectors are much livelier than the stereotype.
“My PhD is in 16th-century Spanish lyric poetry, which explains why I’m totally broke,” quips Saúl Roll in the opening scene. He, like many of the dealers profiled, joined the trade unintentionally. “After a month in Las Vegas, of all places, I knew this was what I wanted to do with my life,” says Rebecca Romney, who evaluates old books on “Pawn Stars”, a television show.
Over the past 20 years the internet has irrevocably altered the trade. The listing of obscure books online put many rare booksellers out of business. “Collecting is about the hunt, and the internet has killed the hunt,” laments Dave Bergman, who specialises in natural history, paleontology and decorative arts. “In the modern marketplace you either have to have the best, the cheapest, or the only copy,” to survive.
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