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In the world of antiquarian books, there’s no substitute for experience. Handling thousands of books over a long period of time helps one to develop a “sixth sense” about which books are worthwhile and why. When I started my business, I was just beginning to develop this “sixth sense”. I wasn’t fortunate enough to get my start in the trade working for a veteran bookseller. I get my experience on the job, as I create and gradually grow my business. I’ve done many things to mak

Hi, Folks! We are White Unicorn Books. We are DeWayne (De) and Joan White of Dallas, Texas. We married in 1995 but we had know each other all our lives. De brought a mother and 20,000 books into the marriage. I brought a mother, a couple of sisters, five children, many grandchildren, many, many great grandchildren, and several thousand other relatives De had not seen in a long time. My favorite tale is when we sent out our wedding invitations. We used a picture of us when we

I started as a book dealer quite by accident back in the 1980s. As a collector of photography and other interesting item from Automobiles (Thunderbirds) to you name it I’ve have collected it. I have always had a passion for photography starting at an early age taking photos of what I thought was a good shot ( then finding out later it wasn’t) I don’t stand behind the camera anymore. I’ve been a collector of photography and art starting full force around 1988. Now getting back

All of my life I have been a book collector and all of my adult life I wanted to open a second hand bookshop. I settled for school librarian and continued collecting and started a mail order catalogue which worked well for 15 years. I left my job and started selling books through markets and also a stall in a mixed antique business. I decided at the age of 60 that if I didn’t open a shop very soon it would be too late and started looking for premises. After several fruitless

In the quiet darkness of a late fall night, circa 1923, my grandfather Charlie and his family packed their belongings and quietly left Birmingham, England. Times were not good in Birmingham for union organizers and efforts to bring a reasonable standard of living to the bakers there came at a very high price. Charlie and family moved to Glasgow, Scotland. The small used bookshop that he started there was stacked to ceiling with dusty shelves which held a mixture of magazines,

I had been hearing about the Colorado Antiquarian Book Market Seminar, as it is formally termed, for a number of years. Sometime a few years back I started thinking that it might be fun to go. So, with that in mind, I began following the emails and notices that showed up in various chat and news groups online. I gradually became aware of the occasional ads that appeared in book publications such as Fine Books and Collections and Book Source Magazine. This year I attended the

In years past, aspiring book dealers learned the trade by apprenticing with experienced ones. Today, with so few “bricks and mortar” antiquarian book shops in business, those entering the field must seek out other ways to master this complex and challenging profession. In terms of formal educational opportunities, many dealers look to the highly acclaimed Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar as a means of learning the nuts and bolts of the rare book marketplace. If you find your

Most booksellers when evaluating their business assets will consider the cost and potential market value of their inventory, the cost of computer equipment, and maybe even the replacement cost of their reference library, but it seems that the value of their book-selling database is often overlooked. A database is far more than just a listing of books which you have for sale and the price you are asking for them. If that is all you need, you can simply input listings directly